I am a lesbian. I am also a Jungian. Given the homophobic and heterosexist foundations of analytical psychology, I wonder some days how I can authentically be both.
I am a lesbian. I am also a Jungian. Given the homophobic and heterosexist foundations of analytical psychology, I wonder some days how I can authentically be both. (1) So, I thought I would interview myself in an attempt to find out how I manage this and why I bother.Do you ever wonder why you are a lesbian?
No. It seems to have come "naturally" to me. (I put "naturally" in quotes because I believe there is so much we don't understand about sexuality and about our choice of partners, if it is a choice.) However, I do sometimes wonder why anyone would want to be a heterosexual. I went through a phase of that myself was even married to a man for 10 years. But I realized eventually that heterosexuality wasn't working for me. It wasn't just that the sex wasn't satisfying, it was that I could not connect intimately to people who had been raised as 'men' if I thought of them as potential sexual partners. It was almost as if sex got in the way with men. It's not that I altogether dislike men. In fact, "some of my best friends are men" .... really. I guess, as a lesbian, I have the luxury of being very particular about the men I allow into my life. As a result, I believe, I have come to appreciate particular men more now than when I thought I was straight. It's just that once I opened myself to the possibility of being with a woman, I immediately felt a drive to get closer to women, a longing that is best described for me in something Karin Lofthus Carrington wrote: "The love of one woman for another evokes a deep cellular remembering of woman's origins, her darkness, her beauty, her power, her wisdom, and her limitless desire. At the same time, old longings are satisfied and new longings, never before experienced, are created." (2) That's how it felt to me when I 'came out' (in the mid-70's) and how it still feels.
OK. Then, how did you become a Jungian?
Actually, I discovered Jung via astrology (one of my passions) around 1980. At first, I thought his concepts of 'the feminine' and 'the masculine' would help me understand my sexual orientation, that they would give me language in which to express what it has meant to me to love other women. It was only much later, under the influence of several feminist thinkers (e.g., Elizabeth Minnich, Demaris Wehr, Christine Downing, Judith Butler) that my thinking started to change. I eventually came to realize that these 'principles' are really only reflections, even reifications, of cultural stereotypes. I also came to realize that the heterosexist bias of analytical psychology is so enmeshed and embedded in Jungian theory that nothing short of a total deconstruction of certain concepts (complementarity, contrasexuality, and the animus) will even begin to rectify the situation. So I guess you could say that I became a Jungian before I realized how much Jungian theory needed to be revised. And by then it was too late. I was already taken by what Giles Clark has described as "Jung's profound, complex and rich model of the psyche, and his radical understanding of the reality of the psyche."(3)
Yet, like Clark, I have had to find my way through a theoretical structure that often does not match my experience with clients (or with myself). I keep asking myself what parts of Jungian theory need to be dismantled in order to free it of heterosexism and, for that matter, the many other 'isms.' It seems to me that Jungians are faced with two problems: (a) determining what exactly needs to be revised in order to free Jungian theory of its many prejudices and (b) determining how much can be revised without demolishing the entire structure (assuming that is even possible). Noreen O'Connor and Joanna Ryan have begun such a process in relation to Freudian psychoanalysis.(4) They point out the many challenges facing psychoanalysis if it is to find some way of conceptualizing lesbianism non-pathologically: the many points of theory that would need to be unraveled, the various assumptions about gender that would need to be relinquished, the cherished notions that would need to be rethought, the language and terms that would need to be revised, the developmental schemas that would need to be retooled. They ask some hard-hitting questions which make clear what is at stake. In other words, in order to accommodate a meaningful theory of lesbianism, psychoanalysis would have to change, and change drastically, because the inclusion of lesbianism would undermine and expose its foundational concepts as inadequate. Although the particular concerns expressed by O'Connor and Ryan are specific to psychoanalysis, the kind of theoretical problems they raise are equally relevant for Jungian theorists. Jungian theory, too, would have to be examined, dismantled, and overhauled, its reliance on contrasexuality as an explanatory principle would have to be abandoned, some of its sacred notions would have to be scrutinized, and its obsession with various 'opposites' would have to be re-imagined. O'Connor and Ryan wonder whether psychoanalysis is up to such a task, whether it is ready to adopt the pluralistic view that would be demanded. I wonder in the same way about analytical psychology? Is it willing and ready to reconsider itself? Because that's what would be required.
