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LYN COWAN (1942–2022)
Lyn Cowan graduated from Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA )and started practicing as a Jungian analyst in 1980. She was Director of Training for IRSJA for six years and also served as its President. She held a professorship for ten years in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology, served for five years as professor of Jungian Studies at Saybrook University, and was named Pacifica Graduate Institute Department of Mythological Studies 2009 Distinguished Scholar. She wrote three books: Portrait of the Blue Lady: The Character of Melancholy (2004), Tracking the White Rabbit: A Subversive View of Modern Culture (2002), and Masochism: A Jungian View (1982), as well as an unpublished monograph, “Dismantling the Animus” (1994). She was President and faculty member of the Minnesota Seminar in Jungian Studies until the time of her death.
cover with photograph of George Platt Lynes standing under spiky tree
MASOCHISM
A Jungian View
Third, revised edition
(May 2024)
What are the true spiritual and psychological pleasures of shame, pain, humiliation, and submission? Are the secrets to these pleasures contained in the clinical literature of Krafft-Ebing, Freud, Jung, and Murray? Are the symptoms of masochism inherent in the religious belief of Dionysus—Lord of Souls, Lord of the Dead—and Jesus? Lyn Cowan presents these answers in a book as surprising and fresh as an unexpected lash of the whip.
 
 
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“Redeeming masochistic modes from ‘the hell of meaninglessness,’ Cowan makes a persuasive case for the very extremes of masochism as manifesting a ‘religious instinct.’ ”
   —Utne Reader