Last December I was invited by our local Jung Society to participate in a panel discussion on Jung and gender. I was specifically asked to discuss how I saw Jung's ideas about masculine and feminine as relevant or out-dated in my analytic work.

Last December I was invited by our local Jung Society to participate in a panel discussion on Jung and gender. I was specifically asked to discuss how I saw Jung's ideas about masculine and feminine as relevant or out-dated in my analytic work. After giving it some thought, I concluded that my experience over the past 20 years was that Jung's ideas were both relevant and out-dated.

It is difficult to discuss this topic generally. Some of my clients find Jung's concepts regarding masculine and feminine extremely useful and enlightening. For example, the notion of an inner man or inner woman is helpful to many of them. This Jungian construct seems to fit their experience and assists them in understanding their dreams. But to others, these ideas about gender are foreign and unacceptable—especially when it comes to the narrower definitions Jung gave to concepts such as the anima and animus.

Clearly, some of Jung's ideas are objectionable to modern ways of thinking. Women, in particular, have pointed to Jung's sexism, his turn-of-the-century Swiss-German patriarchal perspective on women and men. My wife, an avowed feminist, has been most valuable in keeping me watchful of sexism in Jungian theory and practice. Nevertheless, I have tried not to throw the baby out with the bath water, but to weigh what is useful to each and every one of my clients. It is important to me to respect my analysands' own process of awakening to gender issues in the language and images that make sense to them.