January 26, 2023

Gender and age are deeply bound-up with the original conception of individuation in Jung’s psychology. Classically speaking, the notion goes something like this: men are oriented towards logos or thinking and have an inferior eros or feeling, which is represented by the anima—the inner feminine soul; women, meanwhile, have a far more developed feeling function and underdeveloped thinking, which is represented internally as the animus, or inner masculine. An underdeveloped anima shows up in men as overpowering moodiness and depression, and a reliance on women for feeling. In women, the ignored animus shows up as strong but untested—and unoriginal—opinions. (In reality, let’s be clear, all genders are prone to all of the above.)

In his brilliance, Jung was adamant about the need for both men and women to develop “the Other.” He understood this calling for rounding out of lopsidedness to come around Midlife—once the external gender roles had been properly performed and exhausted. At this point, men would be desperate to truly feel and know their inner lives in new ways, and women would be desperate to exercise their brains and perhaps engage in business and career after a life of being at home caring for others.

While revolutionary in the sense that Jung saw an equal path for women to become whole people, and a journey for both men and women that meant pursuing wholeness through a kind of psychological androgyny, it goes without saying that this simplistic binary framework has ended up being quite harmful to people of all genders and ages. (My book, Quarterlife, tackles these old troped to modernize them beyond gender and age.)

In the case of Christiana Morgan, about whom I’m leading a three-part seminar soon, Jung offered some of his most radical and damaging views on individuation as regards sex and stage of life.

Christiana Morgan was 28 years old when she initially began analysis with Jung. Though much younger than the anticipated midlife, Jung saw that she was unequivocally engaged in the journey of individuation. “Obviously her fate is benevolent,” Jung expressed. “I have seen people even at sixty who finally discovered that they had seen only half the world, that they had lived only half of their life… Now this woman has got to the other side of the world at thirty.”

And yet, while Jung made a profound allowance for her age within his model and had a deep respect for her journey, he also got quite trapped by the gender binary and the rigidity of his own model of women being aligned with feeling and the unconscious, and men being aligned with thinking and the conscious mind. This rigid thinking arguably proved fatal for Christina—a thinking type.

I’ll say more about all of this next week! And if this interests you, please do join me for my upcoming seminar on Christiana Morgan, the extraordinary subject of Jung’s Vision Seminars, and the topic of the remarkable biography, Translate this Darkness by Jungian analyst Claire Douglas. Christina’s story is truly riveting and with some incredible synchronicity and bizarre side stories throughout history. I know you may never have heard of Christiana, but her story offers a lens into the history of Jung’s psychology, the psychology of men and women, and Jung’s thoughts on open relationships, all while providing tremendous insight into the role that sex and gender play within his scholarship. Oh, and there’s a quite sad connection to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, that I uncovered in my own research about this story too. It’s illuminating, to be sure.

Also, also, coming up this Sunday, is my 2.5 hour workshop, “My Two Conflicting Selves”! I’ll share some accessible techniques of active imagination and inner witnessing to find a way through personal conflict or confusion and towards the birth of the third—a new, creative way beyond the confusing binary of “this” or “that.” Scroll down to learn more. Would love to see you there!

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

See here and here for two related articles.