Conception

Saint Thomas states with characteristic succinctness: ‘Semen mulieris non est de necessitate conceptionis,’ because female seed ‘nihil facit ad generationem.’ Female exudate is an imperfect analogue to male semen.

Hillman demonstrates how Aquinas’s formal denial of the necessity of female seed to conception encodes a philosophical subordination of the feminine that saturates the biological theory of reproduction with patriarchal cosmology.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis

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the concern with conception in antiquity (Aristotle devoted 37 per cent of his biological writings to generation) was part of philosophy and not merely a problem in a minor branch of physiology.

Hillman argues that ancient theories of conception were always philosophical and cosmological enterprises, and that the denial or affirmation of female seed carried ontological stakes extending across civilizations and religious traditions.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis

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‘Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?’ Wilson went on to share his epiphany spurred by Ebby’s insightful question: ‘That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years.’

Peterson shows how Ebby’s question inviting Wilson to personally author his conception of God catalyzed the foundational spiritual transformation underlying Alcoholics Anonymous, establishing individual autonomy in forming the God-image as a clinical and spiritual principle.

Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024thesis

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kune iti — inner conception, a conception which takes place inside; Te kune rahi — preparation; Te kine hanga — the impulse to search; Te Ranga hautanga — ordering, as for instance of the cells in a growing body.

Von Franz reads the Polynesian cosmogonic sequence as grading conception from an interior psychic impulse through to embryonic ordering, making conception the primordial metaphysical event that precedes and enables physical existence.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995thesis

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we encounter a long and incredible history of theoretical misadventures and observational errors in male science regarding the physiology of reproduction. These fantastic theories and fantastic observations are not mere misapprehensions… they are recurrent deprecations of the feminine.

Hillman contends that the history of biological theories of conception is not a progressive correction of error but a sustained, mythically driven deprecation of the feminine encoded in the authoritative language of each era’s science.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis

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The star or comet plainly belongs to the birth-scene… Moerike’s poetic fancy imagined another such divine conception… ‘T’would rather be the Wind’s own bride / Than have a man and marry.’ Then came the Wind and held her fast… a merry child within her womb was planted.

Jung establishes the miraculous or divine conception — by wind, star, or cosmic force — as a recurrent archetypal motif expressing the psyche’s symbolic representation of transformative or spiritual genesis independent of ordinary biological paternity.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis

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genius, William Harvey, after famous dissections upon the uteri of the does of King Charles, came to the ‘conclusion that semen could not enter the uterus and therefore was not necessary for conception.’

Hillman marshals Harvey’s extraordinary empirical ‘conclusion’ as evidence that even landmark scientific observers filtered their data on conception through prior philosophical and fantasy commitments rather than neutral observation.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting

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Just like what happened with Eckhart and Jung, Wilson allowed his own conception of the God-image to change: confronted with Ebby’s query, ‘Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?’ Wilson…

Peterson situates Wilson’s transformation of his personal conception of God within a lineage running through Eckhart and Jung, framing the freedom to revise one’s God-conception as the living heart of psychological and spiritual individuation.

Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting

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Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection we imagined we had abandoned the God idea entirely.

The Big Book identifies the confusion of a single inadequate conception of God with the God-idea itself as the characteristic intellectual error of the agnostic or anti-religious alcoholic, and treats the revision of that conception as the therapeutic turning point.

Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc, Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition The Official ‘Big, 2001supporting

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with a woman, conception and the child itself happens within her body — at the very center of her being. From the moment that she has conceived, whether she knows it or not a woman is quite literally with child.

Nichols argues that biological conception is, for women, an inescapably centripetal psychic event — an annunciation in the unconscious — making every birth a re-enactment of the archetypal motif of the Divine Child.

Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting

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In Jewish tradition one finds the reverse: in the embryo, the bones, tendons, nails, contents of the head, and whites of the eyes come from the father, ‘who sows the white’; skin and colored parts are derived from the mother, ‘who sows the red.’

Hillman traces the red-white symbolism of male and female seed across alchemy and Jewish tradition, revealing how conceptions of reproductive contribution are coded by prior color symbolisms that carry philosophical freight about hierarchy and completeness.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting

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Anna was telling her mother: thus I conceive the problem of birth. What do you think of it? is it right? The game is really meant as a question, for, as we shall see later, this conception still had to be officially confirmed.

Jung documents how a child’s spontaneous play-enactment of birth constitutes a working theory — a psychological conception — of origins, demonstrating that the child’s understanding of procreation is an active construal seeking social confirmation.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Development of Personality, 1954supporting

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Herrmann explores how instrumental Eckhart was in helping both William James and Carl Jung develop their unique conceptions of religious imagery, explaining that he is ‘the missing link… between Jung and James.’

Peterson, drawing on Herrmann, establishes Meister Eckhart as the genealogical source of both James’s and Jung’s distinctive conceptions of the God-image, locating the intellectual conception of religious psychology in medieval mysticism.

Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024supporting

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notion of preconceptions is the direct descendant of Plato’s Ideas… ‘Jung’s “archetypes” are probably much the same as innate preconceptions in theory.’

Samuels, via Money-Kyrle, identifies Jungian archetypes with Bionian preconceptions as shared innate structural schemas — phylogenetically inherited proto-conceptions — that await realization through experience.

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

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A tentative norm of health: a conception (usually general and to some degree open-ended) of the flourishing and complete human life.

Nussbaum situates ‘conception’ within Hellenistic therapeutic philosophy as one of three interlocking normative elements — alongside diagnosis and method — through which philosophical therapy defines its vision of human flourishing.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994aside

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