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Is it the age of the Hermaphrodite? Yael Hafft I would like to share my thoughts and
dilemmas that have been bothering me for some time. Let me start with a dream
I dreamt about two years ago. I see a robust male figure, very virile,
with black hair and a black mustache. Next to him there is another figure,
unclear, sort of a servant or a helper. The man spreads his arms sidewise. He
is full of vitality and joy. He starts to undress from top to bottom. His
chest is wide, full with strong arms. When he continues to take off his
clothes, I see he has no penis, but a woman's genitals. I look up to his
chest and I realize there are little breasts. I am stupefied. He on the other
hand continues to smile, emanating a strong energy of joy and confidence. I
woke up with a strong feeling of wonder, and joy full of unexplained
energy.
This figure of the Hermaphrodite reminded me of another dream I have
had during my analysis, where a Hermaphroditic figure appeared. At that time
I was appalled, felt that there was something
abnormal within me, until I understood that he represents a helping animus
power. I
remember a dream of a patient of mine of many years ago. This woman
threatened with suicide in a very difficult stage in her life and in
analysis. In her dream there was a woman coming close towards her, wanting to
embrace her, when she realizes that the woman has a penis. She, of course, interpreted this as another
proof for her distortedness. It was
extremely difficult for her to accept the symbolic meaning of the penis as a
penetrating fructifying force.
Since my dream of two years ago I have started to concentrate on the
Hermaphrodite figure and its meaning to me in my life and in general.
Jung in his book Symbols of Transformation (1) he presents a picture
of a Hermaphrodite figure called The Crowned Hermaphrodite. It is taken from
a manuscript Da Alchimia,
belonging to Thomas Aquinas from 1520.
In this In
Greek mythology there are several distorted figures such as Hephaestos, the Hermaphrodite, Hermes in his undignified
appearance, the trickster, that are leading figures towards consciousness,
transformation and inner development. It
is interesting to follow the human development in connection with the figures
of the Hermaphrodite and/or the Androgyny in various versions. In
the pre-Greek mythology of the Pelasgians, the
feminine principle creates the masculine principle in order to help with the
creation of the world. The Goddess Eurynome, who is
called The Goddess of all things, rose up from the chaos naked. To enable her
to stand, she separated the sky from the sea, and in order to warm herself
she danced on the waves. When she danced towards the south she felt the wind
behind her moving, thus feeling the north wind. The north wind, called Boreas, is supposed to fertilize. The Goddess Eurynome took the wind between her hands and rubbed it.
From the rubbing Ophion was created. Ophion enamoured by her
dancing, curled himself around her thigh, impregnating her. When she realized
her pregnancy she turned herself into a dove flying above the waves. When the
time of delivery came she gave birth to the Universal Egg. Ophion, as a snake curled himself seven times around this
Universal Egg, and remained curled until the Egg split into two. Thus were
created the children of Eurynome: The sun, the
moon, the planets, the stars, the earth and everything in it. Eurynome and Ophion lived on the
Out of Ophion's teeth Eurynome
created the first man, Pelasgus, and the Pelasgians race (2).
The fructifying power cannot create anything without a receiving and
an accepting power, as Ophion and Eurynome. The masculine principle needs the feminine
principle, and vice versa. The Hermaphrodite, according to the myth
written in the Larousse Encyclophedia (3), is the
son of Aphrodite and Hermes. The nymph Salamacis
fell in love with him but he rejected her love. She, in desperation, cursed
him with these words: "Cruel youth, you are fighting in vain. He Gods,
make that nothing will separate him from me and that nothing will separate me
from him." (3). Thus he became one with her. According to this story,
the Hermaphrodite, in fact, is a victim of the curse and the yearning of Salamacis. He is a
victim of a possessive and an envious love.
This story makes me think about sexual identity and the psychological
problem with regard to some of the homosexuals, but not only with them, as a
problem of the possessive, envious relationship of the mother or the father
with the son or daughter, and the latter's continuous trying, which always
fails, to extricate themselves from this problematic connection, together
with the yearning to become one with her or him. On
the other hand, the Hermaphrodite in
In pre-Colombian
June Singer wrote in l977 a book called Androgyny, Towards a New
Theory of Sexuality. There she wrote that "the Androgyny was the
beginning of mythic
time. Chaos is the potency that exists in the Void, the potentiality for
energy within the potentiality for matter."(4).
