Toni Wolff

Toni Anna Wolff (18 September 1888 – 21 March 1953) was a Swiss Jungian analyst and a close collaborator of Carl Jung.

[1] During her analytic career 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, as well as the theory of the psychological types.

[2][3] Her best-known paper is an essay on four "types" or aspects of the feminine psyche: the Amazon, the Mother, the Hetaira, and the Medial (or mediumistic) Woman.

She 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".

[9] Wolff assisted Jung with psychology-related research and accompanied him, along with his wife, Emma, and a group of other colleagues, to a psychoanalytic conference in Weimar, Germany, in 1911.

[11] Wolff's connection and experience working with Jung was pivotal in her development as an analyst and member of the early analytical psychology circle in Zurich.

Beyond her signature essay on the four feminine structural forms, she wrote several other papers, most of them geared toward educating the growing number of students who came to Zurich to learn about the field of analytical psychology.

In her later years, Wolff had severe arthritis, possibly stemming from her volunteer military service in neutral Switzerland during World War II.

[15] About a year after terminating Wolff's analysis, Jung had several dreams that indicated to him a need to reestablish their relationship; finally, he wrote to her in 1913.

[18] This arrangement satisfied what Jung had termed "my polygamous components",[19] and fit into his lifelong habit of distributing his affections for safety among a number of his so-called Jungfrauen.

[20] However, some interpreters claim that the marital arrangement undercut Toni's and Emma's self-esteem and caused both an enormous amount of pain.

A close acquaintance of both, Laurens van der Post, stated: "In this unfamiliar terrifying underground of the collective unconscious, she was Jung's guide .

[24] In his 1957 interviews with Aniela Jaffé, his secretary and biographer, Jung confirmed that he could talk with no one but Wolff during this period about his inner experiences.

In the early 1930s, Jung began to study alchemy as a parallel to the process of individuation, but Wolff refused to accompany him in this new venture.

[29] Despite Wolff's refusal to join Jung in the study of alchemy, she remained personally loyal to him for the remainder of her life and thoroughly committed to furthering the field of analytical psychology.