So, then how do you reconcile yourself now to being both a lesbian and a Jungian?
Well, I try rationalizing it by telling myself that, after all, I'm a "post-Jungian" and a 'radical' one at that. For me, the Radical Jungians are those who are intent on taking Jung in entirely new directions, beyond himself (and usually in spite of himself). They are the iconoclasts, the freethinkers, the agitators, the renegades. They are at the cutting edge, as I see it, of Jungian feminist thought. This is not a crowded category. It would include folks like Andrew Samuels, Lyn Cowan, Peter Mudd, Demaris Wehr, and Christine Downing.
What is it like then to identify yourself as "a lesbian Jungian"?
Well, there's a kind of defensive feeling involved, as if I'm always on guard waiting for someone to make an offensive slip, scrutinizing everything that is written or said, feeling like an outsider. Let's face it. Jung believed that heterosexuality is the norm and that homosexuality is a pathological symptom of developmental arrest. How is a lesbian or gay man supposed to feel in the face of that kind of judgment? And no matter how 'liberal' some Jungians try to be, or how much lip service they give to being accepting, the fact is that the theory they espouse is superbly homophobic and heterosexist much like Western culture as a whole.
So, each time you're at a Jungian event and want to challenge a heterosexist comment or question the relevance to lesbian/gay experience of something that has been said, you must decide whether or not you want to 'out' yourself?
Right. But, actually, the most frustrating thing for me is when the speaker gives me a 'politically correct' response, but then goes on essentially to ignore or sidestep the impact of my point on the topic under consideration. So I leave that lecture knowing that nothing really has changed. That speaker is going to go on to deliver that same lecture at the next stop on the circuit and simply neglect to incorporate the experiences of gays/lesbians into that paper.
But isn't it true that in the last few years, some more affirmative Jungian writings on lesbian and gay issues have appeared?(5) Aren't things changing? Doesn't that give us reason to hope?
Yes and no, because the basic problems still remain: 1) 'Mainstream' or 'official' Jungian thought continues generally to ignore the existence of lesbians and gays, to minimize the importance of our experience, and/or to ignore our potential impact on theory. 2) Most of those who have attempted to address lesbian/gay concerns have done so generally by trying to adapt traditional Jungian structures and theory. And 3) 'gay affirmative' writing is often problematic in that it attempts to argue that lesbians and gays are 'just like' heterosexuals and, therefore, are not a threat to the existing power structures. Many lesbian theorists oppose such 'normalizing' strategies. Celia Kitzinger (6), for example, insists that lesbianism is, in fact, a threat to a male-dominated society and that attempts to argue that it is just as "normal, natural and healthy" as heterosexuality, simply make homosexuality seem insignificant (p. 49) and relegate it to the realm of "depoliticized individualism" and personal choice, thus diverting it from its role as a force for change, and reducing it to being "an instrument of social control" (p. 62). Kitzinger conceptualizes lesbian identity as subversive. She doesn't want to be integrated into society; she wants to transform it.
In this context, Jungian writers are generally, at best, "reformulators" of Jungian theory.(7) I would include here writers such as Robert Hopcke, Karin Lofthus Carrington, John Beebe, Scott Wirth, Mitchell Walker, Robert Bosnak, and Donald Sandner. Although all of these writers have an important contribution to make in dismantling traditional Jungian views, they all fall short in their critiques and, on the whole, are attempting to salvage some basic and problematic concepts: for example, the 'feminine' and 'masculine' principles, contrasexuality, and the animus.(8) I believe all of this is a fundamental mistake. Many of Jung's constructs are heterosexist and his theory depends largely on a psyche that speaks in oppositions, the most basic of which are the so-called feminine and masculine principles. Heterosexism is, in fact, institutionalized through these Jungian constructs of contrasexuality, opposition, and complementarity. And its not just Jung's original work that is problematic. There is an entire tradition of heterosexist work that came after him.
