I recently had a conversation with a close friend about Jungian archetypes. It went something like this:Him: Have you considered which of the 13 archetypes you are?
Me: Uh... I guess I would have to learn more about them first.
So, we chatted, and after he left, I refreshed my college Jungian psychology. Here's a Wikipedia link as good as any other I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetypal. No doubt you'll recognize aspects of yourself in these 13 archetypes!
What I found particularly interesting (and just plain news to me) were the Anima and Animus archetypes. Now, prior to discovering them, I would have primarily identified with the "Wise" part of "Wise old man." That is... I seem to be able to do things with knowledge that others can't... perhaps even change reality... yet I never identified with the "old" and certainly not the "man" part. And I've since met people who seem to innately know more "useful" things (i.e., wisdom gained from life experiences) while I seem to have more skilled learning suited more to abstract problems and machines rather than human behaviors. Question to self: should I try to adapt that ability to learn skills to the realm of human behavior?
Shrug. Back to roles... I never played Role Playing Games (RPGs) before, so I'm not really sure which archetype I'd be. My only two guesses would have come from times where I would have identified with the Merlin role, or the Warrior Princess role. Aye-yia-yia-yia-yia!
Then along comes Anima. Okay, I certainly seem to be embodying the totality of what little I know about Anima - the feminine inner personality, as present in the unconscious of the male. My Anima has a name, I am she, and she is me, and we are Clio.
And then I find this page on Jung's Anima Theory and how It Relates to Crossdressing. Note: I am not a crossdresser, although empirically, I crossdress. The author, a (former) crossdresser merges traditional transgendered case study results with Jung's theories in a plausible and constructive style.
So it seems I have come home to open up (and heal) old psychological wounds prohibiting me from realizing my full potential. This much is obvious by fate, and I have accepted and learned from it. Now what?
Well, I am happier as a woman, yet I am not a woman. I am miserable as a man, yet I made a good one. As I will never be biologically female again (we all were once women in the womb) I have to come to terms with being somewhere in the middle... but where?
If you've ever lived (as opposed to visited) in a foreign culture, you are familiar with culture shock - that uneasy feeling that comes from being immersed in a different culture. It's like jet-lag, but for culture instead of time. It occurs each time one switches culture, just like jet-lag when switching time zones.
Well, gender dysphoria is like that too... I used to think I could get by living as the duality:
In number 69 there lives a transvestite,but the "gender-lag" from switching is ... uncomfortable. Further, it just feels 'weird' to be the male that my body is. It feels right to be the woman that is the embodiment of my Anima, and I prefer to be her... this much is certain... but who knew she was a, pardon my French, a chick-with-a-dick?
He's a man by day, but she's a woman at night.
- Space, "My Neighborhood"
So what does integration bring? I don't know what one does yet with this knowledge, so for now, I'll just take comfort in knowing that I am what I am.
