Jung and Sex

Re-visioning the treatment of sexual issues

Edward Santana

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317419860
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Sexualidad humana en psicología

C. G. Jung, despite not being widely known for his views on sexuality or the treatment of sexual issues, made extensive contributions to understanding the complexities of this field throughout his life. In Jung and Sex, Edward Santana makes the case that reclaiming this knowledge can address substantial problems with current treatments and support many who struggle with sexual issues.

This thorough exploration of Jung's approach to sexual issues presents a wide-ranging new look at his work and adds contemporary perspectives for helping those suffering with sexual difficulties. The book calls for an important bridging of clinical perspectives to address the contemporary challenges of complex sexual issues and brings attention to a large body of Jung's work on human sexuality, ranging from pioneering thoughts on sexual expressions of the soul to understanding ways to treat sexual symptoms. Jung and Sex provides a comprehensive analysis of Jung's views on, and clinical approaches to, sexual issues and treatments, using this knowledge in order to help those with sexual problems and the professionals who support them. It is an essential text for understanding critical dimensions of human sexuality.

Jung and Sex is an important contribution that closes a gap in the literature of Jungian psychology. It offers unique insights into the subject for Jungian psychotherapists, analytical psychologists, sex therapists, and relationship counselors. The book also supports the work of academics and those interested in contemporary applications of Jungian and post-Jungian studies.

1
Jung and Sex

Sex is a playground for lonely scientists.

~ C. G. Jung (1935/1977, p. 85)

Psychoanalysis began with Freud’s (1892/1953) exploration into the causes of hysteria and neurosis, which he later determined were the result of unconscious and repressed sexual material in the patient. At the dawn of the twentieth century, he wrote,

Not only does a considerable portion of hysterical symptomology spring directly from the manifestations of sexual excitement …. but even the most complicated symptoms reveal themselves as “converted” representations of phantasies which have a sexual situation as their content. Whoever knows how to interpret the language of hysteria can perceive that the neurosis deals only with the patient’s repressed sexuality.

(1905/1953b, p. 281)

Freud’s attempts to understand repressed sexual contents firmly established the foundational role of sexuality in psychotherapy. He wrote about topics that might be considered controversial even today, publishing articles such as “The Sexual Enlightenment of Children” (1907/1959), “Character and Anal Eroticism” (1908/1959a), and “Hysterical Phantasies and Their Relation to Bisexuality” (1908/1959b), to name a few. Freud studied and wrote about incest, homosexuality, infantile sexuality, masochism, and many other provocative topics. Notably, years later, Freud (1920/1955) adjusted his view on the primacy of sexuality with the publication of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” which shifted emphasis to his theory of drives. Nonetheless, mainstream psychoanalysis remained firmly rooted in the psychopathology of sexual phenomena.

Jung (1952/1967f) disagreed with Freud’s emphasis on sexuality as the primary cause of neuroses and attempted to move psychotherapy away from an emphasis on biological instincts. He widened Freud’s notion of the nature of libido, expanding the concept to describe an energy that is not definable as a specific instinct. Jung said,

We would be better advised … to understand it as an energy-value which is able to communicate itself to any field of activity whatsoever, be it power, hunger, hatred, sexuality, or religion, without ever being itself a specific instinct.

(1952/1967f, p. 137)

Freud, however, was adamant about his theory of sexuality and insisted that Jung adopt his views and advance them in his research on the human psyche. His demands on Jung were not subtle, as evidenced in a letter to Jung on October 7, 1906, wherein Freud wrote,

Your writings have long led me to suspect that your appreciation of my psychology does not extend to all my views on hysteria and the problem of sexuality, but I venture to hope that in the course of the years you will come much closer to me than you now think possible. On the strength of your splendid analysis of a case of obsessional neurosis, you more than anyone must know how consummately the sexual factor hides and, once discovered, how helpful it can be to our understanding and therapy. I continue to hope that this aspect of my investigations will prove to be the most significant.

(Freud & Jung, 1974, pp. 5–6)

The seeds of a division between the two men were apparent to Jung from the very start of their relationship, but in the early days Jung made his differences with Freud known in ways that did not completely disrupt their important association. Jung (1928/1969) expressed admiration for Freud at times, while maintaining his views:

Freud is not only a scientific investigator of sexuality, but also its champion; therefore, having regard to the great importance of the sexual problem, I recognize … his concept of sexuality even though I cannot accept it scientifically.

