The depth-psychology corpus approaches ‘Male and Female’ not as a fixed biological binary but as a tensioned field of psychological, archetypal, neurological, and cultural forces. Jung and his inheritors — Winnicott, Hillman, Neumann, Samuels — interrogate the polarity through the lens of anima/animus, Logos/Eros, and the symbolic residue of Adam-and-Eve cosmology, frequently revealing that the categories are ontologically unstable: what appears as sexual difference is revealed as a projection of psychic opposites onto anatomy. Winnicott’s clinical distinction between ‘pure male and pure female elements’ — not persons — marks one of the most precise attempts to disentangle psychological quality from gendered identity. Hillman’s genealogical critique in The Myth of Analysis dismantles the Western philosophical tradition’s construction of female inferiority as a sustained fantasy of masculine consciousness. Samuels extends this by interrogating whether Jungian Logos/Eros terminology illuminates or merely reinscribes gender hierarchy. At the neurological pole, Panksepp and Siegel affirm that male and female brains differ along a gradient rather than a binary, while Campbell and Neumann situate the polarity within mythological and archetypal primordium — the androgyne, the severed Platonic sphere, the coniunctio. What unites these divergent treatments is a shared preoccupation: the male-female dyad is always also a metaphysical question about wholeness, separation, and the possibility of reunion.
the element that I am calling ‘male’ does traffic in terms of active relating or passive being related to, each being backed by instinct… by contrast, the pure female element relates to the breast (or to the mother) in the sense of the baby becoming the breast
Winnicott proposes that ‘male’ and ‘female’ name distinct modes of object-relating — active/instinct-driven versus identificatory/being — irreducible to biological sex.
, Playing and Reality, 1971thesis
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. The balance and relation between the two separate principles regulates the individual’s sense of himself as a sexed and as a gendered being
Samuels argues that Jung’s masculine/feminine principles (Logos/Eros) are properly understood as psychological polarities independent of anatomical sex, though clouded by gendered language.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
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 locates the entire Western tradition’s theorisation of male-female hierarchy within the mythological template of Adam and Eve, treating it as the founding narrative of patriarchal psychology.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
The image of female inferiority has not changed, because it remains the image in the masculine psyche. Theories of the female body are preponderantly based on the observations and fantasies of men.
Hillman argues that anatomical and psychological theories of female inferiority are artefacts of masculine fantasy rather than objective observation.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
male and female sexualities are as differently organized in male and female brains as they are in bodies. Although learning mechanisms are of obvious importance in generating the details of gender ident
Panksepp asserts that male and female sexual organisations are neurobiologically distinct, rooted in brain structure, not solely in socialisation.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998thesis
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 argues that developmental neuroscience reveals gender identity as a spectrum produced by hormonal and genetic variation, undermining strict male/female binary classification.
, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020thesis
Before the separation of Eve, Adam was both male and female. Or consider the allegory in Plato’s Symposium, where it is said by Aristophanes… that the earliest human beings were ‘round and had four hands and four feet’
Campbell places the male-female polarity within a cross-cultural mythological pattern of primordial androgyny — the original unity prior to cosmogonic splitting.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959thesis
locked up in Jung’s copious writings on masculinity and femininity, there may lie clues to an understanding of our current conundrum… I have also detected an immense dissatisfaction — with Jung’s concepts and not just some of his expressed attitudes.
Samuels identifies the reception of Jung’s gender theory as marked by simultaneous anticipation and dissatisfaction, framing it as the central unresolved tension in post-Jungian psychology.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis
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 presents neurobiological evidence that male and female sexuality are poles on a gradient, each sex possessing circuits for both modes, allowing for extensive variation.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
The recurrent questioning about female seed in our tradition obviously expresses a recurrent doubt about female essence. The problem had therefore to be repeatedly encountered, and female seed had in some way to be accounted for, in order to maintain the image of female inferiority.
Hillman traces the persistent philosophical anxiety about female generative contribution as a symptom of the tradition’s need to protect a theory of female inferiority.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
adamant rejection of any theory of the difference between the sexes in terms of pre-given male or female entities which complete and satisfy each
Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Samuels advocates abandoning essentialist notions of pre-given male or female entities in favour of a theory of irreducible difference.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
Femininity is a category invented by men to keep women inferior and pliable, fulfilling men’s needs… I am first of all a person, and I want nothing barred from me on the basis of gender.
Berry presents competing feminist positions on gender, foregrounding the archetypal-psychology debate over whether ‘the feminine’ is a meaningful psychological category or a patriarchal imposition.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982supporting
Coping with the fact of a division into two sexes is important, not only for external reality testing, but also as a first approach to reconciling internal psychological diversity and conflict.
Samuels argues that the male-female division functions psychologically as an initial template for reconciling the individual’s internal plurality and conflict.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
left = female is not a universal law. The Andaman islanders, for instance, associate left with male.
Hillman demonstrates that the symbolic equation of left with female and right with male is culturally contingent, not a universal archetypal law.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
in antiquity certain influences, evidently deriving from the Gnostic doctrine of the hermaphroditic Primordial Man, penetrated into Christianity and there gave rise to the view that Adam had been created an androgyne.
