Addiction to Perfection

i love all of Marion Woodman's writings and this one is very good at dealing with all the denials and addictions women suffer from. Anorexia and many other types of psychological addiction to being perfect stem from the mother's criticism. There is an internalized inner critic which keeps us separat......more

This was a re-read. A lot of the books I've been reading led me back to it -- and one in particular (Donald Kalsched's first book) quoted it directly, so I decided it was time to circle back around on Marion Woodman's study of perfectionism and dealing with it. This book first came out in 1982 and ma......more

This book rocked my world. Odds are it can rock yours, too, since Marion Woodman's warm, earnest, yet literary style makes complex Jungian psychoanalysis mostly-accessible to lay readers like myself! And thank god! Like Clarissa Pinkola-Estés' book Women Who Run with the Wolves was for me a few years......more

Marion Woodman's Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride: A Psychological Study (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts, 12 is about breaking the tie to the evil anima that stymie feminine individuation. Lady Macbeth and Medusa are examples of the type of personas that paralyz......more

There are some interesting ideas in here, and others that have not aged well (at one point she suggests that lesbian relationships are an exercise in finding "validation for their femininity" ...yikes) In the foreword Woodman acknowledges that some parts of the book could do with editing but that she......more