Men, Women and Relationships - A Post-Jungian Approach: Gender Electrics and Magic Beans

270 Pages·2010·1.5 MB·English

by  Phil Goss

Men, Women and Relationships –
A Post-Jungian Approach
This book offers Jungian perspectives on social constructions of gender
difference and explores how these feed into adult ways of relating within
male–female relationships. Phil Goss places this discussion within an
archetypal context drawing on the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk to
consider the deep tension in western culture between the transcendent
masculine and the immanent feminine.
Offering both developmental and socio-cultural frameworks, areas of
discussion include:
• the use of story and myth to understand gender
• Jungian and post-Jungian approaches: updating anima/animus
• working clinically with men and with women
• the developmental pathways of gender difference
• power relations between men and women in the home.
Men, Women and Relationships – A Post-Jungian Approach will be a
valuable resource for all those with an interest in analytical psychology,
includingpsychotherapists,psychoanalystsandcounsellors,aswellasthose
in the broader fields of social work and education who have an interest in
gender difference and identity.
PhilGossisaJungianAnalystandamemberoftheAssociationofJungian
Analysts and the IAAP. He is also Senior Lecturer for Counselling and
Psychotherapy at the University of Central Lancashire.

Men, Women and Relationships
– A Post-Jungian Approach
Gender Electrics and Magic Beans
Phil Goss
Firstpublished2011byRoutledge
27ChurchRoad,Hove,EastSussexBN32FA
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
270MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
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(cid:216)2011PhilGoss
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orin
anyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwriting
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BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
Libraryof CongressCataloginginPublicationData
Goss,Phil,1961–
Men,womenandrelationships,apost-Jungianapproach:genderelectrics
andmagicbeans/PhilGoss.
p.cm.
ISBN978-0-415-47674-4(hbk.) – ISBN978-0-415-47675-1(pbk.)1.Sex
differences(Psychology)2.Man-womanrelationships–Psychologicalaspects.
3.Interpersonalrelations–Psychologicalaspects.4.Genderidentity.5.Men–
Identity.6.Women–Identity.I.Title.
BF692.2.G672010
155.3–dc22
2010013882
ISBN 0-203-84158-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN:978-0-415-47674-4(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-47675-1(pbk)
Dedication
To Claire, Oliver, Jacob and Louisa, for letting me work on this book
amidst the hubbub of family life, so helping me locate my writing in the
crucibleofhome.Idedicatethisbooktothem,aswellastomymotherand
sisters, and to the memory of my father.
They need to remember the gendered, so that they wake from their
dreams to reality.
(Jung, 2009: p. 264)
Contents
List of tables and figures xi
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
What this book is about 1
Gay and transgendered experience and relationships 3
Story, archetype and relationship 3
Describing gendered experience 5
Writing as a man, about women 6
The role of personal myth 7
Encountering sameness and difference in the consulting room 8
Being postmodern 9
Gender and development 10
Home and road 11
1 Jack and the Beanstalk: Magic beans and angry mothers 12
The story 12
Jack the lad 15
There might be giants . . . 17
The beanstalk 20
Transcendent sky and immanent ground 22
Mother and the other female characters 24
Father and the other male characters 26
To conclude 27
2 Gender illusion, gendered reality 28
What is ‘gender’? 30
The basic split 33
Gender difference and the brain 34
viii Contents
Gender illusion and socialisation 35
Gender illusion and feminist critique 36
Giants and gendered territory 41
Men, the dying phallus and the feminine 43
The gendered collective 46
Immanence and transcendence 46
Gender complexity as emergent 49
Experiencing anima and animus 50
A gendered model of the psyche – principles 52
Inter-gender and interpsychic gender experiencing: a model 53
Concluding comments 54
3 Gender electrics: Eros, thanatos and currents from the past 56
A post-Jungian developmental approach to gender 58
Influences on the developmental model 59
Mapping gendered development: From birth to the pubescent
moment 65
Unconscious knowing 65
Conscious experiencing 66
Map of gendered development (1): Birth to pre-pubescence 67
Birth – 18 months: The primary oedipal phase 67
Boys, girls and envy 71
The pre-pubescent moment 73
Gender and ‘recognition’ 77
Winnicott and Fordham: Ego integration and gender 82
The secondary oedipal phase (3–6 years): Phallus and the
oedipal conflict 85
The pre-pubescent moment and beyond 90
4 Thanima 93
Discontinuity in the male psyche 95
Analytical theories of male identity discontinuity 96
Suffering the legacy of discontinuity 99
Clinical examples of thanima waiting and deadness 102
Clinical examples of disembodiment 105
Two selves: The idealised and the rejected 106
Bridging discontinuity 107
Father and discontinuity 110
Men working with women analysts 111
Archetypal maleness? The place of phallos 114
Contents ix
Concluding comments: Confronting discontinuity – the wait for
the Great Mother to give up her dead 116
5 Thanimus 119
Animus 121
The roots of female ‘territory’ 123
Thanimus and relational discontinuity 124
Working as a man with female antipathy towards male
territory 126
Women and aggression 129
Discovering the benevolent mother 130
Women working with women analysts 134
Aggression and oppression 139
Concluding comments 144
6 Climbing the beanstalk: Personal and collective adolescence 147
Human ‘ale’ and Giant (w)ine 148
A brief psychological history of gender – archetypal and
personal 152
Boys versus girls: The race up the beanstalk 160
The adolescent brain 162
Mapping contrasexual influence from puberty to adulthood 168
A collective adolescence? 168
7 Walking on clouds: Male and female territories 170
Adult male and female territories 170
Female territory: Relational completeness versus individuated
separation 171
Time and space 173
Projection 176
Power and authority 179
Male territory: Perfecting individualism versus individuated
relatedness 181
Time and space 184
Projection 184
Power and authority 185
Marriage as a psychological relationship 187
Two models to describe the ‘territorial deal’ 189
Midlife and male and female deintegration/reintegration 191
Paradox and the need to feel different 192