TransgenderSoul

I will present some thoughts on transgender psychology and in particular the psychology of the cross-sex identified person based upon the analytical psychology of Carl Jung. While medical science is inching its way closer to understanding the biological correlates of cross-sex identified persons, and while behavioral science studies the psychological and sociological aspects of cross-sex identified persons, I believe the analytical psychology of Carl Jung provides a unique mythologem for the healing journey of the transgendered person. What has been missing from the psychological counseling, medical interventions, and aesthetic options for cross-sex identified persons is a myth that tells an intuitively cohesive story of the psychological and sometimes spiritual journey of gender and sex transition. Such a myth, or story, describes the basic archetypal journey of the transgendered soul in its search for holistic healing and wholeness. A myth serves as a psychological map showing the psychological terrain that must be covered, although the individual must still plot their own journey using their own inner bearings.

Analytical psychology or Jungian psychology is used to describe the psychological processes inherent within a gender variant person. This transgender psychology, while addressing psychological suffering, is also unique in its non-pathological attitude toward gender variant people. Gender development has not gone awry. After proposing an analytical or Jungian psychology of transgender identity and transphobia, I then amplify this with journal entries, a dream sequence, and a brief active imagination work.

I believe it important to disclose the experiences which bias my thinking, so that you may further contextualize my remarks. I was raised Catholic only to abandon mainstream Christianity for a perennial philosophy based in a Jungian psycho-spirituality. I was raised in an abuse free and loving home with two sisters and a brother. I chose for my career the profession of clinical psychology, and have been trained in traditional American universities in the scientist-practitioner model. (Or should I say my career chose me). I am employed as a clinical psychologist in a busy generalist out-patient behavioral health clinic. I have had 6 years of an intensive Jungian analysis with a certified Jungian analyst which I’ll add, I believed would be interminable. I have transitioned from man to woman and had genital surgery. I identify as a third gender, a woman with two-souls.

I find that the most challenging therapeutic work for both me and my patient is with a cross-sex identified person who has internalized transphobic attitudes. I define transphobia as a complex of diminishing and negating beliefs and associated affect directed against the transgendered aspects of self which violate the binary gender identity system. The intensity of the associated affect fluctuates and may components of anxiety, depression, ambivalence, guilt, shame, and anger directed inwardly toward the self. Transgendered people learn transphobic beliefs through the process of social stigmatization primarily imbedded within a patriarchal social structure. Self-negating beliefs about emerging transgender aspects of self are transmitted through interpersonal exchange within the family and by messages transmitted through forms of mass media. Transphobic beliefs have also entered into the belief system of the therapist and may be transmitted to the patient unknowingly even by a therapist with a supportive conscious attitude toward cross-sex identified persons.

The transphobic complex is a psychic structure modeled on the archetype of self as an outsider, and includes images, fantasies, beliefs, affects, and memories that are hostile toward transgendered aspects of self including the psyche and the soma. The transphobic complex positions the self in a position of relative worthlessness to the non-transgendered others. Hostile beliefs include global core beliefs about the transgendered self which diminish the patient’s subjectively experienced value or worth as a person, such as pervert, sexual deviant, damaged, unlovable, disgusting, self-centered, and immature to name a few. Hostile core beliefs are typically held unconsciously and structure the experiences of the cross-sex identified person by creating transphobic automatic thoughts and compensatory behavioral strategies. Situations that contain gendered processes may trigger elements of the transphobic complex into activity, for example causing self-hating self-talk, depressed mood, and images or memories of abandonment. A range of psychological defensive strategies originating unconsciously and enacted unconsciously or consciously are employed in an effort to reduce disorganizing affect (i.e., self-hate) to a tolerable intensity. For example, a transgendered person may not seriously consider dating in order to avoid triggering the transphobic complex with its experienced ego threatening and disorganizing contents.

Transphobia within the cross-sex identified person results in a de-valuing of the self. This breeds paralytic fear often trapping individuals within incongruently sexed-bodies, and gendered persona roles leading to persistent gender dysphoria, depression, despair, hopelessness, suicidal wishes, and sometimes death. Even in individuals who have completed sex transition and genital surgery, transphobia often persists. Transphobia in these transgendered men and women continues to diminish their potential for satisfying lives.

