When she first heard of the phenomenon, she interpreted it through a Jungian lens. Jung wrote about the ‘animus’, or masculine side of women, and ‘anima’, or feminine side of men. ‘The idea that teenagers were playing with this seemed wonderful to me,’ she says. And then one of her adult patients told her that these girls were getting mastectomies. ‘That completely changed the way I saw it. Jungians know that to concretise something symbolic is a very bad idea.’
