A public dispute has unfolded within the pages of the Journal of Analytical Psychology over how contemporary Jungian clinicians should understand and work with gender-expansive patients. What began as a single paper by Robert Tyminski has grown into a multi-part exchange involving a critical response, a rebuttal from an international coalition of queer Jungians, and a separate evidentiary analysis. It raises broader questions about how the field reconciles its foundational theories on gender with evolving clinical and social understanding.
The debate stems from a November 2024 issue of the JAP, where Robert Tyminski published his paper Humanizing Different Archetypal Expressions of Gender Expansiveness, proposing a dynamic model of gender that treats it as a “mosaic” to be explored collaboratively with patients rather than being fixed categories. Marchiano, Withers and Papert responded critically, arguing from a more concrete interpretation of Jung’s binary formulations that gender essentially divides into binary expressions that correspond to binary biological categories. They also express concern that Tyminski’s approach risked encouraging “self-diagnosis” and unexamined medical transition in a young patient referred to as Kerry. Both Tyminski’s original paper and Jay Barlow’s The Umbilical went on to receive the 2025 Fordham Prize.
A response letter (which you can read in full below) from an international group of queer Jungians argues that Marchiano, Withers and Papert’s critique actually enacts the anxious reassertion of fixed categories in the face of gender’s inherent ambiguity that Tyminski describes in his paper. The group frames Tyminski’s non-directive stance as a model application of core Jungian values: tolerating not-knowing, resisting premature closure, and allowing individuation to unfold organically. They dispute the letter writers’ reliance on the UK’s Cass Review, characterising it as methodologically contested, and close by invoking Annie Boland’s warning against binary thinking.
Karen Herdzik’s paper Re-Examining Thinking about Gender, Evidence and Outcomes takes the dispute further by interrogating the evidentiary claims underlying Marchiano et al.’s position. She questions whether their reading of Jung is best described as traditional at all, arguing instead that it reflects an essentialist interpretation rooted in binary categories that overlooks Jung’s own emphasis on the tension between opposites as the generative core of the psyche. This reading finds support in Susan McKenzie’s earlier work in the JAP, which argued that anima/animus theory need not be bound to binary oppositions of male/masculine and female/feminine, and that a more fluid, emergent understanding of gender is consistent with Jung’s own framework. Herdzik contrasts this with Marchiano et al.’s more static, biology-anchored model, and questions why their approach would require confining gender exploration to the symbolic rather than concrete realms. She argues that Marchiano et al. mischaracterise the Cass Review’s findings, particularly around desistance from cross-sex identification, noting that Cass’s actual discussion centers on social transition and a single cited study, not on outcomes tied to clinical affirmation. She points out that the Cass Review does not endorse enforcing binary gender norms, nor does it find that open, exploratory therapeutic engagement produces worse outcomes; if anything, it notes that gender-diverse youth often withhold information from providers they expect to be invalidating. Herdzik situates the review within a broader field of methodological criticism and contrasts it with WPATH’s longstanding clinical guidance, concluding that the evidence does not support the more restrictive framework Marchiano et al. propose.
This is not the first time Marchiano’s position has drawn Jungian pushback. In a 2021 Psychological Perspectives piece, Defacing Dionysus, Nicholas S. Literski, who is among the signatories to the queer Jungian response, challenged her framing of transgender youth. He uses mythic and archetypal figures including Dionysus, Tiresias and Kwan Yin to evidence that gender nonconformity has a long-standing presence in world mythology.
Signatories
The response letter was signed by members of the International Queer Jungian Initiative: Guy Albert, Therese Noël Allen, Andrea Arocha, José Arroyo, Paul Attinello, Naomi Azriel, Michael Bala, Sophie Barnes, Bob Bongiovanni, Zabeth Burl, Aroldo de Lara Cardoso Jr., Marieke Cahill, Diane Camurat, Ames Carpenter, Marybeth Carter, Tali Catz, Sarah Cycon, Christine Downing, Nick Duggan, Kip Erev, Stephen Garratt, Carolina Guíñez, Karen Herdzik, Chema Jiménez Orvañanos, Valeria Kierbel, Claire Kohne, Melissa Kohner, Claudette Kulkarni, Dominique Lambert-Blum, Nicholas S. Literski, Hanna Zygmunt Marti, Andy McCormack, Amelie Möhring-Geisler, Yannis Munro, Kathleen Murphy, Sophie Murphy, Mark Matthew Palmer, James Perrin, Gustavo Pessoa, Gareth Prosser, Caroline Rapp, Camila Ribeiro Castro Soares, Fran Ruggiero Alfaro, Samuele (Sam) Russo, Sara Sage, Kara Schamell, Matthew Silverstein, Laura N. Stockford, Aurora Stout, Ann Strack, Joanna Jaka Tarnawska, George Taxidis, Douglas Thomas, and Jennie Wiley.
These exchanges illustrate a tension within contemporary analytical psychology that explores how to honor the field’s traditional theoretical vocabulary, while remaining responsive to clinical experience and a growing body of gender-diverse patients and practitioners. Readers interested in how contemporary Jungians are grappling with sex, gender and sexuality more broadly may also want to revisit our earlier coverage of Claudette Kulkarni’s “Jung’s Pointing Finger”, which explores related questions within analytical psychology’s theoretical tradition.