Jung traces the androgyne motif from Gnostic sources through early Christian theology, linking the hermaphroditic image to the alchemical lapis and the theme of psychological wholeness.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
male and female brains differ in many important respects. For instance, females generally exhibit greater hemispheric coordination, since their right and left lobes are integrated more extensively via the larger fiber connections of the corpus callosum.
Panksepp documents neuroanatomical differences between male and female brains, including greater interhemispheric connectivity in females, with implications for emotional and cognitive functioning.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
The red-white pair as representative of male and female is familiar from alchemy, but there red is male. In Jewish tradition one finds the reverse: in the embryo, the bones, tendons, nails… come from the father, ‘who sows the white’; skin and colored parts are derived from the mother, ‘who sows the red.’
Hillman shows that symbolic colour-coding of male and female is culturally reversible, undermining any claim to natural or archetypal fixity.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
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 recounts the Platonic myth of the severed androgyne to illuminate the mythological roots of sexual desire as a longing for primordial unity.
, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001supporting
Either the mother has a breast that is, so that the baby can also be when the baby and mother are not yet separated out in the infant’s rudimentary mind; or else the mother is incapable of making this contribution, in which case the baby has to develop without the capacity to be
Winnicott argues that the maternal provision of the ‘female element’ — the capacity simply to be — is foundational to the infant’s psychological existence, prior to any active or ‘male’ relating.
, Playing and Reality, 1971supporting
the model of ‘mind’ is something basically enterable, a container, like female innards in contemporary perceptions… One concrete image for the relation between a possessing god and the mind is erotic penetration of female by male.
Padel identifies in Greek tragic thought an embodied, gendered metaphysics in which mind itself is imaged as female — enterable, receptive, and subject to divine intrusion figured as male penetration.
, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994supporting
Freud’s basic fantasy — ‘the assumption that all human beings have the same (male) form of genital,’ his ‘First Adam’ theory (of 1905) — is put into the mind of children as their fantasy.
Hillman exposes Freud’s theory of female sexuality as rooted in a masculine archetype projected onto children, recapitulating the Adam-and-Eve cosmology of masculine primacy.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
there is no doubt that something which may be termed ‘feminine’ has been neglected in a ‘patriarchal’ psychology.
Samuels acknowledges that post-Jungian feminist writers identify a genuine lacuna: the feminine as experienced from within, rather than as constructed by patriarchal psychology, has been systematically marginalised.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
man is made for the erga hupaithria, ta exo erga, the open-air life and outside activities, and woman, for the indoor life, ta endon.
Vernant documents the Greek cultural coding of male and female as an inside/outside spatial opposition structuring all social and bodily life.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
in the primordial phase, therefore, the woman always conceived by an extrahuman, transpersonal power… Fecundation makes the woman into a numinous being for herself and for the male.
Neumann argues that in primordial matriarchal mythology, the female’s reproductive power was experienced as transpersonal and numinous, predating any meaningful male contribution to generation.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
There are fine anatomical and neurochemical differences between males and females in all these areas… there are also some differences in the cortex, as well as in the commissures that connect the two hemispheres, which no doubt contribute to distinct cognitive styles in men and women.
Panksepp maps neurochemical and anatomical sex differences across brain regions, arguing these contribute to the distinct cognitive and behavioural profiles of men and women.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
the function of the male in this society is to prepare and maintain a field within which the female can bring forth the future. These are two quite different roles. And their bodies are made for them as well.
Campbell reads male and female social roles in primatological and mythological terms, presenting biological complementarity — field-maintenance versus generation — as the foundation of gendered mythology.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990supporting
are there significant differences between the emotional workings of the brains of men and women? To begin with, there undeniably are obvious differences between men and women… thanks to the tremendous variation between individuals, there’s often a lot of overlap.
Burnett interrogates the empirical basis for emotional differences between male and female brains, finding that while differences exist, individual variation produces substantial overlap between the sexes.
, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023supporting
The risks or vulnerabilities to states of conditioned love have been described in gender-specific myths, which promote female chastity and female vulnerability to first love in contrast to male promiscuity. Underlying these myths may be an implicit understanding of the monogamy switch
Porges proposes that gendered myths around female chastity and male promiscuity may encode an implicit neurophysiological understanding of differential bonding mechanisms.
, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, 2011aside
Males are still more likely to be physically violent than females in keeping with their ancestral social roles — hunting and fighting for territory — and females can be violent too, but it is apparent that the majority of males are caring individuals
Damasio notes a statistical sex difference in physical aggression anchored in ancestral role differentiation, while resisting any absolute dichotomy between male violence and female care.
, The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018aside
in India, the female principle… the man psychologically is interested in other things and then this power field goes by and… she is the activator.
Campbell contrasts European yang/yin and Indian Shakti traditions, noting that in the latter the female is the active, energising principle that draws the passive male into worldly engagement.
, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, 2004aside
it is attractive to believe that male and female orgasms are fundamentally similar in terms of brain neurophysiology
Panksepp tentatively proposes neurophysiological convergence between male and female orgasm as a hypothesis, situating female orgasm within a broader evolutionary and bonding context.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998aside