In
this phase the woman is not anymore an equal partner to the man. She represents
the psyche and the soul of man. He years for her yet shuns from her and
subordinates her. The ego is considered masculine, just as consciousness,
belonging to the ego realm, is considered masculine, whereas the psyche and
the unconscious are considered feminine and dangerous. The negative and the
sinister are personified in the woman.
Thus the woman is considered as a twin soul, or the other half without
her the man is not complete, because she carries his soul. On the one hand
the man longs for her and on the other hand, he rejects and shuns away from
her because of her threatening, castrating, devouring power. The
masculine is seen as the rational, where the mind prevails. He is active,
pushing forward. The feminine is seen as sensitive, vulnerable, passive,
accepting and containing.
Habitually, the figures of the Androgynous and the Hermaphrodite
interchange within them. Singer (7) differentiates between the
Androgyny and the Hermaphrodite. According to her "Hermaphroditism
refers to a physiological abnormality…Hermaphrodites belong to the
classification of intersexuals" and in that
respect they are kind of freaks. Bisexuality,
according to Singer is a psychological problem, as it refers to a lack of
clarity in gender identification, whereas Hermaphroditism
refers to lack of differentiation in physical sex characteristics. The
Androgyny, accordingly, is not confused in his sexual identification.
Androgyny men have male sexuality, Androgyny women have female sexuality -
they simply do not portray masculinity or femininity in the accepted
formulations of strength versus weakness, activity versus passivity,
characteristics of gender. Singer also thus talks about the Androgyny
Monotheism, namely one god that contains the World Parents. (8)
Often, the immediate reaction to the figure of the Hermaphrodite,
whether in life or in a dream, is repulsion, distaste and fear. It is an
encounter with something abnormal, unusual, distorted and repulsed.
Lopez in his book Hermes and his Children (9) mentions
the Hermaphrodite as the god of the various kinds of the Freaks. According to Ruti Netzer (10), and I agree with her, the "Androgynous refers to a description of sexuality in its formation, which includes the two sexes that have not yet been discriminated into a specific psycho-sexual entity. It is a kind of an ancient Uroboric wholeness that has not started to develop. The Hermaphrodite, on the other hand, is a mythological figure that containing the
masculine and the feminine that have become newly united, which is the
alchemical aim of unity". She further mentions that in olden times
people who had been born with double sexual organs, masculine and feminine,
were worshipped, because they symbolized the longed for unity (11).
According to Lopez (12) the Hermaphrodite is a Hermetic paradox; his bi-sexuality
resolves the conflict of the opposites and brings about a new consciousness.
He further pertains that with the Hermaphrodite psychology begins to be
psychology in the deepest meaning. If
we think about the Hermaphrodite as having a special consciousness of its
own, then it accepts reality with all the complexity of masculinity and
femininity working within us, as a symmetrical figure; namely, that the
masculine and the feminine are equal partners and out of this symmetry they
form one figure. It reminds me of the yin and yang of the In
contradistinction to Singer, Lopez Pedraza,
takes the freakishness of the Hermaphrodite and shows it as one of the main
problems of society today, namely, the obliteration of borders between normal
and abnormal.
