Images of Androgyny: Seeking Wholeness

Individuation means detaching from the things you were before, from the culture and history around you, and becoming who you really are. - C. G. Jung

This talk explores images of androgyny in the dreams of various male analysands who wrestle with their sexual orientation and find meaning in grief and depression through a relationship with the collective unconscious. The dream images suggest that while outer life is concerned with the binaries of male/female and gay/straight, the unconscious, where opposites potentially exist as a totality, seems to have little vested interest in such binary differentiations.

The mysteries of the masculine and feminine principles require an intimacy with both sides. As in alchemy, this could lead to an emergence of a psychological androgyny or to the seeking of wholeness.