Androgynous

The depth-psychology corpus treats ‘androgynous’ not as a biological curiosity but as a structural symbol of psychic totality — the union of opposites that constitutes the goal of individuation. Jung anchors the term in alchemical and Gnostic precedent: the hermaphroditic Primordial Man, the veiled androgyny of the lapis, and the androgynous Christ-image derived from Adam’s original bisexual nature. This makes androgyny a hieroglyph for the coniunctio, the sacred marriage of masculine and feminine principles within the soul. Neumann maps its developmental significance, locating the androgynous son-lover in a structurally undifferentiated early stage prior to fully differentiated masculinity — neither regression nor pathology but an intermediate, intersexual condition. Hoeller draws a sharp distinction between androgyny as a rare, high achievement of psychic flowering and ‘unisex’ as its debased cultural counterfeit. Berry offers the sharpest dissent: she argues that the concept, far from liberating gender, merely recycles its abstractions in cleaner, more sterile form, stripped of flesh and struggle. Samuels situates the debate within post-Jungian revisions of anima/animus theory, noting that Singer’s ‘androgyny’ moves analytical psychology toward a polymorphous model reminiscent of Freud’s bisexual disposition. Campbell traces androgynous divine figures across world mythology — from Avalokiteshvara to Ardhanarisvara — as symbols of transcendent wholeness. The tension between androgyny as genuine integration and as idealized abstraction remains the field’s central contested point.

In the library 11 passages

Its veiled androgyny reflects the hermaphroditism of the lapis, which in this respect has more affinity with the views of the Gnostics… the theme of androgyny has been subjected to quite special treatment

Jung establishes androgyny as a core symbol linking the alchemical lapis, the Gnostic Primordial Man, and the Christ-image, grounding the term in a continuous hermaphroditic symbolism running from antiquity through Christianity.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis

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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, drawing on Jung’s Seven Sermons, argues that androgyny represents the supreme telos of psychic transformation, categorically distinct from the culturally fashionable but psychologically hollow ‘unisex’ model.

Hoeller, Stephan A., The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982thesis

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The feminine element in the androgynous son-lover… is entirely original, as the androgyne’s structurally undifferentiated disposition shows, and is not caused by the regression of an already developed masculinity.

Neumann corrects Jung’s regression interpretation by insisting that the androgyne’s feminine element reflects a primary, structurally undifferentiated stage of development rather than a pathological retreat from established masculinity.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019thesis

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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 mounts an archetypal-psychological critique of androgyny as a concept, arguing that its balancing of masculine and feminine abstractions produces only a bloodless transcendence that evades the genuine mess and complexity of embodied gender.

Berry, Patricia, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis

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it is also a phallic symbol and thus has an androgynous character. (For Christ’s androgyny cf. Mysterium Coniunctionis, pars. 526, 565 & n. 63.)

Edinger cross-references Jung’s documentation of Christ’s androgyny in Mysterium Coniunctionis, linking it to the symbolism of dying gods such as Attis and confirming the androgynous character as a feature of the redeemer archetype.

Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung’s Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting

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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 maps the post-Jungian concept of androgyny — particularly as developed by Singer — onto Freud’s bisexual and polymorphous models, showing how the term functions as a bridge between Jungian gender theory and broader psychoanalytic discourse.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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androgynous gods, xx (Pl. X), 152-54, 162, 169-71 (Bodhisattva)… Ardhanarisha, manifestation of Shiva, 154

Campbell’s index confirms his systematic treatment of androgynous gods — from the Bodhisattva to Ardhanarisvara — as a cross-cultural mythological constant expressing the mystery of cosmic and psychic totality.

Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015supporting

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That father was himself the womb, the mother, of a second birth. This is the meaning of the image of the bisexual god. He is the mystery of the theme of initiation.

Campbell interprets the bisexual — effectively androgynous — divine image as the initiatory symbol par excellence, in which the paternal principle encompasses maternal rebirth, dissolving the opposition of the two sexes in the moment of transformation.

Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015supporting

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the skull was buried of Adam, the androgynous dawn man of the Hebrew myth

Campbell identifies the Hebrew Adam as an androgynous primordial figure whose skull at Golgotha mythologically connects the first creation to the redemptive act of Christ, illustrating the cosmogonic function of androgyny across traditions.

Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting

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Such a disposition should not be adjudged negative in all circumstances, in so far as it preserves the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost.

Hillman, citing Jung, gestures toward the androgynous dimension of the anima complex by affirming that identity with the anima — however problematic — preserves something of the original wholeness of the undivided anthropos.

Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985aside

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locked up in Jung’s copious writings on masculinity and femininity, there may lie clues to an understanding of our current conundrum

Samuels frames the broader gender debate within Jungian studies, noting the tension between those who see Jung’s masculine-feminine theory — including androgynous ideals — as progressive and those who regard it as fundamentally inequitable.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985aside

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