Masculine and Feminine

by Gareth S. Hill

Book Overview

A Jungian analyst provides a new model for understanding the masculine and feminine principles that exist in everyone, providing insight into the events of daily life and the themes of entire lifetimes.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087773674X
• ISBN13: 9780877736745
• Release Date: June 1992
• Publisher: Shambhala Publications
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

One of my favorite books on masculine and feminine archetypes

This was a text book used in one of my classes in a Master's program in Transpersonal Psychology. I fell in love with the book, emerging out of a Jungian psychological perspective, which gives such a good "feel" of the energies associated with these four patterns: Static masculine, Dynamic masculine, Static feminine, Dynamic feminine. The lengthy, wonderfully researched and resourced explication of these four types will really help you find them within yourself, something that will then assist you to discover where your own or your client's blockages may be (at which pole of the four you might find yourself stuck) so that you or your client can get moving again. If you absorb these types adequately, you can eventually begin to "sense" or intuit the particular pattern where someone is stuck: for instance, a particular person will strike you as having a "vegetable" or chthonic quality, and you'll know by this that they are situated in the Static Feminine. ANother will radiate a dryness and depressed quality, and you'll sense their location in the Static Masculine. Hill also describes the particular dynamics that are found in the tension between two polarities: for instance, in the US, we have tension between the dominant Static Masculine and the rebelling Dynamic Feminine. These four patterns can easily be correlated, by those interested in doing so, with archetypes found in various myths or systems, such as in Greek Mythology or the Tarot. For instance, Hill correlates the Static Masculine to the Greek god Zeus, and the Dynamic Feminine to Dionysus or Bacchus. Whole societies can also be viewed through either these patterns or the polarities created by the tension between two poles. Hill also describes how particular psychological pathologies, such as acute schizophrenia, can be understood through this system of patterns and the oppositions their energies create in the psyche. Altogether this is a fascinating, rich book offering a wonderful trove of insights. It will be treasured by those whose spiritual paths or personal growth paths are archetypally or intuitively oriented, or who in other ways are interested in understanding the psyche through what Jung and others concieved as its own ancient manner of communicating with us: its archetypal energies.

Assessment and treatment in Jungian psychoanalysis

Thank heaven for Gareth S. Hill. Nearly twenty years ago I floundered in my work as a psychotherapist. I had some decent technique but my capacity to think clinically was hampered by the plethora of psychoanalytic theories I had studied. It was the problem of too many tributaries and no central stream, no overarching theory to hold all the other theories. When I first read Hill's book, it brought order to my confusion. It became a kind of polestar around which I could integrate all the various psychoanalytic theories I had been studying: Kohutian self psychology, British object relations theory, even American existential-humanistic and transpersonal theory. Moreover, it does this within a Jungian context that is enormously practical and insightful, and encompasses the individualities and presenting clinical syndromes of the wide range of patients we see every day. For anyone looking for a basic volume on assessment and treatment in Jungian psychoanalysis, this is an excellent book. Moreover, it was after reading this book in conjunction with Barbara Stevens Sullivan's "Psychotherapy Grounded in the Feminine Principle" that I was inspired to undergo analytic training and become a Jungian analyst. I have since had my graduate students and a few of my analysands read Hill's book over the years, and all of them have found in it a useful lens through which to view themselves and their development. I wish the book were more widely read and used.