Can you be more specific about how certain Jungian concepts that you've proposed for demolition (contrasexuality, complementarity, and the animus) support the heterosexism of Jungian thought?
Well, first of all, we must recognize that major portions of Jung's theory were predicated on a near obsession with the concept of 'the opposites' and elaborated by the concomitant concept of complementarity that is, the idea that each of a pair of opposites possesses a set of qualities which supplement the elements missing from its opposite. So, if we drew up lists of characteristics which describe each of a pair of opposites, the two lists would complement each other and together would create 'a whole.' The implication, of course, is that one 'needs' the opposite list in order to complete oneself, that otherwise one will be lacking in wholeness. This is both mechanistic and based on a fantasy of 'wholeness.'(9) Now, in this framework, the central or most fundamental opposition of all for Jung is the opposition between the so-called masculine and feminine principles. These two principles are said to complement each other, that is, to need each other in order to make 'a whole.' And we know that Jung and Jungians, in spite of repeated disclaimers, consistently deal with these principles reductively, assigning women, for example, some kind of special access to 'the feminine.'(10)
It is an easy step from this to the concept of contrasexuality that is, to the idea that in order to be a 'whole' person, one must be sexually involved with a member of the 'opposite' gender/sex via a projection of the contrasexual 'other' (anima or animus) onto a literal member of the 'opposite' gender/sex.(11) Some have tried to salvage this part of Jung's theory by complicating it (e.g., by using concepts and phrases like 'the anima of the animus' or by arguing that both men and women have an anima and an animus). But this misses the point. Jung's theories on sexuality are irretrievably heterosexist and based on several assumptions: that there are only two sexes, that these are 'opposite' (rather than just different from) each other, that the qualities of one sex/gender are innate and, therefore, available only through some connection with 'the opposite sex,' that in order to be 'whole' one must have this connection with someone of 'the opposite' sex/gender. In other words, heterosexism is literally institutionalized in the structure of Jungian theory. As a result, some of the more promising areas of Jungian ideas (for example, the alchemical concept of 'like to like' which Lyn Cowan and Christine Downing have pointed to) are entirely ignored. I would argue, therefore, that these heterosexist aspects of Jung's work do not need to be reformulated or salvaged. They need to be sunk.
Certainly, various others interested in Jung , for example, people of color who are understandably scarce in Jungian circles might make other lists of questionable doctrine. Which is not to say that I think we should put that on them. It's really for those of us who 'enjoy' white privilege to begin questioning those elements of Jungian theory that are racist. It's not for the oppressed to tell the oppressor how to undo oppression. I'm not saying that the oppressed don't have a role in undoing oppression, only that they shouldn't have to do it alone or even take the lead. They're busy enough trying to survive and minister to their wounded. In addition, they don't have access to the power required to effect change.(12) So, unless those of us who are privileged are willing to wait around for a violent revolution in order to rectify the situation, we must begin the process of deconstructing ourselves, coming to understand what it means to be 'white,' and undoing racism at every level. Similarly, gays and lesbians shouldn't have to be leading the fight to deconstruct Jungian heterosexism. Heterosexuals should be doing that not just because it would be the right thing to do, but also because it would challenge the hegemonic assumptions of heterosexuality and thereby force heterosexuals to learn more about themselves. But, unfortunately, with very few exceptions, heterosexuals are not doing this work. It's as if they're afraid of facing themselves. It seems they would rather simply adopt a liberal humanist approach (homosexuality is 'just as normal' as heterosexuality, etc.) so that they can avoid facing some tough questions about their own sexuality questions like "Why am I a heterosexual?" or "How does my being a female heterosexual contribute to the patriarchy?" or "As a male heterosexual, do I really like women or just see them as the 'object' of my sexual desire?"
OK, so, then, why are you still a Jungian?