(pp. 57–58)

Jung (1961/1989) also recognized the powerful force of sexuality to shape people’s experiences, particularly those that reveal the shadow of human nature. He wrote, “Sexuality is of the greatest importance as the expression of the chthonic spirit. That spirit is the ‘other face of God,’ the dark side of the God-image” (p. 168). Jung’s approach involved expanding ideas about the sexual impulse and its pathology into the spirit or archetypal realm to decipher the meaning and purpose of the soul’s need for expression through a particular symptom. In Psychology of the Unconscious, he declared, “I think that one should view with philosophic admiration the strange paths of the libido and should investigate the purposes of its circuitous ways” (1911–1912/1917, p. 73). The split between Jung and Freud divided depth psychology, and the effects of this split remain. Their ideas on the psychopathology of sexuality were central to this division but the importance of Jung’s actual views on sexuality became somewhat obscured by the dramatic events and stories surrounding their professional parting.

Jung held strong views on the preeminence of the sexual drive and how it was expressed, consciously and unconsciously, in the culture of his age. He wrote passionately at times on the phenomena of human sexuality, calling it the “spokesman of the instincts,” the “chief antagonist,” and a “creative power” on a level equal to the spirit (1928/1969, p. 57). He explained,

Sexuality is not mere instinctuality; it is an indisputably creative power that is not only the basic cause of our individual lives, but a very serious factor in our psychic life as well. Today we know only too well the grave consequences that sexual disturbances can bring in their train. We could call sexuality the spokesman of the instincts, which is why from the spiritual standpoint sex is the chief antagonist, not because sexual indulgence is in itself more immoral than excessive eating and drinking, avarice, tyranny, and other extravagances, but because the spirit senses in sexuality a counterpart equal and indeed akin to itself. For just as the spirit would press sexuality, like every other instinct, into its service, so sexuality has an ancient claim upon the spirit …. Where would the spirit be if it had no peer among the instincts to oppose it? It would be nothing but an empty form. A reasonable regard for the other instincts has become for us a self-evident necessity, but with sex it is different. For us sex is still problematical, which means that on this point we have not reached a degree of consciousness that would enable us to do full justice to the instinct without appreciable moral injury.

(p. 57)

Jung seemed to identify the powerful forces of sexuality as rivaling the power of the spirit and driving men and women to madness in ways that actually help to give the spirit its own form. Jung’s disagreement with Freud seemed to be mainly on the grounds that sexuality could not be reduced rather than disagreeing about the tremendous forces at work within sexual symptoms or expressions.

December 21, 1908—Jung’s letter to Freud: Jung described his treatment of a 40-year-old woman who had been interned because she solicited every man on the street demanding coitus. Previously, her libido had decreased for years with her husband but then returned some years later after a difficult childbirth. The husband was disinterested in her renewed sexual energy. She became convinced her husband was saving his erotic energy for other women, so she demanded, through forceful means, that he have coitus with her up to four times per night and more during the day. She was insatiable and demanded sex even with her brother and brother-in-law; she also went into the streets begging for sex. For Jung, the case seemed an example of dementia praecox (an earlier term for schizophrenia) hallmarked by a failed attempt at compensation.

(Freud & Jung, 1974, pp. 188–190)

Jung and Freud, among others, were early explorers, not just in theorizing or observing sexual phenomena but also in attempting to treat complex cases against the backdrop of the moralism of the Victorian era and the inhumane cruelties of the Middle Ages.

Freud and Jung helped to usher forward the modern and postmodern age and the evolution of “psychological man” (Davis, 2003, p. 4), which was seen as an affront to the widespread ideas of rationalism and empiricism emanating from the Enlightenment. This “psychological man” was at the heart of Jung’s decision to move away from medicine and into psychiatry, although he also had a growing aversion to physiology and surgical procedures (Bair, 2003). Jung grasped the idea to become a psychiatrist while reading a book on psychiatry by Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1886/2011), a well-known psychiatrist whose earlier work on human sexuality documented cases of perversion and sexual deviance. Jung wrote that he wanted to specialize in psychiatry to “catch the intruders in the mind—the intruders that make people laugh when they should not laugh, and cry when they should not cry” (as cited in Shamdasani, 2012, p. 35).

Sexuality was a topic of focus and concern for many of the men who were influences around Jung at that time. When he took a post at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zürich, which was a leading progressive center for psychiatry, the former leader of the clinic, Auguste Forel, had just left prior to Jung’s arrival in order to work on social reforms (Shamdasani, 2012, p. 35). Forel’s (1905/1908) book, The Sexual Question: A Natural Scientific, Psychological, Hygienic and Social Study for the Educated, was a bestseller and Jung quoted material from it in his later works. Jung (1909/1976) also wrote this potent review in a bulletin for Swiss physicians lauding Forel’s efforts at social reform:

The author introduces his book with the following words: “The following pages are for the most part an attack, based on documentary material, on the hypocrisy, the dishonesty and cruelty of our present-day morality and our almost non-existent rights in matters of sexual life.” From which it is apparent that this work is another contribution to the great social task to which Forel has already rendered such signal service. Essentially it presents a large number of psychosexual conflicts of a moral or judicial nature, knowledge of which is indispensable not only for the nerve specialist, but for every doctor who has to advise his patients in the difficult situations of life.

