WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE OF POWER: A THEORY FOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The development of women in corporate settings is the focus of this paper. Human beings experience three kinds of power, transformative, communicative, and instrumental. All three are experienced in the context of a universal energy flux. Within this energy continuum, persons can be envisioned as configurations of energy, according to the emerging scientific paradigm. Women experience the three kinds of power through an individual blend of their dominant sex-correlated feminine principle and the developing action of their contra-sexual masculine principle, or animus. Men's experience is the converse. This conceptualization yields a view of potential human androgynous functioning which this dissertation explores in relation to women. The last chapter draws implications for this view for the training and development of women in complex associations.;The Jungian psychology of women also undergirds the perception of women's experience of the three kinds of power offered in the paper. Women experience transformative power, the capacity to move toward their full potential, through the nurturing and imaginative action of their feminine principle, and the clarifying effect of their masculine principle. Women experience communicative power, the capacity to achieve consensus through the relating and receptive action of their feminine principle and the discriminating action of their masculine principle. Women experience instrumental power, the capacity to gain prespecified goals through the adaptive and persistent action of their feminine principle, and the insightful action of their masculine principle.;The development of all three kinds of power in women is an appropriate and feasible objective of a contemporary corporate training program with women.;Jurgen Habermas' critical theory discriminates and shows the interaction of three practical interests which have formed the base for the three kinds of power discussed here. His theory also provides a foundation for the specific paradigm shift led by David Bohm, physicist and Karl Pribram, neuropsychologist. Within that shift, the participation of human beings in the universal continuum of energy can be seen. This image of human experience helps to give a setting for understanding and prediction of hitherto problematic meditative and transpersonal experience. The psychological theory of Jung and his followers foreshadowed also this understanding of three kinds of power.