Syzygy and Gender – A Union of Opposites

In this lecture, specific clinical issues of attachment, gender, sexual preference, personal individuation as well as religious inclination are explored both phenomenologically and archetypally with reference to C.G. Jung's basic understanding of Syzygy, the dynamism and imagery of masculine (animus) and feminine (anima) yoked creatively together within the psyche in key interpersonal relationships and in all Nature.

This presentation contextualizes the imagery and fluidity of gender historically through a brief review of divine figures of Western tradition and their ritual contexts where sex and the mystery of gender is religiously expressed. Plato's mythic Androgyne of this Symposium (regressively correlated by Freud with infantile sexuality while viewed progressively by Jung as a dynamic symbol of the syzygy and Self) is paradigmatic here of the ontological split between male and female, ego and self, human and divine which animates the erotic moment while tilting ever foreword: the motive force of individuation and reintegration so vividly described in the 2nd Century Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.