Well ... I guess I could just beg off and say that this is simply one of the many mysteries of the universe! Seriously, though, the real reason is both simple and complicated. First of all, I discovered Jung at a time when I was in personal crisis. It was a numinous experience for me something like love at first sight and it literally signaled the beginning of the restoration of my psychological life. Today, having familiarized myself with many other psychological theories and therapeutic approaches, I can say that I still find Jung's way of seeing to be the one most compatible with my soul. So, in spite of Jung's admonitions to the contrary and in spite of my insistence on revising him, I generally am comfortable with acknowledging myself to be in the community of those who call themselves 'Jungian.'
However, while I always start from Jung, I almost always deviate from him on various and numerous points. I have been asked a number of times why I bother to try to explain or correct Jung at all. Why not just acknowledge that he made some truly awful and absurd generalizations about various groups of people (women, homosexuals, ethnic and racial groups) and then get on with it? Why not just admit, sadly, that Jung was a product of his time? For years my only response to this had been to say that a simple dismissal of particular aspects of Jung's work did not feel satisfying or sufficient. It would be just an easy way out and it would somehow feel dishonest. That was all I could say.
Then, in 1989, I heard Andrew Samuels lecture on "Jung, Anti-Semitism, and the Fuehrerprinzip."(13) Samuels' way of working with this topic has profoundly impacted me in many ways and has helped me both to understand my reluctance to simply reject certain of Jung's ideas in favor instead of developing a consciously post-Jungian position. What Samuels essentially argued in that lecture was that it is pointless and unproductive to descend into reductive arguments about whether or not Jung was an anti-Semite since that simply results in the constellation of two opposing camps (the defenders and the attackers) and inevitably only bogs us down in the debate itself. He also maintained that it is not enough simply to renounce those aspects of Jung's theory which were produced from his "flaws." Rather, Samuels insisted that Jungians begin to put things right, first, by asking ourselves what implications this controversy holds for us today and, then, by employing "psychological reflections" for the purpose of "renewing" analytical psychology "from within."
In other words, rather than trying to repair or salvage Jung, we must mourn him, learn from his errors, and dedicate ourselves to repairing the great damage done by some of his ideas. This would require, among other things, that Jungians abandon the use of a "type psychology," that is, the Jungian tendency to define entire groups of people in stereotypical ways (for example, Jews have not been able to create a significant culture of their own because they are nomads, women think in 'diffuse' ways, homosexuals are immature, etc.) and, instead, actually ally ourselves with, and listen carefully to, these "so-called minority groups," helping such groups achieve their goal of dismantling "the defensive stereotypes imposed by threatened dominant cultures." Samuels called this "subversive work" and argued that the world "urgently needs a pluralistic, psychological model or vision in which difference is truly valued" and where difference and diversity are seen "as normative and as mutually enriching" rather than as an excuse for division and repression. He proposed, in addition, that any exploration of difference be done "experientially, not in a definitory or essentialistic way." Samuels maintained that many of Jung's ideas have "subversive possibility" if we get to the core of these ideas and apply them in non-conventional ways ways that Jung himself could not imagine, given his flaws. For example, we can "make new and creative use of Jung's protest about leveling" and of his "rejection of the imposition of the spirit of one group upon another." Ultimately, Samuels wants us to focus not on Jung, the flawed man, but on the flaw itself in order to repair the wounds and promote healing at the point where the injury was actually inflicted.
I believe that we must extend Samuels' approach to other similar debates and thereby challenge ourselves to acknowledge our responsibility in relation to Jung, our "leader." I believe that is what I am trying to do: Trying to repair the damage that Jung did, rather than trying to save Jung. Lesbians (among others) have suffered for too long from the heterosexist bias of Jungian theory and practice. This must stop.
But how exactly can this be accomplished?
In my opinion, this kind of work can be done only from the edges and fringes of the inside, that is, at the margins not quite inside, but not entirely outside either. I borrow here from the work of bell hooks, a leading feminist theorist in the area of African-American concerns. In an essay entitled "Choosing the Margin as a Radical Space of Openness,"(14) hooks argues that the margin is "a radical standpoint" because it summons those who want to be active "in the formation of counter-hegemonic cultural practice" to come together and identify 'sites of resistance' from which we can begin to work for change and within which we can "stand in political resistance with the oppressed." This choice of where to stand is for hooks a crucial one. It shapes everything: how and what we see, the ways we think and talk, our ability to envision alternatives. This is a chosen marginality rather than one "imposed by oppressive structures" and, therefore, it will not be given up or surrendered in order to move to the center, i.e., back into the mainstream. Rather, it is "a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one's capacity to resist" and because it helps us attain a "radical perspective" that allows us "to imagine alternatives." We must do this, she argues, "if we are to survive whole, our souls intact."
