Psychosocial Wednesdays: Claudette Kulkarni: A Call to Rehabilitate Jung’s Theory of “The Sexes”

In some ways, Jung was ahead of his time. With his concept of anima/animus, he recognized that men and women share human qualities. Unfortunately, that’s where he (and Analytical Psychology) got stuck—partly because the concept of opposites dominated his thinking and partly because he could not see beyond his various presupposition about males and females. He could not imagine men and women as anything but opposites or through anything but stereotypical terms and preconceived norms. And he could not get past dividing human qualities into “masculine” and “feminine.” In this presentation, I will outline the concepts and building blocks that shaped Jung’s thinking about sex, gender, and opposites, discuss the problems his theory presents for post-Jungian thinkers, offer some alternative ideas to Jung’s reliance on ‘othering’ and opposites, and invite you to think with me on ways we might rehabilitate and rejuvenate Jungian theory on “the sexes” in order to bring it into the 21st century.