The Alchemy of Gender: A Hermeneutic Inquiry

Abstract

Postmodern discourse regarding gender identity calls upon the field of depth psychology, and primarily Jungian psychology, to reexamine its traditional dualistic constructs pertaining to gender so as to be open to including the experiences of queer, genderqueer, and transgender individuals. This research is particularly interested in honoring the personal narratives that define one’s self-understanding. Using a hermeneutical perspective, it explores gender identity as an alchemically constructed archetypal experience. Dialectical engagement with three key psychological theories; queer theory, psychoanalytic theory, and Jungian theory highlights the possibility of bringing together intersections of socially constructed paradigms of gender identities with the interiority of an individual’s symbolic self-understanding. This research culminates in the generation of an intra-psychic theory of gender identity, that understands gender as composed of a polyphony of images, and meanings that shift and change, deepen, and transform. The inquiry concludes by presenting a transformational theory of gender that sees gender through alchemical metaphors of transformation and explores the complex intersection of desire, emergence, embodiment, and archetypal imagery. A transformational theory of gender views gender identity as an evolving and revelatory aspect of the self that may issue in a further quest for awareness, symbolic living, and ultimately the practice of soul making