The feminine and the masculine in the dream imagery of career-oriented women - a post-Jungian perspective
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Date
1999
Authors
Griessel, Loura
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
The central aim of this study is to explore the archetypal Feminine and Masculine in the dream
imagery of career-oriented women in order to understand more about their developmental
patterns and dynamics, especially within white Afrikaner culture.
The study is theoretically grounded in the analytical psychology of C.G. Jung. In evolving his
ideas on psychological development, Jung sees development and individuation as embedded in
the archetypes of the Feminine (nurturing, interrelatedness, immersion in life, empathy) and the
Masculine (autonomous, separateness, aggressiveness). Jung argues that women instinctively
have more of these Feminine qualities and live in a Feminine consciousness, while men have
more of a Masculine consciousness.
Post-Jungians have come to understand that, as a result of gender and cultural conditioning in the
western patriarchy, women, as a result of their experiences, tend to have the archetypal Feminine
patterns and ways of being mediating themselves. Post-Jungian thinking has led to an
understanding that Feminine and Masculine consciousness are open to both sexes from birth. A
post-Jungian developmental model regards the Feminine and Masculine as the basic principles in
which all other archetypes partake. They are used to explain the developmental patterns of the
Self and ego-consciousness over a life-time. Thus this post-Jungian model becomes a way in
which to understand the developmental patterns of the Self in career-oriented women by using
the Feminine and Masculine principles, their images, and forms.
In the Jungian paradigm, the world of industrialised market-related work forms part of the
Masculine archetypal principle with its modes of consciousness in its heroic drivenness,
aggression, goal-orientation, and regulatory nature. Thus, career-oriented women would tend to
move closer to, and even identify with, the world of the Masculine and its modes of
consciousness, while leaving more of their Feminine qualities in the unconsciousness.
These considerations lead to the questions of what Feminine and Masculine themes emerge in
the dream imagery of career-oriented women and how they relate to the developmental model of
the Self which explains development in terms of the Feminine-Masculine polarity. This
investigation also indicates particular images with which these women are identified and which
mediate their ego-consciousness and ways of being.
The first part of the literature study deals with Jung's understanding of the dynamics of the psyche
and how these pertain to the two basic archetypal principles of the Feminine and Masculine. The
focus is on the developmental model of the Self which integrates Jung's work and current post-Jungian thinking. This part also explores the Feminine and Masculine principles, their forms,
images and structures.
The second part of the literature study focuses on the Masculine nature of work. The last part of
the literature study deals with an adapted model of the Self, using the archetypal Feminine and
Masculine, for career-oriented women.
To address the research questions empirically, a hermeneutically-grounded thematic analysis of
128 dreams reported by career-oriented women of Afrikaner origin was undertaken. Nineteen
themes emerged from the data, each of which has been elucidated in turn, using Jung's method
of amplification. This process yielded two concise themes, the Feminine and the Masculine.
This study concludes that the dream imagery in career-oriented women reveals more Feminine
themes (fifteen) than Masculine (nine), indicating that these women have as a group moved
closer to the Masculine modes of consciousness with their specific implications for development
and individuation. The structural or typological images mediating these modes of consciousness
are identified and described within the developmental model of the Self. The clinical implications
of these findings and indications for further research are explained.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology))--University of the Free State, 1999
Keywords
Imagery (Psychology), Women and psychoanalysis, Dreams -- Psychological aspects