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person1980–2018

Marion Woodman

Disciplines:
canada
jungian psychology
body
jungian psychology/feminine
clinical psychology/eating disorders

Summary

Canadian Jungian analyst who wrote Addiction to Perfection, The Pregnant Virgin, and Dancing in the Flames — developing the Jungian understanding of the addicted psyche, the embodied feminine, and the relationship between eating disorders and the rejection of the body — one of the most influential Jungian voices of the late 20th century.

Core Contribution

Articulated the Jungian analysis of the addicted personality and eating disorders as a rejection of embodied feminine life — perfectionism is a form of spiritual inflation that denies the body's reality — and developed 'Conscious Femininity' as the integration of the body, nature, and the Great Mother archetype.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Perfection as Addiction (Woodman's core clinical insight: the pursuit of perfection is not aspiration but addiction — the perfect body, perfect performance, perfect control — each representing a refusal of bodily, mortal, imperfect life — and the underlying drive is not ambition but the terror of incarnation, of being trapped in a body that bleeds and ages and dies)

Notable Works & Achievements

Addiction to Perfection

The Pregnant Virgin

Dancing in the Flames

Historical Influences

C.G. Jung Von Franz Hillman

Intellectual Lineage

London OntarioToronto Zurich

Contemporaries & Peers

Von Franz Hillman Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Minds Influenced

Jungian feminine psychology Body-oriented Jungian workJungian tradition

Intellectual Posterity

Addiction to Perfection The Pregnant Virgin Conscious FemininityWoodman as feminine psychology

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