(p. 387)

According to Shamdasani (2012), “Forel’s work gives some indication of the aspirations of psychologists and psychiatrists at this time—the hope that their new science would reform society” (pp. 35–36).

What was it like for a young doctor in a mental hospital at the beginning of the twentieth century—witnessing these ill and abused patients and attempting to understand the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of their suffering in modern ways? Work at the Burghölzli was challenging for Jung during his first few years, seldom leaving the hospital where he worked and lived. His hours were extreme, and at times the small number of doctors on staff were spread thinly in the care of more than 400 patients across the sprawling institution.

April 17, 1907—Jung’s letter to Freud: Jung shared several cases at the Burghölzli with Freud that involved a “hellish compulsion to autoerotism” (p. 36) and remarked that he saw more than one patient who died as a result of these symptoms. He viewed these cases as having developmental issues involving inhibition, when no grave anatomical issues were to be discovered. He also mentioned a case of an “educated young catatonic” (p. 36) who began masturbating early in life and had sexual relations with his sister. Jung remarked that a deterioration set in with intense hallucinations. He detailed that the patient had episodes of “mounting excitement, masturbates incessantly, sticks his finger rhythmically into mouth and anus alternately, drinks urine and eats stool” (p. 37). He believed several cases demonstrated how feelings of sexual excitement are channeled into other psychological and physical symptoms.

(Freud & Jung, 1974, pp. 35–38)

Jung (1951/1968a) wrote, “In whatsoever a man is involved, there his sexuality will appear too” (p. 91, n75). Given Jung’s extensive writings on the subject, this statement might reveal that there is much we can learn about Jung’s own sexuality by studying his wide-ranging efforts. The breadth and content of his writings are explored thematically in the next sections of this chapter for their insight into the human condition, as well as their broad implications for psychology. This also includes some of the direction Jung (1906/1961) provided to psychotherapists, such as this statement on working with sexual psychopathology:

Every skilled psychologist will surely take account of this fact. Any rigid formula is particularly wrong here. Apart from the fact that there are many patients who are not in the least harmed by sexual enlightenment, there are not a few who, far from having to be pushed towards this theme, guide the analysis to this point of their own accord. Finally, there are cases (of which I have had more than one) that cannot be got at at all until their sexual circumstances are subjected to a thorough review, and in the cases I have known this has led to very good results. It therefore seems to me beyond doubt that there are at least a great many cases where discussion of sexual matters not only does no harm but is positively helpful. Conversely, I do not hesitate to admit that there are cases where sexual enlightenment does more harm than good. It must be left to the skill of the analyst to find out which these cases are.

(p. 8)

Jung seemed to be fighting against rigidity and to attribute deeper meaning to the psychic contents that appeared in his patients and that were evident to him in the culture. He held that psychic symptoms were like the phenomena of god-like spiritual possessions:

We are still as much possessed by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians. Today they are called phobias, obsessions, and so forth; in a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room, or disorders the brains of politicians and journalists who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world.

(1957/1968, p. 37)

An aspect of Jung was fighting against the mores of the Victorian age. In agreement with Freud, Jung explained the consequences of such repression as the psychological disorders and neuroses he and other psychologists treated in the individual psyches of men and women at the time. Jung (1914/1961) cast a foreshadowing condemnation against the social principles of the time and cautioned that the ethics of the new era would constantly be revised: “We should never forget that what today seems to us a moral commandment will tomorrow be cast into the meltingpot and transformed … forms of morality belong to the category of transitory things” (pp. 288–289).

Jung also contradicted himself. This was mostly in reaction to Freud and psychoanalysis but also because he held that symptoms were indications of deeper layers of the unconscious. On occasion, he also tended to reveal his moral convictions, though those were often contradictory. In one of his Tavistock Clinic lectures in 1935, Jung (1935/1977) made the extraordinary statement:

Sex is a playground for lonely scientists.

You might as well study the psychology of nutrition as the psychology of sex. Primitive man, of course, had the sex instinct, but he was much more deeply concerned with feeding himself. Besides, why base the psychology of a man on his bad corner?

When I deal with one who is mentally unbalanced …. I look for the ancient man in him. I try to trace the strata of the human mind from its earliest beginnings.

(p. 85)

Although he placed great importance on sexual phenomena and made many far-reaching statements on the subject, he also went to great lengths to discourage it as a focus. The following sections present and examine some of the diverse range of contributions Jung made in his writings about sexual phenomena, including many clarifying statements about his break with Freud and psychoanalysis.

Breaking with Freud’s “numinosum”

Given his age and inexperience, Jung said (1961/1989) it was difficult for him to “assign Freud the proper place … or to take the right attitude toward him” (p. 147). In hi...