Antonia Anna "Toni" Wolff was a Swiss Jungian analyst and a close associate of
Carl Jung. During her analytic career Toni Wolff published relatively little
under her own name, but she helped Jung identify, define, and name some of his
best-known concepts including anima, animus, and persona. Her best-known
paper was an essay on four "types" or aspects of the feminine psyche: the
Amazon, the Mother, the Hetaira, and the Medial Woman.
Biography Wolff was born in 1888, the eldest of
three daughters of a wealthy Zurich family. Encouraged by her parents to
pursue creative interests, Wolff developed a passion for philosophy and
mythology, as well as for astrology.However, when she asked to be
allowed a university education, her father denied her request, explaining
that it was not appropriate for a young woman of her class to have an "official"
education. Wolff pursued her studies by enrolling in classes as a
non-matriculating student. In December 1909, when she was 21,
Wolff's father died and she became acutely depressed. She began analysis
with Jung, who was impressed by her intellect and treated her depression by
stimulating and encouraging her to use it. Wolff became one of “a long line of
women who gravitated to Jung because he allowed them to use their intellectual
interests and abilities in the service of analytical psychology”. She began to
help him with research, and accompanied Carl and Emma Jung to a psychoanalytic
conference in Weimar in 1911, Jung describing her as at that point as “a
remarkable intellect with excellent feeling for religion and philosophy”. A
not unwarranted sense of jealousy on Emma Jung's part meant that her research
work with Jung had to be broken off, however, at the end of the year.
Wolff's relationship with Jung was pivotal in her development as an analyst
and member of the early analytic psychology circle in Zurich. She became
an analyst and honorary President of the Zurich Psychological Club. By age 60,
she had a busy practice, but was in poor health, suffering from both severe
arthritis and her years of heavy smoking. She died suddenly and
unexpectedly on 21 March 1953, aged 64. Relationship with Jung
Following Wolff's analysis with Jung, and her work as his assistant, she
became his lover in 1913 when she was 25 years old. [Apparently Jung recorded in
his diary that he decided to undertake the relationship with Wolff after an
impressive dream that occurred at the end of 1912]. During the period of
intense introspection from 1914-18 that followed Jung's break with Sigmund Freud
- his "encounter with the unconscious" - Wolff became a pivotal figure for the
maintenance of his sanity. At that time she was a "constant presence in the
[Jung] household. It was she who listened to all Jung's visions, dreams,
and fantasies, serving his every need from sounding board to devil's advocate,
and who was his unacknowledged personal analyst."
The intensity of Jung's relationship with Toni initially caused tensions in
his marriage, but by the 1920s an accord of acceptance had evidently reached
between Jung, his wife Emma, and Wolff. Jung's wife Emma accepted to share Carl
with her in a ménage à trois for that reason. Jung had been looking for the
"Anima woman," eventually coming to call Toni his "second wife." Wolff was a
frequent visitor to the Jung house, occasionally working on projects for
Jung at his home office in the late mornings until the family lunch, and
then continuing in the afternoon. She usually joined the family for Sunday
dinners. From around 1920 until the end of her life, Jung was commonly
accompanied by both Wolff and his wife at public and private functions. This
arrangement satisfied what Jung had termed “my polygamous components”, and
fit into his lifelong habit of distributing his affections for safety
among a number of his so-called Jungfrauen. However, the arrangement has
been claimed by some interpreters to have been destructive to the self-esteem
of both women. When in the early 1930s, Jung began to
pursue alchemy as a parallel to the process of individuation. Wolff became
concerned that Jung would be marginalized by this arcane focus of
study. She invited a group of university students to visit Jung, including the
brilliant and socially awkward 18-year-old Marie-Louise von Franz. In
her 2003 biography of Jung, Deirdre Bair quotes von Franz as saying she
intellectually replaced Toni Wolff in Jung's life. This can be confirmed from
a documentary film in which von Franz said on camera:
"Her [Wolff's] big mistake was in not being enthusiastic about alchemy. It was
unfortunate that she refused to follow him there, because otherwise he would
not have thrown her over to collaborate with me. He would have used me just for
translating, and he would have confided in her. But she wasn't interested. She
was too much a slightly conventional Christian, and she refused to follow
him." Yet despite this 'failing', throughout
her life Wolff remained the companion of Jung's inner work. Aniela Jaffé, Jung's
secretary and biographer, described her as Jung's "helper in the intellectual
penetration of the world of psychic images." In A Memoir of Toni Wolff,
Irene Champernowne describes her this way:
"I always felt as if I were even nearer to Jung’s inner wisdom when I was with
her than when I was with him in the flesh. She was in some way the inner
side of his or rather the inner companion of his journey through the
unconscious. She had a remarkable insight and was articulate and
confident." Jung acknowledged the importance of his
relationship with Wolff. Even in later years of life, they frequently spent
time together at Jung's Bollingen tower. Until his health deteriorated after a
heart attack in 1944, Wolff and Jung usually spent Wednesday evenings
together at the home of Wolff. When Wolff died in 1953, Jung was overcome
with grief, and found himself physically and emotionally unable to attend her
funeral, fearing a public collapse; Jung's wife attended for them both. Jung
had a memorial stone carved for her that read in Chinese characters arranged
vertically "Toni Wolff Lotus Nun Mysterious."
Publications Studien zu C. G. Jung's Psychologie
Structural forms of the feminine psyche. Zurich: CG Jung Institute 1956)
See also References
Sources Whitney, Mark. Carl Jung — Matter of
Heart, 1h45m documentary in which Toni Wolff is discussed and pictured.
Champernowne, Irene. A Memoir of Toni Wolff. C.G. Jung Institute of San
Francisco. Davis, D.A.. Jung in the Psychoanalytic
movement. In P. Young-Eisendrath & T. Dawson. Cambridge *Companion to Jung.
Cambridge University Press. Bibliography
Wolff, Toni. Structural forms of the feminine psyche.. Zurich: C.G. Jung
Institute. Champernowne, Irene. A Memoir of Toni
Wolff. San Francisco Jung Institute. Jensen, Ferne. C.G. Jung, Emma Jung and
Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances. Analytical Psychology
Club. Kirsch, Thomas B.. Toni Wolff-James
Kirsch correspondence. Journal of Analytical Psychology 48, pgs. 499–506.
Neri,Nadia.(1995)."Oltre l'ombra.Donne intorno a Jung" Borla,Roma.
External links "A Memoir of Toni Wolff" by Irene
Champernowne. Available for free download courtesy of the San Francisco
Jung Institute. Out of the Shadows: A Story of Toni
Wolff and Emma Jung A series of audio lectures on Jung and
his relationship to Toni Wolff.