Hermaphroditus

The much older figure of the Hermaphroditus, whose outward aspect probably derives from a Cyprian Venus barbata, encountered in the Eastern Church the already extant idea of an androgynous Christ, which is no doubt connected with the Platonic conception of the bisexual First Man

Jung traces the Hermaphroditus from pagan antiquity through the androgynous Christ to the Platonic First Man, establishing its role as a cross-traditional symbol of primordial androgyny absorbed into alchemical and Christian theology.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis

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The corpse left over from the feast is already a new body, a hermaphroditus (a compound of Hermes-Mercurius and Aphrodite-Venus). For this reason one half of the body in the alchemical illustrations is masculine, the other half feminine

Jung identifies the hermaphroditus as the transformed body produced by alchemical mortification — the rebis — whose dual-gendered form embodies the union of Mercurius and Venus as the goal of the opus.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954thesis

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a hermaphroditus (a compound of Hermes-Mercurius and Aphrodite-Venus). For this reason one half of the body in the alchemical illustrations is masculine, the other half feminine (in the Rosarium this is the left half). Since the hermaphroditus turns out to be the long-sought rebis or lapis, it symbolizes that mysterious being yet to be begotten

Jung equates the hermaphroditus with the rebis and lapis as the supreme goal of alchemical work, whose masculine-feminine duality is materially depicted in the Rosarium illustrations.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954thesis

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With the Hermaphrodite, psychology begins to be psychology in the deepest sense. If we conceive of the Hermaphrodite as a particular consciousness in itself, then, from its own level of consciousness it apprehends that basic reality of life which makes psyche possible: man and woman.

López-Pedraza argues that hermaphroditic consciousness constitutes the deepest psychological mode, uniquely holding the male-female opposition within a symmetrical image and making genuine psychic movement possible in the analytic encounter.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977thesis

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it was claimed for him that he was none other than the Hermaphroditus. With Aphrodite as his mother, he was said to have various other fathers: Dionysus, or sometimes Adonis, or even Zeus himself.

López-Pedraza draws on Kerényi's mythological fragments to establish Priapus's identification with Hermaphroditus as a psychologically constitutive claim, integrating multiple paternal genealogies into a single polymorphous archetypal image.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977thesis

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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 house-cult statue as a symbol of originary wholeness, representing the primal androgynous condition that marriage ritually restores and from which family life perpetually regenerates.

Kerényi, Karl, Hermes Guide of Souls, 1944thesis

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she became one with the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, that son who was called Hermaphroditos and since then was ind

Kerényi recounts the foundational myth of Hermaphroditos — the fusion of the son of Hermes and Aphrodite with the nymph Salmakis — establishing the genealogical and narrative basis for the figure's dual-sexed nature.

Kerényi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis

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the hermaphrodite is an important symbol that often occurs at a particular stage of psychological development. It is an archetype. the Platonic all-round being is a hermaphrodite, a bisexual condition which means asexual, because the two conditions check each other.

Jung characterizes the hermaphrodite as a developmental archetype signifying the preconscious, undifferentiated state before the emergence of differentiated sexual identity and conscious selfhood.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984thesis

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claiming to be a Hermaphroditus and, in the tenth image of the Rosarium, a meeting of this claim with Luna, belong within the archetypal spectrum of Priapus. There was a time when freakishness had its own religious cult and way of life

López-Pedraza situates Priapus's hermaphroditic claim within the Rosarium's alchemical imagery, arguing that the archetype of the freak — including clinical presentations of hermaphroditic identity — belongs to a historically repressed religious constellation.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977thesis

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Priapus offers our imagination a hermaphroditism which, because of that claim to be Hermaphroditus himself, is a concretized fantasy expressed in the body, i.e., our lady therapist and the little nun.

López-Pedraza proposes that Priapus's hermaphroditism manifests as a somatic, concretized fantasy — a bodily archetypal expression with specific healing properties in psychotherapeutic relationships.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977supporting

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it was claimed for him that he was none other than the Hermaphroditos. His mother was said to be Aphrodite, and his father was usually supposed to be Dionysus, or sometimes Adonis, or even Zeus himself

Kerényi documents the mythological identification of Priapus with Hermaphroditos and his multiply attested divine paternity, establishing the mythographic basis for the conflation of phallic and androgynous symbolism.