Nowadays, we are witnessing and experiencing phenomenon that are
happening in the world and in the universe, which we can only see them as
abnormal and non-rational. I shall refer to only a few of them: unusual
happenings in Nature, uncontrollable volcanic eruptions. The findings of
quantum physics usurbed and changed entirely the
basic physical foundations that we have been accustomed to. Nothing, today, is as it seems, nothing is finite
or stable. Everything is in motion and in interrelation and everything
influences each other. It seems that everything that was considered
unconscious became conscious and leaves us in doubt and disorientation. We do
not know any more what is normal. And I wonder what effect does
it have on psychotherapy. We
encounter freakishness, obliteration of limits in ethics and culture in the
streets, in clothing, in hairdos of both sexes up to the point that when
looked at from behind, it is sometimes very difficult to identify the sex of
the person. I shall mention here the photograph that appeared in the
newspaper taken during the love parade in Tel Aviv, just as much as other
freakish parades of homosexuals, lesbians and others, happening in big cities
all over the globe, be it in New-York, London, Berlin, Zurich, Tokyo and
others, in the name of love and freedom. We find this also in films, such as Schwarzeneggger becoming pregnant, or the film “Tutsi”
before, where the man wants to experience what it means to be a woman; or Almadover’s film “All about Mother” dealing with the
Hermaphrodite appearing as a woman. We also encounter this subject in books
such as “The Trumpet” by Jacky Kay, about a well known Jas player who was
married to a woman and only after his death it transpired that he was in fact
a woman. His wife was the only one who knew it. We also encounter it, of
course, in dreams. I think it was Fellini who was
one of the first to bring the Hermaphroditic/Androgyny freakishness in its
essence, just as much as the estrangement from the collective freakishness.
In his films “Satyricon” and “Julietta
of the Winds”, the Hermaphroditic figure has healing powers, but is either
feeble needing the help of people to stand straight or is fat and unclear. It
is interesting to see the possible development in the Hermaphroditic figure
in the films mentioned above, and in the Almadover’s
film. The Hermaphrodite in the Almadover’s film is
a full-grown proud woman. And
what about our becoming the victims of the various robots who exchange the
work of men and rule over them? It
seems to me, or perhaps it is my wish to see this state as an interim period,
between cultures, one that is about to change into a beginning of another
different culture. Interim times, usually, are confusing and chaotic. The
confusion is almost in every respect. It shows itself in the process of what
is happening to people, to morals, to gender, to sexual identity, to
fundamental concepts of marriage. In this respect, there are now many
different kinds of marriages; men remain home and women are the providers,
open marriages, living together without the sanctions of the religious
ceremony, or even the state, homosexual or lesbian marriages accepted by the
clergy etc. A lot of changes occurred within interrelationships. Women are
pursuing their independence and their need to different kinds of experiences
that are not confined to formal marriages. So also with men, quite a few of
them find themselves in new formats, some of them search independency and
choose to live alone and not be tied to committed frames. This is not always
a flight from commitment or responsibility. This may, perhaps, be their first
time to feel inner freedom and the need to be alone with themselves.
We also witness now changes in inner values. On the one hand there is a
fixture in holding on to the past, hardening of existing belief systems,
whether personally in possessiveness and jealousy of all kinds, be it in
religion in the flourishing fundamentalism of "holy wars" in the
name of God, between the Islam extremists and Hindus, Jews, Christians and
the like, as well as the procuring of total destructive weapons where there
are no frontiers, no boundaries and no morals. If
we relate to the myth of the Hermaphrodite only as the result of the jealousy and
possessiveness of Salamacis, then it reflects
indeed the confusion and lack of limits that we have shown. It leaves us
helpless in face of facts that do not lead us anywhere. Pedraza Lopes wrote in the above- mentioned book, that we
have to take the figures and the mythological stories and use them not only
to explain a certain situation but especially to encourage with their help
and stimulate an inner process to occur. The
Hermaphrodite, as said above, is a combination of the archetypal figures of
Aphrodite and Hermes. In
psycho-chirology we can see this combination and
the relations between them by a diagonal line formed between their respective
areas in the inner palm of the hand. We call this line, the line of
development. I
would like to concentrate on these figures as they are, in order to
understand the meaning of their relationship and what can it show us.
Richard Niebuhr, a Protestant theologist, in his book Radical Monotheism and Western
Culture (13) considers "Gods as value centers" or as symbolizing
"the principle of being and value".
Therefore, I shall concentrate on the archetypal figures forming the
Hermaphrodite, namely, Aphrodite and Hermes, as archetypes in themselves and
in their unity within the Hermaphrodite. What are their meaning and their
values as portrayed by them and how can they operate within our lives. The
birth of Aphrodite was unnatural. She was not born to parents. She was born
from the foam created in the sea out of the contact with the semen of Uranus.
