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Ann Belford Ulanov presents an argument for the application of depth psychology to the feminist and spiritual concerns of women. This chapter is taken from a book published in the United States and aimed, presumably, at American women. I think there may be an assumption that, because it is written in English, we will be ‘speaking the same language’, but this assumption is, I believe, mistaken, and an effort must be made to ‘translate’ what is intended. This brief review is not the place to undertake such a translation.
Ulanov considers that depth psychology, by asking, ‘Where did this view or image originate?’ and, ‘Where is this view leading?’, can help women to understand their identity as rooted in both the personal environment into which they were born and by which they were shaped and also in the archetypal or collective sphere. Following Jung, she terms these two routes to understanding the ‘reductive’ hermeneutic and the ‘prospective’ hermeneutic.
In the first of three sections Ulanov introduces the psyche as a ‘living presence’ and ‘document’ within, which ‘pulls us across the borderlands of subjective-objective, personal-collective, traditional and personal God-images’. She indicates that by ‘depth psychology’ she means a combination of object-relations and Jungian understandings.
In the second section she explores some of the images and issues associated with feminism and, applying selected principles of depth psychology, attempts to redress an imbalance she perceives in feminism: ‘[a] tendency to idealize all things feminine … to see feminism as all light … and females always as innocent victims of … masculine forces’. Ulanov emphasizes the importance of allowing and accepting that different women may experience the feminine in different ways and illustrates this by exploring the issue of abortion.
In the third section the author addresses spirituality, the ‘life of the soul’, looking particularly at the origin and development of God-images and encouraging wo