The Seba library treats Bitch in 6 passages, across 5 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Edinger, Edward F., Cooper, Seiso Paul).
the bodies to be combined were described more picturesquely as dog and bitch, horse (stallion) and donkey, cock and hen, and as the winged or wingless dragon.
Jung identifies ‘bitch’ as one of the theriomorphic designations for the feminine alchemical body in the coniunctio, representing the erotic and affinal pull between paired opposites.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis
The theriomorphic form of Sol as a lion and dog and of Luna as a bitch shows that there is an aspect of both luminaries which justifies the need for a ‘symbolizatio’ in animal form.
Jung argues that Luna’s representation as a bitch encodes the appetitive, unconscious dimension of the psyche, distinguished from but complementary to Sol’s nobler predatory forms.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
My son, take a Corascene dog and an Armenian bitch, join them together, and they will beget a dog of celestial hue [a blue dog], and if ever he is thirsty, give him sea water to drink.
Edinger presents the alchemical text in which the Armenian bitch, paired with the Corascene dog, produces the celestial offspring — a concrete instantiation of the coniunctio as generative psychic union.
, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis
She moves from ungraspable, unsayable, unnamable, disgusting, to a self-described ‘bitch.’ The movement evolves from a disembodied feeling, a vague no-thing to a some-thing.
Cooper reads the patient’s self-identification as ‘bitch’ as a clinically significant individuation step — the emergence of a definable, if negatively valenced, self-experience from prior formlessness.
, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
These judges are falling prey to another version of the ‘angry bitch’ phenomenon. When people perceive emotion in a man, they usually attribute it to his situation, but when they perceive emotion in a woman, they connect it to her personality.
Barrett exposes ‘bitch’ as a cultural stereotype-concept through which female emotion is pathologized as character defect while equivalent male emotion is exculpated as circumstantial.
, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017supporting
But that bitch looks out for everything, even where you’d least expect it. She doesn’t drink; she’s level-headed; her advice is good. But she has a nasty tongue.
Auerbach’s citation of Petronius illustrates the vernacular use of ‘bitch’ as a complex social epithet that simultaneously disparages and acknowledges a woman’s practical competence.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside