Gender occupies a contested and generative position within the depth-psychology corpus. The field inherited from Jung a set of symbolic polarities — Logos and Eros, masculine and feminine — that were intended as psychological principles independent of anatomical sex, yet which persistently became entangled with cultural assumptions about actual men and women. Samuels, the most systematic post-Jungian analyst of the question, maps the tensions between those who celebrate Jung’s anticipation of feminist insights and those who find his basic model structurally inegalitarian. Patricia Berry, writing from an archetypal perspective, challenges the entire edifice by critiquing what she calls ‘the dogma of gender’ — the reification of sexual polarity into a monotheistic identity — and calls instead for a polymorphous, particular understanding of gendered experience. Schore grounds gender identity neurobiologically, locating its irreversible organization in the orbitofrontal cortex at approximately eighteen months, while Siegel argues for a non-binary neural model that extends across a spectrum. Clinical literature (Findeis, Eng) treats gender as a socially constructed category distinct from biological sex, demanding precision in research design. Across the corpus the central tension is structural: does gender name an archetypal psychological reality, a biologically grounded developmental outcome, or a socially produced and therefore revisable classification? The answer each school gives reshapes the entire theory of individuation, anima/animus, and the therapeutic relationship.
locked up in Jung’s copious writings on masculinity and femininity, there may lie clues to an understanding of our current conundrum. But, at the same time, I have also detected an immense dissatisfaction—with Jung’s concepts and not just some of his expressed attitudes.
Samuels frames the whole post-Jungian debate on gender as a tension between anticipatory insight and structural inadequacy in Jung’s own theory.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
Perhaps it is not gender as such that is the problem anyway, but its singleness, the monotheism of gender, gender as the epitome of unity and identity.
Berry argues that the pathology lies not in gender itself but in its dogmatic reduction to a singular, totalising identity that forecloses polymorphous plurality.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
what is now needed is restriction in the use of the oppositional theory and clarification of gender terminology. The latter should be used only when absolutely necessary and warranted by the subject under discussion.
Samuels proposes a methodological discipline: gender terminology should be deployed only where sex or gendered behaviour is directly at issue, resisting its illicit extension into general psychology.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
It is important to see that Jung was speaking in symbolic terms of psychological factors that are independent of anatomical sex. Logos and Eros exist within a person of either sex.
Samuels defends Jung’s Logos/Eros polarity as a symbolic schema independent of biological sex, though he acknowledges that gender terminology clouds this intention.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
The storage of such representations in the orbital cortex in the form of internal working models of femaleness and maleness mediates the internalization of gender. The final structural maturation of this cortex at 18 months accounts for the observed irreversible determination of gender identity at this time.
Schore provides a neurobiological grounding for gender identity formation, locating its irreversible consolidation in orbitofrontal maturation during the second year of life.
, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994thesis
the neural embedding of identity unfolds across a nonbinary range of possible senses of self in the world. Honoring that biological reality is a crucial part of integrating internally and interpersonally.
Siegel argues from neurodevelopmental evidence that gender identity is non-binary, the brain’s sense of self unfolding across a spectrum that biological sex categories cannot contain.
, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020thesis
The problem with this neat division into sex and gender is that gender behaviour (conceived by Stoller as mainly learned from the time of birth onwards) plays a vital part in sexual behaviour which is, of course, markedly biological.
Drawing on Stoller, Samuels demonstrates that the analytic distinction between sex and gender cannot be maintained cleanly because learned gender behaviour and biological sexuality are mutually constitutive.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
I want nothing barred from me on the basis of gender. I can think analytically and work creatively… From a psychological point of view, either may be using her ideas of gender defensively.
Berry presents two feminist positions on gender and diagnoses both as potentially defensive ego-identifications rather than genuine psychological self-understanding.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
if one is attempting to describe the entire masculine-feminine spectrum, one has to be sure why terms with sexual or gendered associations are used at all. Otherwise we end up with bland and misleading conclusions.
Samuels critiques the retention of gendered language for non-gendered psychological phenomena, comparing post-Jungian androgyny concepts with Lacanian and Freudian accounts of polymorphous sexuality.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
Although Jung never designates consciousness as masculine per se, he does make a sharp and somewhat tenuous distinction between masculine and feminine consciousness.
Samuels examines Neumann’s and Jung’s conflation of consciousness with masculinity, tracing its developmental logic while exposing its theoretical fragility.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
When one examines these supposedly purely biological accounts of sex roles one finds that they are rooted in appeal to social, not biological, considerations.
Samuels, via Sayers’s critique of sociobiology, argues that biological determinism in accounts of gendered behaviour covertly relies on social premises it claims to ground.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
Recent investigations with primates differentiate genital from behavioral nonreproductive sex differences, with the latter referred to as ‘gender role identification’ effects.
Schore introduces the neurobiological distinction between genital sex and behavioural gender-role identification, grounding the latter in primate and human research on psychological masculinity and femininity.
, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994supporting
to be pre-gender or un-gender is also to feel inferior.
Berry traces the psychological sense of inferiority to a pre-gender or undifferentiated state, linking Adlerian organ inferiority to the primal experience of ungenderedness.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
With brains beginning in a ‘female state’ and being masculinized based on a number of variables, including hormonal exposure in utero, we can see how a brain’s sexual or gender identity would not fit into the rigid male or female binary groupings.
Siegel marshals neurobiological evidence for a gradient model of gender identity, showing that in utero hormonal variability undermines binary classifications of male and female.
, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting
I must question whether the basic thesis of the work is flawed; whether there is not too great an emphasis on the innately feminine with the consequence that ‘the feminine’ is idealised.
Samuels critiques post-Jungian feminine psychology for idealising an innate feminine principle, arguing that a ‘primal feminine energy pattern’ is an internal hypothesis pertaining to both sexes.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
there is little doubt that Jung saw the anima as a more pleasant figure than the animus.
Goldenberg’s critique of the asymmetry between anima and animus theories is examined, revealing a gender bias embedded in the structural architecture of Jung’s contrasexual concepts.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
the term ‘gender’ is used to refer to socially constructed
Findeis explicitly defines gender as a socially constructed category distinct from biological sex, following contemporary clinical convention in ADHD research.
, The effects of psychostimulants in menstruating women with ADHD — A gender health gap in ADHD treatmentsupporting
An even more fundamental criticism of sociobiology concerns the use of the term ‘masculine’ in connection with aggression. The basic idea is that, as aggression flows from the male sex hormone testosterone, and as aggression lead
Samuels examines and challenges the sociobiological conflation of the term ‘masculine’ with aggression, showing how biological reductionism distorts both gender categories and social analysis.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
the greater length and different nature of their pre-oedipal experience, and their continuing preoccupation with the issues of this period, means that women’s sense of self is continuous with others
Samuels draws on Chodorow’s feminist psychoanalysis to argue that gendered differences in self-structure arise from differential pre-oedipal experience rather than innate biological constitution.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
male and female poles of brain sexuality reflect extremes of a gradient that allows for many intermediary types. Although male and female sexuality are distinct to a substantial extent, each sex does in fact possess circuits for both forms of behavior
Panksepp argues from affective neuroscience that brain-based gender differences are gradient rather than binary, with cross-sexual variants emerging from a spectrum of neurobiological organisation.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
There is a significant gender-biased prevalence rate in ADHD of a ratio of at least 3:1 favoring boys in childhood.
Eng notes gender-biased prevalence patterns in ADHD diagnosis, flagging the clinical consequences of gendered assumptions in psychiatric epidemiology.
, Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and the menstrual cycle: Theory and evidence, 2024aside
The psychological history of the male-female relationship in our civilization may be seen as a series of footnotes to the tale of Adam and Eve.
Hillman situates the history of gendered hierarchy in Western civilisation within a mythological framework, reading the Adam-and-Eve narrative as the founding text of male superiority.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972aside
sex, 207–10; differences, 210; and gender, 210, 215; see also anima; animus; Eros; gender;
The index entry cross-referencing sex, gender, anima, animus, and Eros signals the structural interconnection of these concepts throughout Samuels’s systematic treatment.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985aside