Cronus castrated his father Uranus with a sword
received from his mother. He cast his father's genitals into the sea.
Aphrodite, from her birth, is different. She has her own rules of
conduct. She does not belong to the collective. As known, Aphrodite is
considered the Goddess of Love in all its forms. Love that encompasses basic
sexual drives up to the mystical union of two souls, two bodies becoming one.
In Homer and Sappho she appears as the patroness of
marital love. Europides sees her as a generative
force. Aphrodite loves Nature, children and mankind. It is said about her
that she is the goddess of the goddesses in maternity, with a capacity of
great suffering for her children and lovers. She contains Eros and maternity
and she generates love without limits nor
discrimination. So,
what is her meaning and value for us? If
I rely again on psycho-chirological findings, her
place in the hand is very central. The area under the thumb is called the
mount of Venus, namely, Aphrodite. This is the area that we consider as very
valuable because is portrays the amount and
sort of vitality that we have. Our ego strength (which is portrayed in
the thumb) draws its strength, vitality, rigidity or weakness from this area.
Aphrodite, being the goddess of love, portrayed in the area of our vitality,
shows our ability or disability to love and to generate love. This is in fact
the life force beating within us. Thus, love is the vital force. I would like
here to mention the experiment of Rene Spitz during the Second World War with
very young children who received whatever they needed with exception of love.
Many of them either died or became ill, in contra-distinction with another
group of very young children who lacked needs but received consideration and
love. A similar result occurred with the Harlow & Harlow experiment with
Chimpanzees.
When we talk about love, we are in fact talking about a sort of Being.
When in love, everything is widened, spreads out, encompassing the whole
world. We love one we love all; and as the saying goes: the whole world
laughs and loves with us. Lack of love
is described as dry, arid, void, lack of light and life. Therefore, its
meaning in our lives is the essence of life itself. However, we do not always
love nor in love, usually we search for love, not knowing that it is within
us.
Hermes, in contradistinction to Aphrodite, is all the time in
movement. He is considered a phallic god, although he is in fact Androgyny,
namely, without a specific gender, he is both masculine and feminine. He is
known as the messenger of the gods and in always at crossroads and on the
way. He therefore, symbolizes the roads we travel in our lives, including our
intimate ways in sex, which can show our essence. When we search for love, we
are in fact in the hands of Hermes, who directs us at times through dark and
dangerous roads. According to myth Hermes is also the god of thieves, lies,
He is always full of resourcefulness and intelligence. In other words, he can
lead us to good but also to bad. His presence within us allows us to feel the
primitive immediate instinctuality in face of
reality. However, Hermes is also the servant (14). He lights the light, he
cooks the meat, serves wine etc. In essence, Hermes appears in our lives in
many shades and in many roles. Being at crossroads, he protects us by putting
and signing borders and limits between farmers and roads by posts and heaps
of stones. It is said that he had been already in As
messenger of the gods, Hermes connects between the gods and between the gods
and man. Therefore,
he is considered the connecting and influencing god. Because of his
complexity and his different roles and appearances, such as Priapus, he also acts as a compensation factor in our
psyche, which creates a balance. Every connection creates thereof something
new and therefore Hermes is considered as the god of transformation and as a
guide to our soul.
Lopez mentions the undignified side of Hermes operating in the analyst
that can communicate with the undignified material that the client or patient
brings from his life. So,
what are the meaning and the value of Hermes within us?
Hermes within points to the essence of our life, he is the energy
leading us in the dubious ways of our lives for the good and for the bad.
Both Aphrodite and Hermes do not represent collective morals or
ethics, nor do they represent disciplining rules of conduct. Both are
faithful to themselves to serve their purpose in our lives, namely, to be
true to our selves, first of all. Aphrodite symbolizing vitality and ability
to love and Hermes as the messenger and guide in the various venues of our
lives, be it the most basic sexual, lustful drives, or in other aspects of
life such as economics, politics, communications and relationships. This
Hermetic side demands of us to become more conscious and to have aware
boundaries and limits.
