Chema Jiménez Orvañanos, MA., is a Pacifica alumni from Pacifica’s Counseling Psychology M.A. program, as well as being a practicing psychotherapist in Mexico City. They will be presenting on “Queerness in Analysis: A dance with shame” at Journey Week. Journey Week is an immersive week of learning and connecting at Pacifica Graduate Institute, September 26th – 29th, 2024. For more information and to register, visit us here. I’m delighted to speak with Chema about their work and upcoming talk.
Angela Borda: Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Chema. I just saw an ad for Drag Race: Mexico City, a spin-off of RuPaul’s Drag Race TV show, and I at first thought, “The times are changing,” but then I wondered, “Are they really?” I don’t know that much about Mexico and queer culture/history. So may I first ask for your general impression of what it means to be living as a non-binary, queer person in Mexico?
Chema Jiménez Orvañanos: I’ve always lived in Mexico City, so it’s important to take that into account. If I had been born in other parts of Mexico, it would be a different situation. Mexico is a complex country, which colors queer culture. In Mexico City in particular, there’s a long history of activism. We’re progressive legislatively. For example, same sex marriage in Mexico has been legal federally before it was in the United States; so at least on paper, Mexico is much more open. Recently there was also an initiative to criminalize conversion therapy at a federal level. It’s not a utopia, but in general there is a long history of queer activism. Because we’re close to the U.S., it’s easy for our thoughts to be colonized. There is a lot of difficulty with class and race, violence, and your experience is colored by your privileges. So if you have money and live in certain parts of the city, your experience can be very different from other parts of the city.
Angela: I see that you are an organizing member of the International Queer Jungian Initiative, as well as being part of the Lesbianas Junguianas Collective in South America. So my next question, in a general sense, is how do Jung and depth psychology serve the LGBTQ+ community? Is there much that needs to change and evolve in depth psychology to better serve this population?
Chema: One of the founders of the Queer Jungians is my friend George Taxidis, who is currently working on a book with a chapter called “Is Jung Queer?” And that’s a good place to get into this topic. When I met the queer Jungians, I couldn’t believe they existed. It’s such a specific niche, and I thought I was the only one. Who else inhabits these particular crossroads? It’s been enriching to relate to them and think together and question how we’re drawn to Jung when in so many senses, he was a white, cis-straight, Swiss guy, married to the richest woman in Switzerland, and there are passages in his biography and the Red Book where “othering” takes up so much space. There is racism and classicism, and the binary theory around sexuality is rigid. Yet, at the same time, for the first time in the west, Jung suggested there was a feminine side inside men, and it was crucial for men to make room for the feminine within. And there is the alchemical aspect, the transcendent function. So around the issue of Jung and queerness, I say that there are many Jungs. He was limited by his context, upbringing, and privileges, but at the same time he had this subtlety about him and he opened the way in many senses.
I think that, in order to individuate, you have to question the norms with which you were brought up. So to go through that process inevitably has an element of heresy. The ways in which Jungian theory can be useful to queerness are more or less accidental, but they have to do with following the images of your subconscious, and there are a lot of tools for relating to otherness that are useful when thinking of the queer experience. In that sense, queerness can be useful for everyone; when you take the invitation of queerness, even if you are closer to the norm, you get to explore beyond the boundaries of what you know or what is accepted.
If you’re asking if Jungian psychology will survive the 21st century, the answer is yes, if it changes. We have a tendency to become dogmatic in our approach to our forebears. I think that Jung always had this caution. He didn’t want Jungians, he wanted people to follow their own path of individuation. But there needs to be openness to what is not binary and for us to realize how steeped in privilege his theory is.
Angela: You describe yourself as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist and scholar practicing in Mexico City, focusing on queerness, gender, and the deconstruction of masculinity. What’s it like to practice in Mexico City and how does deconstructing masculinity present itself in your practice?
Chema: Practicing and living here is always rent by inequality. That’s always on my mind. In this country, being able to afford mental health services is difficult. It’s usually only available in urban areas for people who have more privileges, like money. That’s always tied to race. These issues operate differently than they do in the U.S.. There’s always a division between people who have been privileged and those who haven’t. On the other hand, this is a place where we have a good relationship with the imagination and the collective unconscious. It’s rich to practice here, there’s freedom to explore therapeutic relationships.
In terms of the deconstruction of masculinity, on the one hand, Mexico “invented” machismo and its presence in the culture. But the men who come to see me are more or less open or curious to this kind of work, and when they’re not, it doesn’t click. It can be too much for some people. When you’re a therapist with the intention of questioning norms or ways of living, that always introduces something that is uncomfortable. So being a queer therapist trying to imagine something different is always complicated. I used to work with teenagers a lot, and as I accept myself more, there is a myth of queer adults trying to convert children, so I question how much of myself I show or not and how it will affect the clinical space. On the other hand, there’s something about this work that is very exciting, very alive, something bigger that we’re trying to follow the invitation of. Exploring new territory involves fear but also something very rich and exciting trying to take form.
Angela: Your talk for Journey Week will focus on shame stymying individuation, and on how “queerness, through intergenerational bonds of kinship, can offer us a politics of survival or resistance to shame.” What caught my eye was “intergenerational bonds of kinship.” Can you tell us a little more about this aspect of your talk?
Chema: This idea of intergenerational bonds of kinship I took from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; when you belong to certain marginalized groups, you have a culture and a family that shares this with you. If you’re indigenous or black, you experience oppression and marginalization, but there is also a community that has experienced the same things as you, and you can build a community around that. When you’re queer, this may not be so. You may be the only person in your family or church or neighborhood who is LGBTQ+. So you deal with a lot of shame, this sensation that there’s something profoundly wrong with you. Shame is a tool for enforcing social norms. People make you feel shame in order to make you conform. But if you decide not to conform, it’s difficult to navigate all of that alone. So intergenerational bonds of kinship means you meet other people who have been marginalized because of their identity or sexuality and they share and/or create ways of navigating these complexities together with you.
Angela: Do you have any forthcoming publications or projects that you’d like to share with us?
Chema: I have this paper coming up in Psychological Perspectives, a volume which is dedicated especially to queerness.
Angela: Thank you so much for speaking with me, and I look forward to your panel at Journey Week!
Journey Week is an immersive week of learning and connecting at Pacifica Graduate Institute, September 26th – 29th, 2024. For more information and to register, visit us here.
Chema Jiménez Orvañanos, MA, is a non-binary, Mexican, Jungian oriented psychotherapist and scholar practicing in Mexico City. Their work centers around queerness, gender and the deconstruction of masculinity. They are an organizing member of the International Queer Jungian Initiative and part of the Lesbianas Junguianas Collective in South America.
Angela Borda is a writer for Pacifica Graduate Institute, as well as the editor of the Santa Barbara Literary Journal. Her work has been published in Food & Home, Peregrine, Hurricanes & Swan Songs, Delirium Corridor, Still Arts Quarterly, Danse Macabre, and is forthcoming in The Tertiary Lodger and Running Wild Anthology of Stories, Vol. 5.