Analytical Psychology is the school of psychology originated by Carl Jung which believes that individuation is the driving force, the primary drive, in human life. Individuation, as I see it, is a process by which we commit to gaining consciousness of the split off aspects of the psyche and integrating all aspects of ourselves, even those dark aspects, into a cohesive self. This process requires awareness and understanding of those aspects of our psyche which we consciously or unconsciously believe are unacceptable and which are split off into the shadow where they are ignored, denied, and repressed. This work also involves an understanding of our complexes, whose nature possesses us at times for better or worse, and our persona, the gendered social mask that we consciously construct and act through in the social world. We may also be confronted with primordial images from the collective unconscious appearing in dreams, fantasies, and images.

Analytical processes, for example the self, ego-identity, persona, shadow, complexes, and archetypes seem to map easily onto the phenomenological features of the transgendered psyche. The transgendered self (or soul) is constellated from a the universe of human potentialities called the Self. As such, the transgendered self or soul is unique to each individual and exists independently of culture and collective values. The transgendered self emerges despite the collective binary gender system, and as the person develops from infancy throughout adulthood, the emerging transgendered self conflicts with the collective binary gender structure.

The experience of transgendered self which in itself contains the template of wholeness, is constrained or limited directly by the sexed body itself (e.g., a natal male body cannot produce eggs) and the collective binary gendered expectations society has for the sexed person (e.g., a natal female does not live as a man). Through the experience of a sexed body and collective binary gendered expectations, an individual gendered ego-identity and gendered persona evolves. For the transgendered person, a tragedy develops when the transgendered self is not allowed to be sufficiently actualized. Both the sexed body and the collective binary gender structure imposes restrictions on the transgendered self. Furthermore, even when a transgendered person consciously reclaims much of the transgendered self, social stigmatization attacks gender variant expression forcing the transgender self back into the shadow. The splitting between the transgendered self and its actualization through the transgendered persona gives rise to the suffering we know as gender dysphoria.

The damage that sex and gender stigmatization has perpetrated on trans-people has not universal cross-culturally throughout history. The North American Native American people, Lakota, naturally and intuitively understood trans-persons as two-souled.

The life path of a transgendered person is fraught with dangers of two kinds which are bound to each other. The first of these originates internally with the transgendered ego-identity as it experiences itself to be. The ego incorporates the stigmatized attitudes of the prevailing culture toward diverse gender presentations resulting in self-hate, shame and guilt. Internalized transphobia is a useful term to denote the self-deprecatory attitude with which transgendered persons initially regard themselves. The second danger originates in the external collective cultural in the concrete forms of social stigmatization, erotic, familial and other forms of abandonment, employment discrimination, deleterious medical side-effects of hormone and surgical interventions, and hate crimes. These two dangers, one internal and one external, may cause such insufferable pain, as to lead to self-annihilation as the Final Solution to an uninvited corundum. I believe that it is for these reasons that transgendered persons commonly experience suicidal fantasies.

In healing the transgendered Soul tortured by sexual and gender stigmatization, self-hate, shame, envy and guilt, the goal of individuation is to heal the split between the authentic transgendered self and the persona which actually inhabits the world. In other words, the goal of psychotherapy is to actualize the transgendered Self into a cohesively transgendered ego-identity, and to establish a functioning transgendered persona by which the person can meaningfully live with others in an authentic life. An authentic transgendered persona is not dependent upon cultural definitions of male and female, man and woman, and is autonomous from the dynamic of passing as a man or a woman. The difference between surviving and succumbing to suicidal fantasies may depend on healing this split.

When the transgendered child learns that gender identity diversity is bad, the parts of the transgendered self that are incongruent with the biological sex are split off and cast into the shadow. These contra-sexual aspects of the transgendered self are not integrated into the ego identity. However, the child never fully loses knowledge of them and incorporates shame to his or her ego-identity through the social process of stigmatization. From that point onward two dysfunctional processes proceed: 1) through the remaining stages of ego-identity formation, a split off, partial self or ego-identity forms, and 2) a falsely gendered persona forms which functions to hide the horrible transgendered truth from the world. We not only hide from others but we attempt to hide from ourselves.

