“Androgyny is stirring within us.”
So claims June Singer in her 1976 book Androgyny, a classic in Jungian studies and the subject of our review. Trained in Zurich, Singer was co-founder of the Jung Institute of Chicago and the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, co-author of the Singer-Loomis Inventory of Personality (SLIP)–an alternative to the popular Myers-Briggs Type Inventory–and author of one of the first comprehensive treatments of Jung’s psychological model, entitled Boundaries of the Soul (1972), among other significant works. Singer was known to be both bold and critical in her understanding of Jungian psychology as well as innovative and insightful in her applications of Jungian ideas for contemporary culture. In this book, she is true to her reputation.
Androgyny is first to be distinguished from hermaphroditism and bisexuality (p.30). Singer sees androgyny as essentially a psychological and intrapsychic attitude with deep archetypal roots. She credits Jung from the beginning in acknowledging that when dealing with “the masculine” and “the feminine” archetypes, the human personality is a “both-and,” not an “either-or, phenomenon.” Specifically, she credits Jung’s anima/animus theory, which she admits can be problematic when it reinforces sex stereotypes, but ultimately setting the stage for what she terms psychological androgyny, a way of being that incarnates the archetypal Self as ”the coincidence of opposites.” And, like most good Jungians, her case is made through ample amplifications on the subject, bringing in her studies of Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Taoism, especially.
Interestingly, Singer refers to “a secret knowledge” that belongs to the androgyne. She comments: “It is secret because the very nature of it is that it cannot be shared or taught or even spoken about.” Why you may ask? Because, she continues, “it is the knowledge that comes from working with oneself towards levels of consciousness in which the opposites within one’s own being (italics mine) become apparent. It is then that one learns to recognize the inner oscillation (italics mine) between Masculine and Feminine modalities of being and to hear with the inner ear the music of their interplay.”
Singer warns however, “One can only hear the music in silence, while the noise of the world is stilled for a time and the reflecting surface now faces inward.” (p. 323) In the near 50 years since Singer wrote this book, clearly the world has gotten much noisier, and the move inward that much more difficult!!
Singer sees the inner marriage as precursor to the androgyne. The androgyne then becomes the ultimate symbol that indicates one’s acceptance of oneself as a total and complete being. Leaving this piece out she tells us, “each person will be looking for another person who will fill out the inner empty places. And, this will make the individual the victim of his own emotional dependence.” (p. 324)
Such an outer-world dependency characterizes most of our lives in the collective. Singer’s words here must strike many as foreign, annoying, or just plain wrong. We routinely resist the inner world like the plague. Our answers are out there somewhere, or with someone. Yet, without the turn in, Singer asserts, the person will miss “the continuing process of separation and reunion within himself.” This process of separation and reunion that takes place within is critical. It is with this inner work that androgyny then becomes visible in the body and in the world.
Singer comments: “The body, in and of itself, we know is either male or female; but the way a person moves, the way a person functions in and through the body, defines the androgyne. This movement derives from the inner experience of the individual.” (p.326) One could paraphrase: the oscillation that takes place between the opposites in the inner world creates that “third thing” that transforms the body and presents it to the outer world.
Singer is speaking of something here that is both subtle and manifestly real. She states, “Because the Masculine and Feminine energies in the androgyne are combined, but not confused, each person realizes her or his unique individuality through androgyny.”(p. 329) In other words, the Two do not get lost in the One; the flow is from within, while also being reflective of what is without, in a multitude of creative and spontaneous ways.
Singer sees androgyny as a goal of individuation. But, individuation, alas, is not isolation or even individualism. She comments, “The androgyne may at times feel complete, fulfilled within himself or herself. This is the asexual aspect of it. There is peace in this. But, unless it finds some expression in work or relationship, in prayer or in art, it tends toward entropy, as a closed system does.” Instead, she suggests, the androgyne is radically open, spontaneous, living life more fully, even with a certain kind of humor and poise…this is evidence of an “open” system, not a “closed” one.
In some ways, Singer was way ahead of her times. But, in others, she makes her case by looking back, rooting herself in “deep” history, where the archetype presents in multiple and provocative ways. Her ability to not only analyze and amplify the androgyne throughout history, but to likewise connect it with the emerging age of Aquarius makes for a tour de force in Jungian studies.
There is a poignant vision that Singer offers that provides nothing less than the myth of the androgyne living in today’s everyday world:
“Without a sense of disjunction, the person will become at once tender and firm, flexible and strong, ambiguous and precise, focused in thinking and diffused in awareness, nurturing and guiding, giving and receiving. It will be like listening to a duet skillfully played by a pianist and a violinist, when one does not hear the two separate instruments so much as the harmonious interplay between them. Androgyny is to be experienced as a conversation where every sentence builds on the totality of what has gone before, and not as a succession of alternating brief speeches. In an androgynous interaction, an individual knows the simultaneous working of that intuitive aspect by which he is able to encompass wholes with the sensate aspect, wherein each minute element of a situation is seen and felt in its relationship to the totality.”
This sounds as close to an embodiment of the individuating person as one can render.