Kerényi, Karl, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting

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The ultimate ground of thinking in opposites is the male/female pair, "the only real antithesis" which in turn can be pushed back to its early childhood experience in "psychic hermaphroditism" (the title of Adler's 1910 paper).

Hillman, reading Adler, traces antithetical thinking to its foundation in psychic hermaphroditism — an infantile bisexual condition that society enforces into binary sex roles, producing the either/or logic that structures both neurosis and ego-consciousness.

Hillman, James, Healing Fiction, 1983supporting

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Her-maphroditus, whose outward aspect probably derives from a Cyprian Venus barbata, encountered in the Eastern Church the already extant idea of an androgynous Christ, which is no doubt connected with the Platonic conception of the bisexual First Man, for Christ is ultimately the Anthropos.

Jung establishes the historical transmission of the Hermaphroditus figure from Cyprian cult religion through Eastern Christianity to the Platonic Anthropos, situating it within his broader argument about the alchemical Rebis as a synonym for the opus's goal.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954supporting

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Mercury reborn in perfect form — as Hermaphroditus, filius sapientiae, or infans noster.

Jung and Kerényi identify Mercury's perfect rebirth in alchemical and medieval traditions as Hermaphroditus, equating the figure with the filius sapientiae and the divine child as expressions of the same renewal archetype.

Jung, C. G. and Kerényi, C., Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949supporting

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hermaphroditus a synonym for, 313; as an idea, 200; images of, 316

Jung's index entry explicitly designates the hermaphroditus as a synonym for the goal of the alchemical work, confirming its status as a terminal symbol of psychic integration within the opus tradition.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting

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filius hermaphroditus, fig. 23 filius macrocosmi, 24, 313 Christ as, 425 lapis as, 232, 425 as redeemer, 24 filius philosophorum, 25, 166, 237, 394, 452, 458n, 478 as hermaphrodite, 25, fig. 23

Jung's index in Psychology and Alchemy clusters the filius hermaphroditus with the filius philosophorum, lapis, and Christ as redeemer, documenting the symbolic equivalences through which hermaphroditism anchors alchemical soteriology.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting

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their two bodies, joined together as they were, were merged in one, with one face and form for both.

López-Pedraza cites Ovid's account of the physical merging of Hermaphroditus and Salmakis to illustrate the mythic substrate of the hermaphroditic image — an irreversible union that becomes the archetype's defining characteristic.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977supporting

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In a hermaphroditic consciousness, men and women are equal.

López-Pedraza proposes hermaphroditic consciousness as the psychologically grounded answer to questions of gender equality, surpassing both feminist claims and traditional Jungian frameworks by positing a symmetrical image that holds both sexes without reduction.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977supporting

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prevent the appearance of the Hermaphrodite which in itself contains both male and female, as well as what 'works' and does 'not work.' I am well aware that the 'achievement' of the Hermaphrodite in the pool, the prerequisite for hermaphroditic consciousness, is difficult for psychology to accept

López-Pedraza acknowledges the resistance of mainstream psychology — including Jungian — to the hermaphroditic image, arguing that the poolside transformation is nonetheless the prerequisite for the bisexual analytic consciousness required in depth work.

López-Pedraza, Rafael, Hermes and His Children, 1977supporting

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His questions attempt to divide the psychic hermaphrodite, see below, Neurotic Thinking and the Hermaphrodite.

Hillman marks Freud's interrogative method as an attempt to dissolve the psychic hermaphrodite by forcing antithetical distinctions, situating the figure at the center of his critique of neurotic either/or thinking.

Hillman, James, Healing Fiction, 1983aside

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filius hermaphroditus/macrocosmi, 332

Jung's index entry in Civilization in Transition cross-references the filius hermaphroditus with the filius macrocosmi, indicating the figure's continued presence in his late symbolic taxonomy of wholeness.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Civilization in Transition, 1964aside

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