[ H. Irene Champernowne, pioneer in the field of art therapy. ] Typescript of her Jungian paper 'Woman and the Community', with a personal reminiscence of the Jung circle.

Much of Tessa Adams's paper on Toni Wolff in 'The Feminine Case: Jung, Aesthetics and Creative Process', ed. Adams and Duncan (2003), concerns the 'remarkable woman' Irene Champernowne and her relations with Wolff and Jung, with a discussion of Champernowne's Withymead Therapeutic Centre in Oxfordshire, which operated from 1942 to the late 1960s. Diane Waller, in her 'Becoming a Profession: The History of Art Therapy in Britain 1940-1982' (2013), argues that 'Irene Champernowne could be considered as an intellectual leader in the field of art therapy, in terms of her synthesis of models from analytical psychology with a developmental model of art, within the context of a therapeutic community'. Chapter 7 of Waller's book is titled 'The Withymead Centre | The role of Gilbert and Irene Champernowne in promoting the theory and practice of art therapy'. Withymead, which 'offered an opportunity for selected patients to experience Jungian analysis combined with art therapy […] The staff and patients were prepared to accept the authority of the Champernownes, Irene in particular emerging as a “charismatic leader” with all the problems inherent in that position'. Waller recounts how Champernowne received extensive support from Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst of Dartington Hall, who were 'responsible for saving Withymead from financial disaster in 1950, and over the following ten years donated £70,000'. The present item is [1] + 25pp., 4to, with a title page preceding the text, which is paginated 1-25. On the rectos of 25 leaves, stapled together. On aged and worn paper, with title leaf and leaves with first and last pages detached and others becoming so. Title reads: 'WOMAN AND THE COMMUNITY | BY H. IRENE CHAMPERNOWNE.' A footnote on the first page states: 'A paper read to the Analytical Psychology Club, London, on 26th September, 1955. Since that date Erich Neumann's book, The Great Mother has been published, which answers so excellently tentative questions and ideas which are here put forward.' (Neumann's book was first published, in English, in 1955.) Champernowne's paper has the following headings: 'Introduction', 'Development of Man and Woman', 'Woman's Personal History' (subheadings 'The baby girl', 'The baby boy'), 'Woman and Woman', 'Woman's Development', 'The Community', 'The Present Split', 'The Family' (subheadings 'One girl among boys' and 'One boy among girls'), 'Conscious Community', 'Women of the last Fifty Years', 'Belongingness', 'Origins of Consciousness and the Community: Matriarchal, Patriarchal', '”Group Man” and “Mass Man”', 'Woman and the Community', 'The Egyptian Document' and 'The Urge Towards Wholeness'. This item clearly predates the published version of the article, which was published in the journal for Jungian studies 'Harvest', vol.5, 1959. The version as published in 'Harvest' omits the penultimate section in this typescript, 'The Egyptian Document' (pp.23-24 of the typescript), which covers one and a half pages, and gives 'one example relating to man and his feminine soul, anima'. Otherwise the published version exhibits a few minor variations, apart from adding a short paragraph midway through the text. Champernowne sets out her stall from the outset: 'I am quite sure that the truly feminine way of communication is not through ordered logical thought and speech. This lecture on woman is in itself something of a paradox for it springs from the more masculine adapted side of a woman in her struggle to become articulate. It is a reaching out towards this essentially masculine world in an attempt to communicate feminine experience.' In the section 'Woman and Woman' she gives a personal reminiscence, recounting how 'Mrs. Jung and Miss Toni Wolff of Zurich' both felt that Champernowne's unpublished paper 'Woman and the future' was 'important for woman's psychology in general. Miss Wolff was quite emphatic that until I had got it all down and had worked on it for some time, it was not wise to expose it to the criticism or judgment of the masculine mind (not even that of my husband). She advised me not to show it to Dr. Jung for some time. Two years later, when the feminine standpoint had been stated clearly from the unconscious so that it could no longer be injured by masculine criticism or seared by the light of too great masculine consciousness, I was free to show it to Dr. Jung.' In the section 'Women of the last Fifty Years' she criticises at length 'the scholarly French woman, Simone de Beauvoir, whose book, The Second Sex, I bought at the awful price of 50s. last year'.