The Michael Fordham Prize, awarded for the most creative and original approach to clinical analytic thinking, has been given to two papers this year. Jay Barlow’spaper, The Umbilical, explores early relational trauma, gender and sexual identity, and projective identification through the lens of a trans man’s experience. Barlow’s work uses images from Louise Bourgeois to illustrate the concept of a “psychic umbilical”. Robert Tyminski’s paper, Humanizing Different Archetypal Expressions of Gender Expansiveness, examines gender fluidity, non-binary identities, and the humanizing of archetypes. Tyminski uses a case study to argue for a more mosaic-like understanding of the psyche.
Analytical Psychology has undergone a notable shift in its approach to transgender issues, moving away from pathologizing perspectives towards more affirmative and expansive understandings of gender identity. Early approaches, influenced by essentialist views linking gender to biological sex, often treated non-normative gender expressions as deviations stemming from trauma or flawed development.
However, contemporary Jungian thought is increasingly recognizing gender as a complex, fluid, and socially constructed phenomenon, not solely determined by biological factors.
Tyminski’s paper advocates for humanizing archetypal expressions of gender expansiveness, viewing it as a sociocultural process. Similarly, Barlow’s paper emphasizes that early relational trauma affects all genders and sexual identities and that gender and sexual identity are fluid aspects of the Self within all human development.
At the current time when recidivist views are ascendant it is salutary to note that there has been an ongoing thread of more expansive, less essentialist, and less binary views in the Jungian world.
Samuels (1989) critiqued biological arguments against women’s evolving roles, setting the stage for more feminist perspectives. McKenzie (2006, 2015) redefines gender as an emergent property and an internal experience, challenging traditional anima/animus concepts. Young-Eisendrath (2004) emphasizes the self’s fluidity, blending Jungian and Buddhist insights. Pessoa (2021) introduces the heteropatriarchal complex to highlight socio-political influences on gender, while Literski (2021) counters anti-transgender myths, using Dionysus as a symbol of non-binary wholeness and advocating for broader clinical understanding.
We would like to heartily congratulate Robert Tyminski and Jay Barlow on their well deserved accolade.