Jung and Women
- jeanettemarsh
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
Reclaiming the Anima: How Jung’s ideas might help to address Violence Against Women and Girls
In July 2025, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) issued a report beginning with these words:
“One of the great societal issues of our time is how we deal with the epidemic of violence against women and girls .. It has reached such levels that in 2023 the Home Office designated [it] as a national threat, akin to that of terrorism.”
(Clare Moody, APCC Joint Lead on Victims and Violence Against Women and Girls)
This makes pretty sobering reading as a woman. I wonder about the place of psychotherapy in a world where this is happening. I wouldn’t call myself political, but I do wonder about how my training, initially as a transpersonal psychotherapist and currently as a Jungian analytic Candidate, can help me to reflect on this issue.
Jung’s ideas about feminine and masculine, anima and animus, have been both influential and controversial. They have been widely discussed and also, at times, condemned in feminist circles as “essentialist”. It can be argued that Jung’s ideas reinforce binary gender norms and suggest inherent psychological differences between men and women based on bodily sex. But that is not the whole story. Jung’s work is also seen as an organising framework of balance for the inner world of the psyche and, despite his now-acknowledged male bias, he does warn us not to neglect the feminine in our culture.
Throughout history, women have found themselves in the shadow – sometimes by chance but often forced there by default or design. The gender imbalance is an enduring and complex matter for both women and men – we have, after all, lived in it and been shaped by it for centuries. And, although some things may have changed, sadly, many have not: “.. across the globe, many women and girls still face discrimination on the basis of sex and gender. Gender inequality underpins many problems which disproportionately affect women and girls, such as domestic and sexual violence, lower pay, lack of access to education, and inadequate healthcare.” (Amnesty International, 2025)
“Women and girls experience violence and abuse each year, yet for far too long it just hasn’t been taken seriously enough by policing, the criminal justice system or the government.” (Yvette Cooper, MP, 4 February 2025)
If we were making sufficient progress we would not need campaigns like #MeToo nor would we have to be outraged by the abuses of women like Sarah Everard, Gisèle Pelicot and Jaysley Beck who took her own life at Larkhill Barracks. “Beck was one of 12 military women who took their own lives between 2016 and 2022 .. At least three of the 12 women had suffered gender-based violence or sexual misconduct.” (Open Democracy.net)
Increasingly, women are finding the courage to bring hidden aspects of their experiences to light – the undeveloped ‘good’ and the denied and pushed away ‘bad’. We can celebrate the contributions of women and highlight the need for systemic change. But it is difficult to counter the misogyny directed at us.
A study in 2024 found that, “.. ideologies, such as sexism and misogyny, are normalised amongst young people ..”, “.. with boys lacking awareness of its impact on their female peers” (UCL/University of Kent, 2024). Social influencers like self-confessed misogynist Andrew Tate are revered by many young men who, themselves, struggle with a confused, resentful or idealised relationship to the feminine - all of which may be indicative of an unintegrated anima projection. Tate’s message resonates with young men who feel disenfranchised and lost in modern society. He is able to tap into the uncertainty and instability facing young men today and lay the blame squarely at the feet of women and feminist agendas – men face uncertainty because women have deposed them from their ‘rightful place’. Tate’s views provide an “.. insidious ideological scaffolding that allows for, leads to and celebrates misogyny ..” (Roberts et al, 2025).
However, violence against women has deep and complex roots that go beyond any psychological theory. It reaches into economic, political, cultural and structural systems of power and control in our world. Tate pushes the idea that women are there to validate men and their power and that dominance, control and conquest should be the order of the day for young men. The damage is endemic and, like any ‘disease’ it will take a comprehensive approach to challenge it. Systemic reforms are needed alongside psychological transformation. The latter cannot replace the former, but it can address the deeply psychological foundation and make the changes stick.
Jung’s understanding of projection was present in the cultural narratives that he explored. He wove together myth, religion, art and story throughout his work and thus provided a vital crossing into the narratives around women’s empowerment. We can rework the redundant and antiquated archetypes that depict women as passive or secondary; together we can promote and encourage a more inclusive, fair and equitable world. Psychological work through therapy enables women and men to work through the layers of life’s struggles to find the authentic narrative of their life. Over time, men must reclaim that which they deny in themselves and project onto women. Dreamwork and active imagination with dream images can bring men into better relationship with their anima. Ultimately, the anima is soul and the journey of the soul is a relationship we all need to foster.
