The androgyne occupies a charged and contested position within the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as cosmogonic symbol, alchemical operator, psychological ideal, and ideological problem. Jung treats the androgyne with the greatest theoretical weight, mapping it onto the hermaphroditic lapis of alchemy and the Gnostic Primordial Man, reading in Adam's androgynous dual nature the prototype of Christ and the coniunctio oppositorum that structures the entire individuation telos. Neumann historicizes the figure developmentally, locating androgyny as a primitive, structurally undifferentiated condition characteristic of uroboric consciousness prior to the masculine-feminine split. Hoeller, following the Gnostic Jung, distinguishes sharply between unisex—a flattening distortion—and genuine androgyny, which he reserves as the 'rare and precious' apex of psychic transformation. Campbell treats the androgyne mythologically, tracing its appearance from Plato's Symposium to Hebrew and Hindu cosmogonies as the symbol of primordial wholeness sundered by divine act and sought in reunion. Berry, from the archetypal wing, mounts the sharpest critique: androgyny as psychological concept is 'clinically clean, straight, and sterile,' a transcending abstraction that suppresses the flesh, pain, and inferiority essential to genuine soul-work. Samuels contextualizes Singer's 'androgyny' within post-Jungian debates over gender essentialism, noting its proximity to Freud's polymorphous disposition. The term thus marks a fault-line between those who use it as an aspirational symbol of wholeness and those who see it as a covert reinscription of binary thinking.
In the library
17 passages
Its veiled androgyny reflects the hermaphroditism of the lapis, which in this respect has more affinity with the views of the Gnostics. In recent times the theme of androgyny has been subjected to quite special treatment
Jung argues that the androgyny of the Christ-image is structurally homologous with the hermaphroditism of the alchemical lapis, both deriving from Gnostic doctrine of the hermaphroditic Primordial Man.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
The very word androgyny is clinically clean, straight, and sterile, free from the germs of time and struggle and disrepute. There is no sense of inferiority, for androgyny is the transcending, trans-sexual solution, not the soiling one.
Berry critiques the concept of androgyny as an intellectualist abstraction that evacuates the erotic, somatic, and inferior dimensions of genuine psychological work with gender.
Berry, Patricia, Echo's Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
Not unisex but androgyny is the true goal of the transformation of the psyche, but this androgyny, rare and precious indeed, is to be found only in the highest flowering of the soul
Hoeller, reading through the Gnostic Jung, positions androgyny as the genuine telos of psychic transformation, distinguishing it categorically from the superficial unisex model.
Hoeller, Stephan A., The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982thesis
The feminine element in the androgynous son-lover, which Jung derives from regression to the mother, is, on the contrary, entirely original, as the androgyne's structurally undifferentiated disposition shows
Neumann argues that the androgyne's femininity is not regressive but constitutively original, reflecting an undifferentiated psychic stage prior to the full emergence of masculine identity.
Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis
the image of the primal androgyne has been applied to a theological reading of the mystery of creation — culminating in a concept of the Jewish people as the agents of God's will, following the failure and disobedience of the divided androgyne in the Garden.
Campbell traces cross-cultural mythological uses of the primal androgyne, contrasting its psychological function in Hindu cosmogony with its theological application in Hebrew tradition.
Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959thesis
Androgyny in a deity is a primitive characteristic, and so, too, is the combination of virginity and fertility in goddesses, and of fertility and castration in gods.
Neumann situates divine androgyny as a marker of archaic, undifferentiated consciousness, exemplified across Near Eastern mythologies dominated by the uroboric Great Mother.
Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting
Singer's 'androgyny', Goldenberg's 'primary impetus in human libido', my 'relation to difference', all take analytical psychology close to contemporary psychoanalysis and its development of Freud's bleak but brilliant insight that infantile sexuality is polymorphously perverse.
Samuels situates Singer's concept of androgyny within a post-Jungian theoretical field where it converges with Freudian polymorphous sexuality and Lacanian accounts of sexual difference.
Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
The Handbook of Jungian Psychology indexes the androgyne as an archetypal concept, situating it within the broader framework of anima/animus theory and archetypal psychology.
Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting
androgyne, anima nature of, 309; see also hermaphrodite / hermaphroditus
Jung's index to The Practice of Psychotherapy explicitly cross-references the androgyne with the anima and the hermaphrodite, marking their functional equivalence in his psychological system.
Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954supporting
The Mysterium Coniunctionis index records Jung's sustained treatment of Adam's androgyny, hermaphroditism, and dual nature as a central alchemical and theological symbol.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
Jung's index entry for the Anthropos figure records its androgyny as one of its defining attributes, linking the primordial human archetype to the motif of original sexual wholeness.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
she became one with the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, that son who was called Hermaphroditos and since then was ind
Kerényi recounts the mythological origin of Hermaphroditos, whose bodily union with the nymph Salmacis provides the Greek narrative substrate for the androgyne as a figure of fused opposites.
Kerényi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
the hermaphrodite within the house represents so to speak the origin of the source: he represents the primal condition restored in marriage, the one who precede
Kerényi interprets the hermaphroditic household statue as representing the primal undivided condition antecedent to sexual differentiation, functioning as the inexhaustible origin of family life.
Kerényi, Karl, Hermes Guide of Souls, 1944supporting
our question will no longer be how to conjunct, transcend, find a synthetic third, or breed an androgyne. For such moves take the antitheses literally, preventing the mind from moving from its neurotic constructs
Hillman cautions against the androgyne as a proposed solution to antithetical thinking, arguing that seeking synthesis through the androgyne literalizes opposites and forecloses psychological movement.
Jung and Kerényi's index cross-references the androgyne with the bisexual being, indicating the term's equivalence in their mythological framework with the broader category of sexual duality.
Jung, C. G. and Kerényi, C., Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949aside
Three kinds of them existed: male-male, female-female, and male-female. The gods then became unhappy about them, betrayed them, and Zeus and Apollo cut them up in half
Campbell invokes Plato's Symposium to illustrate the myth of primordial androgynous wholeness, reading the division of the original beings as a cosmogonic symbol of the yearning for reunification.
Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001aside
Hillman's treatment of contrasexuality places pressure on the binary fantasy underlying androgyne discourse, challenging the assumption that gender opposites define the anima's structure.
Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985aside