The Taming of the Shrew:
The Hostile Divide in the Feminine Soul
Presented by
Victoria Moreno, MA, MFT
link to audio file
Sunday, 4 PM – 6 PM, October 9th, 2016
In Shakespeare’s play, Baptista Minola has two daughters. Bianca is soft-spoken, sweet, unassuming, and perfectly obedient to her father. Katherine is strong-willed, her words characteristically abusive and angry, her actions often violent. Daddy’s sweet, agreeable Bianca has a bitter, biting shadow sister in Kate. This talk explores the rupture in the feminine soul symbolized by these sisters. Kate’s rage is considered a reaction to cultural values that demand the repression of instinctual feminine expression. The presenter reflects on her personal struggle to reconcile these warring feminine aspects of her psyche, represented by Kate and Bianca. She also describes her inner encounter with the negative animus, that part of a woman’s psyche, shaped by the harsh patriarchal attitude that fosters the painful division in her feminine soul.
Course objectives:
Describe what is meant by the instinctual feminine.
Explain the relevance of the patriarchal values that prevailed in Elizabethan England to the repression of the feminine.
Give examples of how the negative animus functions in a woman’s psyche to dissociate her from her needs and feelings.
Victoria Moreno, MA, MFT is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Beverly Hills. She has served on the Board of Directors of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, as well as on numerous evaluative committees for the Institute’s analyst training program. She has lectured and taught on the topic of the repressed feminine as elucidated in the books of Marie-Louise von Franz.