Where Does I Stand? Reflections on Home and Identity Ensnared in a Cultural Narrative

In this paper the author explores a cultural narrative that she suggests rests on the concepts of the Feminine and Masculine as such, employing both as though they contain an agreed set of universal givens. These givens are extrapolated from an androcentric perspective on female and male bodies, in particular their biological functions regarding reproduction. The metaphors of the baby-in-womb, mother's preoccupation with child and heteronormative sexual relations are the primary cyphers for the narrative. She suggests that remaining unconscious of this narrative, such that it is taken as a universal given, can hamper a person's relation to themselves, the world and others. The author names two concepts, Home and Identity: Home being an hospitable and accommodating space with Identity denoting the one who inhabits the space. In the narrative these two are unhelpfully categorized as belonging to the Feminine and the Masculine respectively. For ease of understanding the author uses a capital letter to designate an abstract idea, and lower case when referring to the concrete or particular. Clinical examples are given throughout the paper to illustrate how acknowledgement and awareness of this narrative might free the analyst or therapist to think more broadly around issues pertaining to space and identity.

Inner-outer couple: anima and animus revisited. New perspectives for a clinical approach in transition

The conflicts of the outer couple (crises, separations, divorces) with a high incidence in the rates of depression, reveal the archetypal dysfunction of the relationship between the inner-couple (in-shadow) and the outer-couple (in-crisis). To understand this in depth, a new animated and integrated model of the masculine (animus) and the feminine (anima) is explored. It is a transformational model, in which Jung's contributions are integrated and understood as knowledge in transition. Masculine and feminine cosmogonic principles are personified in the human psyche as anima-animus archetypes-complexes. Their relationship, mediated by the binding eros (cosmogonic-eros), configures the inner-couple-complex. Masculine and feminine are differentiations of the Self energy, present in both men and women. In the conscious dimension, they structure the ego-anima-animus identity; in the dimension of the personal unconscious, the anima-animus complexes; and at the archetypal level, the deep identity of the primordial feminine/masculine. In this initial restructured model, the anima-animus relationship and the description of the dual quaternity as the dynamics of the inner-outer couple interrelation are especially significant. The breadth and comprehensive richness of the new model is illustrated in the clinical/dream material of a patient under analysis, presenting the dynamics: inner couple in shadow - outer couple in crisis.