Emma Jung

Emma Jung, born Emma Marie Rauschenbach in Schaffhausen in 1882 and died in Zurich in 1955, was a Swiss Jungian analyst and writer. She matters both as the wife of Carl Gustav Jung and as a professional with a distinct voice in analytical psychology, and she was her husband's closest intellectual partner.

The daughter of Johannes Rauschenbach, a wealthy industrialist who owned IWC Schaffhausen, she first met Jung in 1896, while still a schoolgirl. They married in 1903 and had five children. After her father's death in 1905, Emma and her sister became owners of the watch company, although her brother-in-law ran it, and the family enjoyed financial security for decades.

She took a strong interest in her husband's work and became a noted analyst herself. She focused particularly on the Grail legend, a subject her unfinished study of which was completed posthumously by Marie-Louise von Franz. Her book Animus and Anima gathers two essays. In the first she describes the animus as the masculine aspects of the female psyche and the anima as the feminine aspects of the male psyche, arguing that integrating them supports psychological wholeness and better relationships. In the second she presents the anima as an elemental being, a natural force able to inspire creativity or unleash destruction.

Her influence endures in Jungian thought, where she is recognised as an original thinker who developed archetypal ideas in her own way.