Episode 58 - The Art & Practice of B*tchiness
This Jungian Life Podcast
Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2019
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, the archetype of the bitch is explored using fairy tales, mythology, and popular culture to shed light on this colloquial, pejorative term. The term is applied most frequently to assertive women - and to men acting in a way deemed "feminine" - who are either not sufficiently in touch with their own authentic power or seem overly invested in power dynamics. What is the secret of authentic feminine power?
We reference the myths of Cassandra, Persephone, Inanna, The Frog Prince (Grimm), and The Devil Wears Prada (film), Spirited Away (film), Boys in the Band (film).
The Dream:
"I’m walking into a room in which there’s a group of men standing around a table, most of them are looking intently at it. I see there is a map spread across the table. One of the men looks up from it, and nods toward the table, inviting me to take a closer look. In the middle of the map, there’s a round symbol I’ve never seen before, and this is what has the group so rapt. I’m not sure what it is, but I get the sense that it is very important, so I lean in to examine it closely. It’s a circle inscribing a sort of rivet/mushroom/umbrella shape. On one side of the stem are two squares, and on the other side is one square. I wake up with a sense of urgency and immediately go to draw the shape."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this Jungian life. |
| 0:03.0 | Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee, |
| 0:09.0 | invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm Lisa Marciano and I'm a youngian analyst in Philadelphia. |
| 0:22.0 | I'm Joseph Lee and I'm a youngian analyst in Philadelphia. I'm Joseph Lee and I'm a young |
| 0:24.7 | Ian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm Deborah Stewart, a youngian |
| 0:29.4 | analyst on Cape Cod. So today we wanted to talk about the archetype of the bitch. We wanted to |
| 0:36.6 | talk about how this notion of aggression and |
| 0:45.0 | perhaps, |
| 0:50.0 | perhaps some of its archetypal underpinnings. |
| 0:52.0 | And of course, it's not just true of females right |
| 0:56.3 | men can be bitches too. |
| 0:58.0 | Absolutely. |
| 1:00.0 | I think it's even worse for a man to be a bitch than it is for a woman to be one. |
| 1:05.0 | Well, what does it mean for a man to be a bitch as opposed to a woman being a bitch? |
| 1:10.0 | Well, this showed up in Young's criticisms of men that were Anima possessed, that in that time |
| 1:20.4 | there were very clear gender roles of what a man would look like or what a woman would look like. |
| 1:26.3 | So if a man's inner feminine had become over-potent in Jung's estimation, that could make him particularly crabby or bitchy or over-emotional. |
| 1:39.0 | And so when I think about that, you know, this, I mean these really loaded terms that you know kind of don't work well so |
| 1:46.3 | so so much anymore but a kind of like an anonymous-driven woman or an onema possessed |
| 1:52.0 | man part of what I think about and I agree that or an oma possessed man. |
| 1:53.0 | Part of what I think about, and I agree that those are really difficult terms. |
... |
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