Toni Wolff

Who they were

Toni Wolff came to Jung as a patient at twenty-two and became, within a few years, a formidable analyst and theorist in her own right. Her lasting contribution is a map of four structural forms of the feminine psyche — the Mother, who nurtures; the Hetaira, who relates to the individual person; the Amazon, self-contained and oriented to her own achievement; and the Medial Woman, porous to the currents of her time. She meant them not as types to be sorted into but as forms that dominate and recede across a life. She helped found the Psychology Club of Zurich, served as its president, and taught at the C. G. Jung Institute from its opening in 1948. Her long relationship with Jung, conducted with Emma Jung's difficult knowledge, is the reason her work was left out of the official histories for decades.