Jung’s understanding of the anima can be helpful if we consider the possibility that, where the anima is unconscious and unintegrated in a man, it is projected onto women and they then ‘carry’ that which a man is unable to accept in himself – his emotions, vulnerability, ‘weaknesses’. Men then attack what they cannot tolerate in themselves and see mirrored back in their projections. Of course, this is only one possible way of thinking about the problem of violence towards women and girls. It is not the only one.Reflecting on the psychology isn’t going to change the world – but I can change my small corner of it and who knows what the repercussions of that might be. Whilst individual psychotherapy cannot directly dismantle patriarchal structures, it can interrupt the psychological mechanisms that sustain them. After all, that is how the #MeToo movement started – with a single tweet that triggered a global conversation. Similarly, if enough individual psychological work happens, a cultural shift can take place that would enable systemic change.
When we can integrate the inner feminine and masculine aspects of ourselves it is possible to relax harmful and rigidly stereotyped gender roles. We need to remove barriers and challenge traditional gender norms, and this would seem to be in line with Jung’s understanding of the journey of individuation, ie, embracing all aspects of the self.
Jung himself was a man of shadows. His work is bound up with the man, his personal and social context, his own struggles and his cultural setting and history. It is not without bias. It is not without problems. However, it is a comprehensive and complex theory of how we can begin to comprehend something of what makes us the extra-ordinary and, at the same time, very ordinary selves that we are. It helps us to face the conflicts, projections and denials that we struggle with in ourselves every day. Despite his complexities and failings, which included romantic involvement with some of his female patients, Jung did take women seriously – the women of his inner circle, sometimes known as The Valkyries – went on to work and teach alongside him and develop prominent careers of their own. When we are able to look at Jung’s work through modern eyes, he does offer relevant and valuable psychological insights into the ongoing battle for gender equality and the celebration of women’s resilience and strength.
I can think of no better representative of that resilience and strength than Gisele Pelicot, who, even in the aftermath of difficult and heart-breaking trauma, declared: “I have faith in our capacity to collectively take hold of a future in which everybody – women, men – can live together in harmony, respect and mutual understanding.” (Gisele Pelicot, 2024)
I feel that, almost a century later, her thoughts carry echoes of Jung's own words: “You seek the feminine in women and the masculine in men. And thus there are always only men and women. But where are people? .. humankind is masculine and feminine, not just man or woman. You can hardly say of your soul what sex it is.” (C G Jung, The Red Book, pp226-227)
Jung encouraged us towards a more inclusive appreciation of human nature that transcends restrictive and unyielding gender categories. Were he here today, I believe Jung would be speaking out on behalf of women. And, given the provisional and evolving nature of the psyche, he might even agree with Butler’s constructivist view that woman is a life and a lifetime: “If there is something right in Beauvoir's claim that ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’, it follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification.” (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity)
I would love to think that increased awareness of the unconscious and its influence in all our lives, as well as working on and owning our own psychological histories and difficulties could help to reduce levels of violence against women. I am not that naïve. But it’s a start. And we need to start somewhere.
Butler J (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
Jung C G (2009) The Red Book, Liber Novus: A Reader’s Edition. W W Norton & Company Ltd. pp226-227
Rowland S (2002) Jung: A Feminist Revision. Polity Press.
Moody C (2025) APCC Joint Victims Lead: Maintaining momentum in tackling violence against women and girls. https://www.apccs.police.uk/apcc-joint-victims-lead-writes-maintaining-momentum-in-tackling-violence-against-women-and-girls/
Regehr K, Shaughnessy C, Zhao M & Shaughnessy N (2024) Safer Scrolling: How algorithms popularise and gamify online hate and misogyny for young people.
Roberts S, Jones C & Maloney M (2025) Beyond the Clickbait: Analysing the Masculinist Ideology in Andrew Tate’s Online Written Discourses. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17499755241307414
(https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-13m-police-centre-to-tackle-violence-against-women-and-girls
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