East West Jung

For baby boomer women, it could be the phenomenon of the 21st century: quitting corporate jobs to find work that feeds their souls.

MBAs and academics, doctors and lawyers, television journalists and investment bankers: all have abandoned promising careers to seek nirvana elsewhere.

Some trade 18-hour days for part-time work so they can devote time to yoga or art classes. Some choose more altruistic jobs. Some start their own small businesses. Some start families.

Fortune magazine recently surveyed 300 career women, about 94 per cent managers and executives.

"The extent of their angst was astonishing," the magazine reported.

"All but 13 per cent said they had made or were seriously considering making a major change in their lives. Almost a third said they frequently felt depressed."

"More than 40 per cent said they felt trapped."

Shirley Seen Yan Ma thinks she understands the trend.

Ma, a Jungian analyst whose office is on St. Clair Ave. W., believes the emptiness of many career women dates back at least to the '70s, when newly liberated women adopted cookie-cutter life-styles.

They dressed for success in three-piece suits with floppy bow ties, grabbed briefcases and charged the work force en masse. Problem was, most were marching to someone else's tune.

"Baby boomers were the first generation of women who had the opportunity of choice not to get married and have a family, to just concentrate on a career," Ma says.

"They were the first generation to be brought up to achieve, to be goal-oriented, to be expected to make it big. They put on the three-piece suits, but underneath they didn't know what they wanted as a woman."

She tells the story of one of her clients, a high-powered lawyer who could "hardly take the pressure. She worked 12- hour days, she had bags and dark circles under her eyes."

Her identity was so centred on her job that it took her two years to admit that she hated it.

"She took some time off and went to Nepal," relates Ma. "She had some kind of experience there with her boyfriend. She got pregnant and had a baby boy . . . Her attitude changed. She didn't only identify with her job any more - she worked only 9-to-5 as a lawyer."

Signs of a midlife crisis are different for women than for men, Ma says. "Usually a man's midlife crisis ends up with a young woman or a red sports car. But often a woman's midlife crisis ends in depression.

"I think there's a connection between the body and the psyche. If you repress a lot of things they come out as depression, illness, nightmares or chronic fatigue, which is common now with a lot of professional women."

One of her clients is a wife, mother and hard-working lawyer - now poised on the brink of a third career.

Seeking one's true self is often a long and arduous journey. It usually requires sacrifice - like financial security, power or prestige.

"The sacrifice is what price you are willing to pay to feel good about yourself," she says.

"It's about being whole. To be whole means to be human. To be perfect means not to be human. A lot of us were brought up with this expectation to be perfect, to be good performers, to be 100 per cent."

Ma says it's imperative for women to develop their feminine side, or they will end up being cut off from life.

"The feminine side has to do with feelings, with what's important to me, of value to me."

She speaks from experience. She left home after high school to pursue a degree in sociology at the University of Toronto.

A perfectionist, Ma graduated with honors and received a gold medal for achievement. Then she received a master's degree in urban and regional planning.

"I did it for my father," she says. They had a deal: he paid for her education; she studied what he wanted.

Her first day on her first job as an economic and regional planner, she had a flash of insight - "Oh my God, I don't want to do this."

But she liked the people she worked with, so she stayed for five years. During the fourth year, she was overwhelmed by feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness.

She entered analysis and that's when she had a dream that changed the course of her life. Ma dreamed she went to the Jung Institute in Zurich and spoke with its founder, psychologist C.G. Jung.

"I told Dr. Jung, 'I'd like to connect your psychology with Chinese philosophy and religion.' So off I went to Zurich, following my dream."

In Zurich, one thing she explored was the practice of Chinese foot binding - an ancient tradition that she believes is a perfect metaphor for modern career women.

"Chinese women began binding their daughter's feet about age 5," she says. "The ideal size was about three inches. The ideal shape was the new moon. The binding cloth was about 20 feet long and it sort of kept the woman in place."

"The piece of cloth symbolizes patriarchal values. Women, in the East or West, are still bound by those values. "

"So when a woman begins to ask, 'Who am I as a woman?' and, 'What are my values?' - then she's unbinding. She's unravelling that piece of cloth."

Copyright © 1996 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved.