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June Singer seems to be an uncommonly intelligent, knowledgeable, and adventurous person who is also endowed with considerable aesthetic sensibility. It is thus a real pleasure to read this book.
The author, apart from her work as an analytical psychologist, is in living and sensitive touch with present-day social movements and in particular with the feminist movement. Though obviously sympathetic and emotionally attuned to the feminist movement she is by no means bowled over by it, but retains a certain objectivity. And so she recognises that some of its more angry and extremist expressions, even if emotionally and historically inevitable, cannot be its real and final form of expression.
She is quite clear that the impetus for writing this book stems from her wish to relate Jungian theory to the new understanding of men and women, of masculinity and femininity; but that in order to do this she must take a new and critical look at some of Jung's formulations.
Obviously it is Jung's description of anima and animus which provokes her most serious and relevant thoughts and objections; for she suggests that he has here incorporated—unconsciously and unquestioningly—the sexual stereotypes of his day (p. 270). This has always seemed to me glaringly evident and I find it more than timely that someone has at last pointed it out and has dealt with it at some considerable length and depth.
June Singer believes that we are ‘approaching the Age of Androgyny’ (p. 18), an age when we come to accept that there is equal value to the masculine and the feminine principles and thus save both men and women from much suffering and developmental stunting. But in order to understand this new age and to be prepared for it we must acquaint ourselves with ‘the old androgyne’; otherwise we might be in danger of dealing with the new androgynous phenomena as one would deal with ‘isolated and symptomatic manifestations if one took no notice of their archetypal bases’ (p. 28).
She sets about exploring