Their unity, as appears in the Hermaphrodite, combines these two
energies in one form containing both, in their negative and positive aspects.
So, what does this imply? It seems to me that what is happening in the
world today, shows their operation without any
restraint and without any specified direction. Everything is possible,
available and in motion. I do not know where does it lead
us to, personally and collectively. This is the confusion, the anxiety and
the lack of stability on the one hand, yet on the other hand the curiosity
and the need to develop, to find new forms, new state of "being",
new discoveries in all walks of life and science. Genetic Engineering and Genetic
Enhancement are examples in point.
This connection between these two energies contains the essence of all
interactions. Everything is
influencing one another and is mutually dependent. These are the foundations
of quantum physics of interdependency
and interconnection. It
seems that we are in the midst of the bootstrap principle. The bootstrap
principle is based on the assumption that there are no basic foundations to
matter and there are no basic laws. The world is seen as a network or chain
of particles and happenings interconnected and interdependent. The sub-atomic
particles are seen as an energetic structure in a dynamic process and not as
individual parts. The network is decisive to the structure. If we consider
the above from a psychological aspect, this can lead to a change in the basic
attitude to psychic problems.
Lopez in his book Hermes and His Children (16) mentions that the
freaks, and especially homosexuals, but not only, who are in treatment, bring
the same usual problems of and in their relationships, but he thinks that
they are coming more from the Priapus\Hermes
archetype and less from problems with the parental figures. He contends that
in order to treat these problems and the problems of freakishness in general,
the analyst needs to recognize and know his own freak side, because
psychology today is more of Priapus and the
Hermaphrodite, who is, as Lopez says, a freak. The
Hermaphrodite, being masculine and feminine combined, contains love and
service, love and dynamic energy, resourcefulness and ability to generate,
give and finding new ways of "being", new ways of living and
loving, bringing new consciousness. This connection leads us into
relationships beyond sexuality as such, beyond the differences between a man
and a woman, beyond the oppositions between power and submission, of activity
and passivity. Eros, who is a Hermaphrodite, serves as a good example of a
loving active relationship, that in his Hermetic way
ignites the spark of love in humankind. I fear, regrettably, that Eros has
been forgotten and neglected nowadays in the world. There remains still the yearning and
rejection of the Hermaphrodite, the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, in the
clutches of Salamacis. Is this the dynamics of what
is happening today in the psyche and in the universe? The rejection of
everything stable, usual and clear and at the same time the rejection of the
freakishness itself that so many of us feel very uncomfortable with it; just
as much as the rejection of lack of limits and boundaries that threatens the
wholeness of being. Notwithstanding,
the yearning can also show itself in the need for freedom without boundaries
and frontiers of place or time. I shall only mention the excursions of youth
all over to remote places, and although we can understand their yearning, and
maybe they also represent our own yearnings, they, in fact, postpone taking
responsibility to their lives and augment the yearning to new experiences,
sometimes, even dangerous, such as the experiences of light and heavy drugs.
In this category belong also the search to travel to different Ashrams and to
look for all kinds of Gurus, all this in search for
spirituality, behind which the yearning to find themselves, to realize their
inner development and to reach inner wholeness. The
yearning can also show itself in the need for more love and relating, for a
more sustaining "being", for finding new ways to fulfill it with
sense, a return to Nature, a return to the connection between body and psyche
and soma-psyche health. Perhaps,
especially, the yearning for the inner Hermaphrodite who leads us to our
Individuation, to our Self and brings us to open up to new relationships in
other modes and in a different reality. Priapus (17) according to the myth,
is the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, some other version says that he is the
son of Hermes and Aphrodite. He is always natural, playful and, like a child,
he is without any restraints. He is full of humor, always sees the humorous
side of things in their simple and basic elements. Priapus
is full of love of life in all its forms.
