Monday, October 9, 2017

On Men and Masks

In Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology there are believed to be "two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind" - the Anima and Animus. That is to say that the psyche (i.e. soul, mind, spirit, ego, person, subconscious, or whatever else one prefers to call it) is understood to be androgynous (i.e. "partly female and partly male; of indeterminate sex") despite one's sex or "default orientation". Said psyche is thought to create a contra sexuality in the inner life of a person (i.e. a female's masculine contra sexuality - the Animus - is expressed in her "rational thinking" function and a male's feminine contra sexuality - the Anima - is expressed in his "irrational feeling" function. Note: Neither rational nor irrational are better than the other).

The Anima and Animus are understood to serve many roles. They allow us to relate more fully to the world and those in it with an equal measure of head and heart despite our predisposition of personality as governed by our genetically assigned sex and the psychosocial pressures that govern the way people behave according to said sex. Within this particular purview, neuroses (i.e. anxiety, depression, obsessive behavior and so forth - the precursor to psychosis) may arise due to an imbalance of the aforementioned.

One could argue that the imbalance has been cultivated by an enduring & biased patriarchal dogma (i.e. set of principles or tenets) which has strongly influenced how we have historically thought and behaved as a species. One need only look to our religious or profane institutions to see how profoundly masculinized we are. This prevailing masculine perspective has shaped our folkways and mores in disproportionate measure to the influence of the feminine perspective. Keep in mind that the prevailing masculine perspective dates as far back as the Neolithic era (i.e. 10,200 BCE to between 4,500 and 2,000 BCE), to when - it is theorized (Gerda Lerner) - that paternity was arrived at due to the practice of private ownership, a then burgeoning desire to bequeath property and an accompanying need for certainty that a male’s descendants were in fact their own (see “virgin”).