Parallels in the Beliefs and Works of Margaret Fuller and Carl Jung

• Main Authors: Jerry Aldridge, Jennifer L. Kilgo, Melissa Werner, Lois M. Christensen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2011-05-01
• Series: SAGE Open
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244011410324

Margaret Fuller, the 19th-century feminist and Transcendentalist, has been compared with Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. The life and theories of Carl Jung, the 20th-century psychiatrist, have been compared with the works of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Jean Piaget, and Sabina Spielrein among others. However, no comparisons have been published concerning the beliefs and works of Fuller and Jung. The purpose of this research was to compare and contrast the beliefs and written works of Margaret Fuller and Carl Jung. Similarities and differences were reported among their ideologies. Similarities in their childhood and adult dreams, literary references, spiritual beliefs, and explorations of gender were described. Differences were reported, which included the focus of their writings and their ideas about who is to blame when things go wrong, and how to deal with the individual daemon in each person was also explored. Special consideration was given to how closely their writings intersect. Specifically, the authors questioned whether Jung was inspired by the ideas and writings of Fuller. To answer this question, five possibilities were identified.