Humor is an energy that lifts us up above the heavy burden of problems
and difficulties in life. Therefore, humor can be of great help, not in order
to run away from hidden feelings but to lighten and raise oneself above them,
in order to see from a different perspective. It has already been said that
laughter heals. (I recall a film about a doctor or a psychiatrist who brought
the Priapic laughter into his treatments,
I think some of us already do this). If we use the priapic
energy, we could consider the most freakish things in the humorous light of priapus, from a simple expression and humor may be it can
be possible to cut through the results of the curse of Salamcis,
of being the victims of rejection and yearning, and to reach the union of the
opposites in a joyful love of man and life beyond gender. Instead of the
maximum of freakishness with the slogan of freedom at any price and love in
the world, we could, perhaps, feel the sense of personal responsibility and
conscious intentionality and awareness, together with keeping limits and
personal ethics and morals. The
last dream that I wish to bring is belonging to a woman who is not in
treatment, but is working on herself. She has been in a Jungian analysis in
the past. She is working in a holistic integrative treatment. In
the dream she enters her treatment room late, because of a private telephone
conversation that kept her for some time. In the room a woman called Alexander,
is waiting for her treatment. (The dreamer does not know any woman or man in
this name). This Alexander rises up assertively and leaves the room because
she is dissatisfied with the lack of consideration and the waste of time. She
does not heed to the offer of the dreamer to give the treatment free. She
leaves and enters a jeep where her friends wait for her and they leave
happily and with joy.
While working on the dream, the dreamer realized that the woman
appearing in the dream was a Hermaphrodite. Alexander is a masculine name,
suggesting Alexander the Great. He conquers new territories. The inner
Alexander conquers new inner territories within as an individual person
without gender specification of masculinity versus femininity. Alexander as
appearing in her dream knew exactly what is correct for her, and was not
dependent or feeling the need to accommodate herself to collective modes of
neediness. The dreamer summerized her inner process
that she is going through at this stage in her life, as the importance of her
belief in herself as combining femininity and masculinity without the need to
belong to any specific gender and to trust the process and herself as she is. I
wish to conclude with a citation from the book of Eric Neumann, The Origins
and History of Consciousness (18):
"We began with the ego in the womb of the parental uroboros dragon, curled up like and embryo in the
sheltering fusion of inside and outside, world and unconscious. We end, as in an alchemical picture, with the
hermaphrodite standing upon this dragon: by virtue of its own synthetic being
it has overcome the primal situation, above it hangs the crown of the self,
and in its heart glows the diamond". And he continues towards the end of
the book, and may his words come true: "Not until the differentiation into
races, nations, tribes, and groups has, by a process of integration, been
resolved in a new synthesis, will the danger of recurrent invasions from the
unconscious be averted. A future humanity will then realize the center, which
the individual personality today experiences as his own self-center, to be
one with humanity's very self, whose coming to birth will finally vanquish
and cast out that old serpent, the primordial uroboric
dragon." Bibliography: 1. C.G.Jung - Symbols of
Transformation. Vol.5. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2.June
Singer - Androgyny Towards A New
Theory Of Sexuality. Routledge & Kegan Paul London 1977. p. 57-58. 3. New Larousse Encyclopedia. Hamlyn. 3.Larousse
- Ibid p. 149 4.
June Singer - ibid p. 56 5. Erich Neumann - The Origins and History Of
Consciousness. Harper Torchbooks. The Bollingen Library New-York 1962 6. Ruth Nezer - a
book in the writing, citing Idel who wrote in l988
p. 159 7. June Singer - ibid p.30-33 8. June Singer - ibid p.56-58,88 9. Rafael, Pedraza
Lopez - Hermes And His Children Einsiedeln.
Daimon Verlag 1989. 10. Ruth Nezer -
ibid 11. Ruth Nezer -
ibid. p. 148/9. 12. Pedraza Lopez -
ibid 13. Richard Niebuhr - Radical Monotheism And Western
Culture. p.24,32. As cited in Androgyny Towards A New Theory of Sexuality by June
Singer. 14.Pedraza Lopez -
ibid citing Walter Otto. P. 5\6 15. Pedraza Lopez -
ibid p. 13 16.Pedraza Lopez - ibid 17. 18.
Erich Neumann - ibid p.418. |
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