Transgendered youth have no real experience of intimacy as long as the authentic transgendered self is split off and they do not experience love and validation for the whole selves. The child thwarts its own instinctive extroverted energy and sociability for fear that his horrible secret will be discovered. Terrible loneliness is felt. A permanent sense of being an outsider, looking in at the world from the outside, being unable to fully participate in life, like an outcast. Associating with other transgendered men and women, while providing solace, cannot assuage the basic alienation from the insiders.

Ann Rice an American author has intuitively grasped this predicament in her books The Vampire Chronicles in which Rice conveys the tales of loneliness, anxiety,

vulnerability and guilt that her vampires will live forever live. A fate similar to that of the transgendered person possessed by transphobia. One of her oldest and wisest vampires, Lestat, is irresistibly drawn into the company of humans, yearning to be human, desperately wanting to touch and be touched, to hold and be held, to love again, and feel all the pleasures and pains of the flesh. She states about her vampire Lestat, "With the passage of time, he comes to know mortals as they may never know each other, and finally there comes the moment where he cannot bear to take life, or bear to make suffering, and nothing but madness, or his own death. Will ease his pain."

If splitting is the main defensive psychic dynamic, then stigmatization is the wedge. The philosophical paradigms of Western medical science and Christianity based in patriarchy support the stigma against gender transgressors, as they have supported stigmatization of gay, lesbian, and bisexual men and women. It is here that the roots of transphobia and internalized transphobia derive there nourishment.

A useful definition of stigma is supplied by Erving Goffman in his book, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Dr. Goffman reminds us that the term stigma was originated by the Greeks to refer to the bodily signs designed to expose something unusual or bad about the moral status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, criminal, or traitor, a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided especially in public places. The term stigma is then an attribute of a person that is deeply discrediting. A person with a stigma is reduced from a whole person to a deviant, one who cannot be trusted, someone dangerous. A person who is fundamentally tainted, a foreigner, an outsider.

The result of stigmatization, the pushing of sexual minorities out into the margins of outersiderhood, is that the trans-person may not come to understand their transgendered nature until late in their psycho-sexual development, and by then the gendered persona has already been firmly established at all levels of social structure and given legal status. Associates of the trans-person (e.g., spouse, children, family, friends, co-workers) may also be targeted for stigmatization and transphobia, and for this the trans-person may suffer paralytic guilt. Living an empty life, feeling ashamed, guilty, and envious of non- transgendered men and women, the transgendered person cannot imagine a solution. The transphobia complex possesses the ego like a demon tortures a soul. Obsessive fears, anticipated and actual catastrophes riddle consciousness. Self-deprecatory thoughts flood the mind, such as, "I am a freak", "Know one will ever love me", "I will never be able to deal with this", and "Everyone will be better off if I am dead".

In Kafka's novel The Trial, Kafka tells a parable entitled, "Before the Law". It is this Law laid down by science and by religion that supports stigmatization, and must be transgressed in order for healing the split within the transgendered person.

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper comes a man from the country who begs for admittance to The Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment....The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity. Eventually, the man grows older and older, and finally, he dies. But, he is never allowed to pass through the door to the Law. I ask you? Must death be such an empty symbol as this?

James Hillman, a notable post-Jungian thinker, explores the symbol of death and its relation to suicide in his book, Suicide and the Soul. Hillman posits that the symbol of death appears in order to make way for transformation of the soul. With death there is a permanent end to things as they are, in order to make the way for new life. However, the psyche resists death, fights change and transformation. The ego may confuse the need for psychic death and transformation with an imperative for concrete death of the body which sustains the life that cannot endure. It is out of the soul’s need for transformation though death that the suicidal fantasies emerge. Hillman states that suicide fantasies provide freedom from the actual and usual view of things, enabling one to meet the realities of the soul. When the psyche persists in presenting its demands for transformation it may use, besides death, other symbols showing birth and growth, and transitions of place and time. However, he believes that death is the most effective symbol because it brings with it that intense emotion without which no transformation can take place.

