Toni Wolff Biography from the Jung-Neumann Letters
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Toni Anna Wolff (1888–1953): Born into a wealthy and distinguished Zurich family, Toni Wolff was sent to Jung for treatment in 1910 after the death of her father the previous year.
She became the soul mate, mistress, and companion of Jung and was of particular importance for him during the time of his crises and subsequent exploration of the unconscious in the years after 1913.
She played a pivotal role in the foundation of the Zurich Psychological Club in 1916 and presided over it from 1928 to 1945.
Patients coming to see Jung for therapy would often see her as well.
When Erich Neumann came to Zurich in 1933 he underwent therapy with both.
Toni Wolff also became the therapist of Julie Neumann when Erich and Julie visited Zurich in May and June 1936 (see Neumann’s letters to Jung from 30 January 1936 [19 N], and 15 April 1953 [95 N]).
Neumann and Toni Wolff wrote to each other on a regular basis from 1934 until her death of a heart attack on 21 March 1953. Neumann wrote a letter of condolence to Jung (see letter from 15 April 1953 [95 N]).
Toni Wolff is the author of Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche (Strukturformen der weiblichen Psyche) (1951) and the collection of essays Studies on the Psychology of C. G. Jung (Studien zur Psychologie C. G. Jungs) (1959).
On Toni Wolff see Molton and Sikes (2011). ~Jung-Neumann Letters, Page 63, fn 145
Antonia Wolff (1888-1953)
Anna Antonia (Toni) Wolff was a representative of Analytical Psychology, founded the CG Jung after his break with Sigmund Freud 1913th
She was born in Zurich was the first of three daughters of a wealthy businessman Arnold Konrad Wolff and his wife Anna Elisabetha Sutz.
Her family belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church and was one of the oldest and most respected in Zurich.
After visiting the Lyceum wrote Toni Wolff in as an auditor at the University of Zurich and heard a number of years of religion, philosophy and mythology.
When she fell after the death of her beloved father in 1909 in depression, her mother sent her for treatment of CG Jung .
This analytical discovered her talent and took them to the IPA Congress in 1911 in Weimar.
Throughout her analysis, which lasted until 1919, developed a love relationship between Toni Wolff and CG Jung.
She became his student, assistant and official “second wife” next to Emma Jung .
In the early 1930s, not as Toni Wolff to the chagrin of his interest in alchemy, Jung said, there was an estrangement between them, which intensified after his heart attack in 1944, in the wake of intensified boys relationship with his wife.
Toni Wolff was 1916 in Zurich, one of the founding members of the Psychology Club, the association of the followers of CG Jung’s Analytical Psychology.
From 1928 to 1945, she was standing outside the club as president and was then club secretary and later honorary president.
Toni Wolff published in Jung’s complex psychology launches next – she moved to the front of this expression of Analytical Psychology – a work on the psychology of women on the basis of Jungian typology.
Under their participation Jung coined the terms “animus” and “anima” as “Persona.”
Though Toni Wolff, who was her life long chain smoker, in recent years suffered from severe arthritis, she took up with shortly before her death therapies. She died of a heart attack.
- WRITINGS
- Introduction to the basics of the complex psychology. Berlin 1935
- The concept of the archetype in the complex psychology and its relationship to international science. Berlin 1950
- Structural forms of the female psyche. Psychologist III, Issue 7 / 8, 1951, 303-315 [Structural forms of the feminine psyche. Zurich 1956]
- The cultural significance of complex psychology. Festschrift for the 60th Jung’s birthday 1935
- Studies of Jungian psychology. Zurich 1959, Einsiedeln 1981
- LITERATURE AND LINKS
- Kirsch, Thomas Wolff, Antonia Anna, also known as Toni Wolff. In Dictionnaire international de la psychanalyse (2002). Edited by A. de Mijolla. Paris, 2005, 1919f [ International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (9.4.2008)]
- Wikipedia (9.4.2008)
WOLFF, ANTONIA ANNA (1888–1953)
Swiss analyst Antonia (‘‘Toni’’) Anna Wolff was born on September 18, 1888, in Zurich, where she died on March 21, 1953.
Wolff was the oldest of three daughters born to Konrad ArnoldWolff and Anna Elisebetha Sutz.
The Wolff family had resided in Zurich since the 1300s and was one of its most distinguished names.
The family had been members of the Swiss Reform Church for many centuries. Konrad had been a merchant and a businessman in Japan prior to his marriage.
Although the marriage was arranged, it has been described as a happy one.
Wolff was her father’s favorite.
When he died in 1910, her mother sent her to Jung for treatment of what today would be diagnosed as depression.
Jung immediately sensed her aptitude for analysis, because in 1911 he invited her, along with his wife and several other women that showed promise, to the Weimar Psychoanalytic Congress.
When Jung began his nekyia into the unconscious, Wolff was the one he turned to.
He shared his dreams and active imaginations with her, which he recorded in his Red Book.
She became his soul mate for psychological matters in a way that Emma could not provide.
She maintained this function for most of the rest of his life. Jung described her as his ‘‘second wife.’’
Jung’s relationship to Wolff was completely public, and all immediate members of the Jung family, including Emma, were aware of the situation.
Emma and Wolff often sat on either side of Jung when he gave a seminar, and Toni frequently traveled with Jung on his lecture
tours.
tours.
This arrangement did not sit well with the children and grandchildren, but it was completely accepted by Jung’s analysands.
It has been said that Jung, as he got older, turned to her less frequently.
She became a founding member of the Analytical Psychology Club in 1916 and was its president from 1928 to 1945.
It was under her presidency that the ten percent quota on Jews was passed. From 1948 to 1952 she was honorary president of the club.
The club, the only Jungian organization at the time, was her domain.
From the 1920s on she worked as a professional assistant to Jung.
Most people who entered analysis with Jung also saw her.
She was considered to be more practical and worked in the personal aspects with the analysand, whereas Jung dealt mainly with the archetypal issues.
She favored the term Complex Psychology over any other name for Jung’s psychology, and when the Jung Institute was founded she wanted to name it the ‘‘Institute for Complex Psychology’’.
Her major paper was, ‘‘Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche,’’ published in German in 1951 and translated into English by Paul Watziliwak.
As of 2005 her other papers were being prepared for publication in English by Robert Hinshaw.
On a personal level she was always described as elegant, and dramatic in her dress; a chain smoker who liked her cocktails, but was never drunk.
She never married, as Jung was the man in her life.
There were rumors of other flirtations, but nothing has been verified.
She suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis, which hampered her mobility toward the end of her life.
She worked until the day she died. Gerhard Adler described having an excellent analytic hour with her the day before she suffered her fatal heart attack on March 21, 1953. ~Thomas Kirsch, International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Page 1871-1872
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