ABSTRACT
The depth of Jung’s observations regarding sexual phenomena live in the constellation of powerful and descriptive images he used to convey aspects of sexuality. These colorful images inform us and offer glimpses into the range of his views and the complexity of his struggles. Calling particular focus to the animated elements that emerged from his psyche, this brief chapter offers a lengthy collage of the images and descriptions he used to portray sex, sexuality, the erotic instinct, and the character of numinous sexual forces. Jung described sexual phenomena, the sexual instinct, and sexuality in these imaginative and varied ways: he called sexuality an essential “expression of psychic wholeness” (1961/1989, p. 168); he personified it, saying that “one meets sexuality everywhere” (1906/1961, p. 4); he called the sexual instinct a formidable “power which seeks expression” (1928/1969, p. 57); he identified it as psychic energy or an “energy-value” (1952/1967f, p. 137); he felt sexuality was “of the greatest importance as the expression of the chthonic spirit,” which is the “other face of God” or “the dark side of the God-image” (1961/1989, p. 168); he named sexuality the “spokesman of the instincts,” the “chief antagonist,” and a “creative power” on a level equal to the spirit (1928/1969, p. 57); he said “the spirit senses in sexuality a counterpart equal … to itself ” (1928/1969, p. 57). Jung referred to sexuality as a person’s “bad corner,” in the moral sense (1935/1977, p. 85); he said the study of sex “is a playground for lonely scientists” (1935/1977, p. 85); he wrote about the sexual complex as having the greatest intensity that always furnishes the clearest examples of how the psyche is taken over by
a complex (1907/1960, p. 47); he viewed sex as the cause of the “wildest and most moving dramas” that create great “conflicts that rage within,” causing destructive neurotic conflicts (1912/1966, p. 257); he envisioned a spectrum where the undervaluation of sexuality equated to being “symbolized as a phallus,” whereas a higher valuation held important “mystical” and spiritual meanings (1951/1968a, p. 226); describing sexuality’s strength, he stated, “of all the components of the psyche, sex is undoubtedly the one with the strongest affective tone” (1952/1967g, p. 151); he declared, “sexuality is numinous-both a god and a devil” (1961/1989, p. 154). Proclaiming the intimate connection between sex and the spirit, he claimed, “sexuality does not exclude spirituality nor spirituality sexuality” (1955-1956/1970, p. 443); he theorized, “the world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality” and stated that spirituality and sexuality are “powerful daimons, manifestations of the Gods” (2009, p. 352); he called the Greek god of love, Eros, a “superhuman power which, like nature herself, allows itself to be conquered and exploited as though it were impotent”, but noted that any triumph was temporary and “dearly paid for” (1943/1966a, p. 28); he called Eros “a questionable fellow” beyond any cultural legislation (1943/1966a, p. 28); he described the erotic as an unconquerable, mythological god that belongs partly to the instinctual aspects of primordial human nature but also to the “highest forms of the spirit” (1943/1966a, p. 28); he said, “the daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent … she is half human soul and is called thought-desire” (2009, p. 353); he also wrote, “sexuality appears as a god of fertility, as a fiercely sensual, feminine daemon, as the devil himself with Dionysian goat’s legs and obscene gestures, or as a terrifying serpent that squeezes its victims to death” (1931/1969b, p. 155). Jung called sexuality an “injured deity” set on revenge for its repression through “every sphere of human activity” (1958/1970, p. 343); he described the erotic relationship in alchemical terms, as the coniunctio (1946/1966); he warned that, if overlooked, the instinct of sexuality would “ambuscade” those who did not “humble” themselves to it (1950/1968b, p. 350); he viewed “the sexual question” or struggle with morality and sexual desires as a universal conflict and the basis of widespread neuroses (1912/1966, p. 265); he called humans’ “unrecognized desires” part of the “shadow-side of the psyche” (1912/1966, p. 266); he also viewed sexual symptoms sometimes as a tantalizing veneer of eroticism trying to divert away from deeper issues (1957/1969, p. 74); he discerned that the diversion into sexual issues was sometimes “a means of escaping the real problem” (1952/1967g, p. 155); he said the erotic was omnipresent in the psyche (1911/1961, p. 66); he pointed out that the psyche does not care what “labels” we use and said, “to the psyche, spirit is no less spirit for being named sexuality” (1931/1966, p. 52). Jung referred to sexuality as the source of incredible angst, because repressed elements target “the very spot where we are most sensitive” or vulnerable (1943/1966a, p. 26); he claimed the natural sexual instinct had been met with archaic approaches to suit the “mass sexual morality” (1943/1966a, p. 27) of his time and illustrated, through powerful imagery, how troubled humans are because
of “the burden of moral guilt which past centuries have heaped upon Eros” (1912/1966, p. 258). Jung described sex in more basic terms as the result of “surplus energy” that must find an outlet (1912/1966, p. 260); he viewed sexuality in the form of love as the “cause of the stormiest emotions, the wildest longings, the profoundest despairs, the most secret sorrows, and, altogether, of the most painful experiences” (1918/1970, p. 6); he spoke of sexuality almost as if it were a shady character or controlled substance and observed that it “comes under a moral taboo and has to submit to a large number of legal regulations and restrictions” (1918/1970, p. 6); he described sexuality as a place where powerful emotions and affects congregate and “where adaptation is least complete” (1918/1970, p. 6); he also said that the realm of sexuality is where society extends “the concepts of pathology to the sphere of the normal” (1946/1954, p. 75); he explained how sexual morality turns a work of art insidious, committing it to a moral “labyrinth of psychic determinants” and, similarly, how “the poet becomes a clinical case” (1922/1966, p. 68); he also understood the destructive nature of sexuality and called it “a tempest” that fills one with “brute desires” (1928/1970, p. 104); and, ultimately, he emphasized sexuality in its deepest sense as “a mysterium” (1975, p. 470), thus profoundly valuing the complex and mysterious nature of sexual phenomena. Portrayed in these diverse expressions and images, it seems clear Jung’s views of sexuality were polymorphic. The images reveal sexual expressions as varied, autonomous, mythic, immense, multiple, and beyond ordinary explanation; they are certainly not reducible to simple concepts of biology or the physical sciences. We can learn a great deal about the complexities of the psyche by closely observing the hidden dimensions expressed through images-those expressed by Jung, a patient in therapy, and our own.