The transgendered person obsessed with suicidal fantasies has not been able to experience death psychologically, and is in danger of physical death. Suicidal ideation suggests the constellation of the death symbol, and as such also creates the potential for transformation. Assistance is needed to correctly understand the meaning of the suicidal fantasy and the death symbol. With the conscious suicidal urge comes hopelessness and despair. With the constellation of despair, transformation becomes possible, because this is the dying away of the falsely gendered ego, the pseudo-self, and the life it has lived through the false gendered persona. The dying here is a real psychic dying of psychological structures (i.e., self-object relations) and the loss or fundamental change of self-validating interpersonal relationships (e.g., as spouse, friend, professional). The transgendered self demands that the ego-identity die so that there is a second chance at the re-birth of a gendered ego-identity that mirrors the transgendered self; thereby, healing the splitting, and creating wholeness and cohesion within the psyche.

Healing the transgendered Soul involves then three major accomplishments: 1) The ego consciously understands that its identity must incorporate the transgendered self which has been split off, and 2) the false gendered ego-identity dies, and 3) a gendered persona which authentically mirrors the gendered ego-identity and actualizes the transgendered self is established.

The first journal entry is from a patient obsessed with suicidal ideation, who often sits in his office with a vial of cyanide, waiting for the courage to face his death. His spouse who is a fundamentalist Christian refuses to even discuss his transgender issues with him because they are sinful. One of is daughters is a conservative Christian, and another has Down’s Syndrome. His entry shows the constellation of the death symbol, his suffering, his despair.

Today is another day of living hell. I look in the mirror and I cry… I hate my body! I hate it! Why did I have to be born a transsexual? Why? Ugliness seeps out of every pore of this horrid body. I am disgusted and ashamed of my physical being. Trapped in this shell, I scream to get out. Imprisoned. Sentenced to spend all my life like this since I haven’t the strength to break out. Hating myself for not having the will to proceed with transition. Transition to freedom and life. Failing at everything I attempt. I am a lousy excuse for a human being, not even having the courage to face my situation and deal with it, I allow myself to suffer immeasurably. Why? "The Solution" is so obvious. It is best for everyone…

Death. "The Final Solution."

I can live as a woman, or die as a man.

That is a phrase ,a truth, I have come to own. And since I can’t bring the embarrassment and shame of me changing sex on my family there I only one choice. The "Final Solution."

Dr. St.Claire said that once a transsexual changes her sex to match her spirit, the gender dysphoria disappears. How wonderful a thought! But she said tat I must prepare for losses if I proceed. I can survive the loss of my children. It would be terribly hard, but I could cope and get on with my life. What I struggle so strongly with is the hurt I would cause them. The pain they would experience with a female father is something I don’t believe they can cope with.

I awake as I go to sleep, my spirit broken and burdened by hopelessness. I would rather have cancer. This is simply hell. Constantly, I agonize over what could have been, what should have been. Whatever I do, where ever I go, I am continually reminded of my incarceration in this horrid prison of my body. Escape is possible, but I’m too cowardly to do it, unable to face the guilt of any hurt I bring my children. I so, so desperately need to go through metamorphosis and become the person, the woman, I was meant to be. But I cower and quiver, a shameful excuse for a human.

It is the pit of hell. Constant torture. Endless pain and crying.

I know hell this is it.

I have an appointment with Dr. St.Claire in two hours. I don’t know if I can go. I need to see her and talk about this situation. I really need to go, but I don’t know if I can force myself.

And my kids, my poor little girls! Oh God, what will this do to them?!

I didn’t make it to see Dr. St.Claire. Instead I sat on the floor of my office and cried. I don’t know what to do !!

The following dream series shows the transformation of the gendered ego-identity to mirror the transgendered self. The dream sequence is as an unfolding mythical story, a healing fiction which both reflects psychic changes and anticipates them. The mythologem can be ascertained in the story of the dream sequence and will be described in a anther paper.

I’m laying in my bed and slowly become aware that I am laying side-by-side with a woman, a definite feminine presence, but I just sensed this as she had no personal identity as in someone I know. A vibration occurred as if we were merging into one and then my consciousness radically changed to a completely unfamiliar state which I could not identify, so I began to be become afraid. I felt a very strong presence in me, as if something or some one else was there. I thought I might be having an out-of-the-body experience. The vibrations were increasing, heightening, more intense as if approaching some final apex. I began to panic and to draw away from this feeling, this state. I struggled within my own body, thrashing to get away, to free myself, to wake up.

