Hands are our creative contact point with the world. To Jungian 
analyst Sonoko Toyoda, they represent feminine spirituality and 
offer a way to achieve wholeness, in women and men alike. But in 
the contemporary world, many women have lost the wisdom their 
hands represent and now must recover the memory of them.

    Through a traditional story told by the Grimm brothers and 
similar folk tales from around the world, Toyoda explores the 
ancient meaning of a woman's hands and the wound of losing 
them. In the details of these stories she finds common threats to 
feminine independence and creativity and hopeful clues for how 
these qualities can be regained. She considers, as well, cultural 
variations in the tales and how the tasks of spiritual wholeness 
differ for women in Japan and the West.

    Turning to the biographies of two prominent women artists—
Frida Kahlo and Camille Claudel—she discovers similar themes 
played out in two historical lives. In these women's relationships 
with their fathers, brothers, and lovers, she considers further the 
sources of spiritual wounding. In both paintings and sculptures, 
Toyoda examines what feminine creativity is.

    For today's world, the cult of the Black Virgin in Europe and that 
of the Senju Kannon (bodhisattva) in Japan represent remnants of 
feminine spirituality. Toyoda looks at these to discover universality 
before considering through stories of her own analysands how 
clinical work can help individuals claim their own feminine 
spirituality.

    Through her sensitive, insightful, and creative book, Toyoda 
evokes the memory of women's lost hands to help recover them.

_________________________________________________________

SONOKO TOYODA is a professor of Clinical Psychology at Tenri 
University in Nara, Japan, and maintains a private practice as a 
Jungian psychoanalyst in Kyoto. She completed her post-
graduate studies at Kyoto University in 1983 with a master's 
degree in clinical psychology and earned her diploma in Analytical 
Psychology from the C. G. Jung Institute in 1992. Toyoda is a 
member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology.


Number Twelve: Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical 
Psychology