Susan Rowland: Jungian Scholar - "A Feminist Revision of Jung & Jungian Art-Based Research”

"A Feminist Revision of Jung & Jungian Art-Based Research” by Susan Rowland (PhD), Friday 19th May

C. G. Jung is no feminist. He had no interest in the restrictive conventions of his social world changing to include women as full subjects. Indeed, he made silly remarks about women in his Collected Works, because he collapsed his notion of the feminine in men, the anima, into unsubstantiated opinions of the “true nature” of women. Like Freud, he also mistook sexuality as a developmental issue when it is an archetypal one. And yet, arguably, Jung offers feminism a lot. For Jung’s work is dedicated to restoring the soul of western modernity, which can only be done, as he knew, by excavating a lost, marginalized and despised feminine.

In the spirit of “dreaming onward” this great revolution in consciousness, Jung is also today recognized as a pioneer of a new “feminine” research methodology, Arts-Based Research. In fact, by explicitly articulating Jungian Arts-Based Research, I use this profoundly Jungian and alchemical mode. My mystery novels are mysteries, exploring the lost feminine in a genre attuned to seeing the feminine in such contemporary issues as the climate emergency, war trauma, human trafficking, witchcraft, and non-traditional families.

BIO

SUSAN ROWLAND (PHD) teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is author of a number of books on Jung, including Jung: A Feminist Revision (2002). Susan articulated the framework of Jungian Arts-Based Research in Jungian Arts-Based Research and the Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico, with Joel Weishaus, in 2020. She continues this profoundly feminine work in detective novels with flawed female fictional heroes. The Sacred Well Murders was published in 2022, and The Alchemy Fire Murder in 2023. Two more manuscripts in the series are in process.