Once I had awakened, I immediately felt a tremendous loss, and emptiness, and said out loud into the darkness, "I was afraid, don’t go away, please come back." I could still feel a strong presence in the room now, as if some one was there. I get out of bed and looked around fully expecting that I might find some one there. But, there was no one.

I’m being chased by a woman. She knows me but I don’t know her. I’m in an unfamiliar building but I live here. I’m afraid. She is dangerous. She’s chasing me and I’m trying to run to the safety of my apartment. I’m trying to get inside the door before she catches up with me. As I reach the door, I fumble with the keys, trying to find the right key, wasting precious time. I find the key and try to steady my shaking hand so I can get the key in the lock. Finally it opens. She right behind me. I rush in and slam the door on her. I reach for the phone and call the police, 911. Two uniformed policemen are running down the hallway after her. I’m trying to shut and lock the door. I’m pushing hard with all my weight, and she’s now pushing hard on the other side trying to get in. I almost have the door shut, but she reaches in with her arm and holds up a can of mace, and sprays me in the face. I feel the ice cold burning in my face, and wake suddenly feeling the physical sensation as if it was real.

I am such a mess. I don’t know how I am ever going to heal. I just don’ know. Driving on the way home now, I cry so hard that I tightly grab onto the steering wheel as if it will stop me from losing all control. I really afraid, and know one around me knows how bad it is. I don’t want them to know. I’m afraid I will break. I gasp for air. The crying is very hard. I cry with my whole body and my Soul. It scares me so. I realized today that I only have the energy left to do those things that I have to do to function. All the rest of life does not matter.

A woman is chasing after me. She has poison gas that she is trying to kill me with. She wants to kill me. She’s following me. She is fat and slow, but she always seems to catch up with me. I can’t lose her. I run home. In the basement, there is some kind of reconstruction going on. I run though where the garage use to be to the back door. I’m out of breath. I don’t see her behind me but I know she’s coming. I’m frantically pounding on the door to be let in. Through the glass in the door, I see my brother playing with a friend inside. I’m pounding on the door. Why isn’t he letting me in? Finally, my brother’s friend let’s me in. I rush in, and immediately close and lock the downstairs door. I run upstairs to the kitchen, locking the door behind me. Mother is in the kitchen doing something. I’m out of breath, in a panic. I try to dial for the police. I can’t remember the police emergency phone number. I dial 9 and nothing is happening. I try again and again but it is not working. Then, she has made it inside the house. She’s upstairs. She broke in the downstairs. She breaks the glass in the door and gets in. I push her away and drab the poison bomb from her and through it as far as I can into the living room. I run downstairs into the streets again, trying to run away. But, she’s after me again.

The Grim Reaper came to visit me at my parents’ home. I am frightened and feel I am in danger. I take my mace out and spray into his hooded darkness where there is no face, but it is useless. Death cannot be injured and frightened away. Petrified I try to run, but the Reaper keeps following. What does he want? Why doesn’t he say something?

Ego: Why do you follow me? What do you want?

Reaper: I have come for your Soul, to escort you across the channel of death so that you do not become lost on you way to live your life anew. I know you are afraid of me. I know your first instinct is to run from me. But you are dying. You must die. It is time now. You no longer have a choice. I am here because Death is near. Have faith in what is true. It is trust in what is true that brings you to the brink of death, even as you have no understanding of what, if anything, lies on the other side of Death. You are no longer able to sustain you life this way.

Ego: But I don’t know what to do. I do not understand how to die. I don’t want to die. I am afraid. Will you help me?

Alyssum and I are standing together outside on the sidewalk together. She insists on holding both my hands in hers. She stands facing me. She wants me to lighten up and be playful with her, to skip around in a circle together. She implores me, "I had a great life, didn’t I? Tell me, please, I had a great life, didn’t I? Please tell me I had a great life!" I thought to myself, "Is it that she cannot remember what was good in her life, or is it that she is not sure it was so good?" I wanted to remind her how we met her very first day on the job, and how we explored the shops on Colfax Avenue together. But, she did not want to be reminded of the particulars of her life, she only wanted to be re-assured that she had in fact had a good life.