That's rather how I feel as a lesbian in the Jungian world. If I am to survive, my soul intact, I must resist much Jungian theory. And resist it in a way that will challenge those on the inside to begin doubting formerly self-evident 'truths.' To quote Hans-Georg Gadamer, foremost hermeneutical philosopher of our time, we cannot really defend the evidence for our beliefs until "all efforts to doubt it have failed."(15) I don't believe that Jungians have done that.
Claudette Kulkarni, Ph.D., is a therapist in private practice and at Persad Center, Pittsburgh, PA. She is a Contributing Editor to the Review, a practicing astrologer, and the author of Lesbians and Lesbianisms: A Post-Jungian Perspective (Routledge, 1997).
Endnotes
1. Simplistically put: the term 'homophobia' generally refers to an irrational fear of homosexuals and to the concept of same-sex love, while the term 'heterosexism' denotes the belief that heterosexuality, as the sexual norm, is superior to homosexuality.
2. Carrington, Karin Lofthus (1990) "The Alchemy of Women Loving Women," Psychological Perspectives 23: 64-82, p. 65.
3. Giles Clark, "How much Jungian theory is there in my practice?" in Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1995, 40, p. 344.
4. O'Connor, Noreen and Ryan, Joanna (1993) Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis, New York: Columbia University.
5. For example: Robert Hopcke's Jung, Jungians, and Homosexuality (1989, Boston: Shambhala); Christine Downing's Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love (1989, New York: Continuum); and a volume edited by Hopcke, Carrington, and Wirth entitled Same-Sex Love and the Path to Wholeness: Perspectives on Gay and Lesbian Psychological Development, (1993, Boston: Shambhala).
6. For example: Celia Kitzinger's The Social Construction of Lesbianism (1987, London: Sage).
7. In The Woman in the Mirror: Analytical Psychology and the Feminine ( 1990, Boston: Sigo), Claire Douglas defines the Reformulators as those who "reexamine, discard, reinterpret, or save" Jung's ideas "in accordance with new points of view" (p. 112).
8. Even irreverent thinkers like James Hillman continue to use genderized language while, in my opinion, effectively abandoning any meaningful dialogue with contemporary Jungian ideas.
9. It would be much beyond the scope of this piece to deconstruct the concept of 'wholeness,' but I believe this discussion hints at the problematic nature of this fantasy. Both Hillman and Samuels have made forays into this area.
10. Of course, this is always discussed ultimately in terms of how it can serve the development of 'the feminine' in men. Men's special access to 'the masculine,' however, is never discussed in parallel terms.
11. These two are conflated in Jung's theory, thus denying the role of culture in the formation of gender identity. Of course, even when we distinguish the two, we are still left with many questions about the existence even of our concepts of sex, as Judith Butler so powerfully points out in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993, New York: Routledge).
12. I think Andrew Samuels gets at this when he observes that while "men have no monopoly on the misuse of power," the fact is that "in today's world men have power and a power complex, whereas women have only the complex" ("Men under scrutiny," Psychological Perspectives, 1992: Vol 26, p. 55).
13. This lecture was the basis for an essay published in Lingering Shadows: Jungian, Freudians, and Anti-Semitism (Aryeh Maidenbaum and Stephen Martin, editors; 1991, Boston: Shabhala) and was expanded on in a couple of chapters in The Political Psyche (1993, London: Routledge).
14. In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, (1990, Boston: South End), pp. 145-153.
15. In "Destruktion and Deconstruction," (Geoff Waite and Richard Palmer, trs), in Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer (eds), Dialogue and Deconstruction, (1989, Albany: State University of New York), pp. 102-113.
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