Marion Woodman – The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter (Quotations)

Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group

The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Repressed Feminine

THE OWL WAS A BAKER’S DAUGHTER

In essence I am suggesting that 20th-century women have been living for centuries in a male-oriented culture which has kept them unconscious of their own feminine principle. ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 8

Now in their attempt to find their own place in a masculine world, they have unknowingly accepted male values—goal-oriented lives, compulsive drivenness, and concrete bread which fails to nourish their feminine mystery. ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 8

Their unconscious femininity rebels and manifests in some somatic form. In this study, the Great Goddess either materializes in the obese, or devours the anorexic. Her victim must come to grips with her femininity by dealing with the symptom. ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 10

Only by discovering and loving the goddess lost within her own rejected body can a woman hear her own authentic voice. This book suggests practical ways of listening, and explores the meaning of the feminine. ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 10

On complexes: Jung “pointed out that an outward situation may release a psychic process in which certain contents gather together and prepare for action. This he called a ‘constellation’; this is an automatic process which the individual cannot control. ‘The constellated contents are definite complexes possessing their own specific energy.’ ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 14

An active complex puts us momentarily under a spell of compulsive thinking and acting.  ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 14

The more unconscious the individual is, the greater autonomy the complex has, even to the point where it may assimilate the ego, the result being a momentary alteration of personality. ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 14

In the Middle Ages, this was called possession or bewitchment. ‘The via regia to the unconscious, however,’ said Jung, ‘is not the dream, as [Freud] thought, but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms. ~Marion Woodman, The Owl Was A Baker’s Daughter, Page 14