A Woman working in a prison mistakenly receives an anesthesia intended for a male prisoner. When she is unconscious, he rapes her. The woman fights back by struggling to raise her rape to public attention because the rape was allowed to happen by the others working at the prison. She is finally successful and as a result persons in high places will take a political fall and be unable to win an upcoming election.

I am in the military. I’m shopping for woman’s clothes in the military store on base. There are other men in the store who are cross-dressed also shopping. I am interviewed by a military columnist about cross-dressing, and an article quoting me appears in the base newspaper. I am surprised that there are pictures of some of us accompanying the story in the paper.

I am having dinner out with several friends and I was waiting for them all to arrive at my house. I am frightened because the devil is going to be there. I do not tell anyone because I am afraid and do not know what to do. The door bell rings, and as I approach the door I know that it is the devil. My fear heightens in my chest. I open the door and am surprised because the devil is a woman. An ordinary looking woman with longer hair and blue eyes who is casually dressed. She looks at me in a way that I know that she knows I have recognized who she is. She says hello and walks into the house to mingle with my friends. I am frightened but I try not to let it show to anyone. She does not make herself known to the others, does not threaten anyone, nor does she attempt to hurt me or anyone. Soon it is time to leave for the restaurant.

As we leave the house, I can feel earth tremors under my feet. We go outside. It is dusk, and the skies are further darkened with huge clouds. There is a storm. There is lightening and thunder in the distance. In the empty lot next to my house there is a tee-pee and some Native Americans are wearing ceremonial dress, chanting and dancing around the fire.

We arrive at the restaurant and are waiting for our table. The devil has joined us as if she is one of us. No one knows who she really is but me. I get the urge to go to the rest room but I am afraid to be separated from my friends. I am afraid that I would be in danger if alone with the devil. I announce that I am going to get a soda from the vending machine which is near the rest rooms. The devil says to me that my can of pop will be half full. I taunt her by asking what kind of pop I’ll be getting, but she does not answer me. I’m afraid to go alone but I have to because I cannot delay going to the rest room. I’m frightened but I go alone to the bathroom.

I quickly go into the bathroom, pee standing at the urinal, and leave as fast as I can. When I pull the door open to leave, I am taken aback by the devil blocking the way. She walks in and I back into the bathroom. Once inside alone with her, she makes no move to hurt or threaten me in any way. I am still frightened. She stands directly in front of me, looking into my eyes, she tells me that she has come to tell me something. She tells me that I will be giving birth to a child, and that I am going to be pregnant. I disbelieve her, and want to know how it is that a male is going to be pregnant. She tells me that I’m going to give birth to a child in 6 months, and tells me that I am slowly changing. She says that when the child is ready to be born, I will be ready to deliver her.

I am shocked. I feel nothing but fear. Speechless, I search her face for more. Then, I begin to cry. She embraces me and I hold onto her, sobbing, as all my fear drains away. I don’t understand how, but this is all somehow her gift to me.

A beautiful child is laying naked on a bed talking to me. He says, "I want your help, but I don’t want your help changing my mind. I knew when I was 3 or 4 years old." The child looks beautiful, glowing, long blond hair, blue eyes, slender, and I notice a penis. He has the names of 4 or 5 surgeons around the country. He wants me to drive him around to find them.

Transgendered persons unwillingly become participants in a tragedy of mythic proportions where they are called upon by their own souls to take the hero’s journey. The journey from self-hatred and paralytic fear, through death, transformation, and re-birth is daunting. As psychotherapists, physicians, and healers our charge is to aid the hero who is frozen with inertia, incapable of answering the call to whatever the transgendered person’s mythic self-revelation demands of them. We need to work to maintain awareness of our own transphobia so that we do not unconsciously project it onto our patients. We must help to educate those possessed by trepidation who cannot transgress the patriarchal rules of the Law, whether laid down by culture, science or religion. We must validate the path of gender and sexual liberation through transgression for those waiting for permission from the Law that will never come so they may have the courage to take that leap of faith into their dark night of the Soul. Because otherwise, many may wait and wait until their death waiting for the permission that will never be forthcoming.