Carl Jung understood 'masculinity' as a form of consciousness—an essential, instinctive way of assessing and relating that he defined intuitively through the term 'Logos', by which he meant discrimination, judgment and insight into the meaning of the situation to be met. This interpretation of the 'masculine principle' assumes an underlying archetypal predisposition built up by the behaviour of males within civilisations across the millennia. Since for Jung the guiding principle of a woman's consciousness is the less separative feminine Eros, masculine consciousness tends to be more unconscious for her and achieved through the archetype of the animus, which has the peculiarity of using the Logos in a more dogmatic, approximate, off-the-point way. With consciousness, however, the animus can enable a woman to discriminate her psychic depths with insight and judgment. Emma Jung suggested four ways in which the animus presents Logos to women: as word, as deed, as meaning and as power. Like the anima (the archetype carrying the man's more unconscious Eros) the animus is seen by Jung to function as a bridge to the inner authority of the Self.
Jung recognised disadvantages to this model. When Logos is postulated as the conscious cultural achievement of men (and Eros as the consciousness emerging in women), the implication is that the other gender is inherently deficient in the principle that is contrasexual to it. In his work on alchemy, Jung attempted to rectify this restrictiveness by developing archetypal images for the masculine and feminine 'principles'. He chose the alchemical Sol and Luna, which were personifications of the (masculine) Sun and the (feminine) Moon as conceived by Renaissance astrology. When applied, by analogy, to depth psychology, these archetypal 'lights' could become conjoined in the consciousness of the same person, through the alchemical coniunctio, symbolising the inner union of masculine and feminine consciousness in the mature person. Even more important, room was allowed for the construction of these gendered principles, rather than fixing their natures a priori. Sol, in the understanding of the alchemists who were trying to forge in the laboratories earthly representatives of the astrological powers, was created by bringing sulphur in relation to mercury, and this implied both chemical and spiritual effort.
This symbolism implies that mature masculinity requires both a direct and forceful emotional expression (the explosive sulphur) and a capacity for irony and conscious ambivalence (the elusive, paradoxical mercury, which qualifies masculine emotional and behavioural decisiveness). Sol, the constructed masculine principle that results from the combination of mercury and sulphur, has the capacity to illuminate a situation with insight rather than simply react to it explosively. The ur-masculine quality of 'sulphur' is itself a product of uniting white and red sulphurs, the colours referring to the moon and the sun, implying that there is a lunar as well as solar component of masculinity that must be combined to construct this basic element of masculine consciousness. The 'union of sames' in constructing sulphur points to the importance of homosexual fantasy and relationships to the building up of masculine confidence. This is a theme pursued by Jung and other Jungians with the aid of anthropological observations of initiation practices, which often require boys to be receptive to older men.
On the other hand, Jung's close associate von Franz exposed the resistance to initiation into maturity in studies of the 'puer aeternus' (eternal boy) archetype, as found in such literary works as St Exupery's The Little Prince and Apuleius' The Golden Ass. Otherjungians have simply emphasised a range of archetypal masculine roles, such as king, magician, warrior and lover; senex and puer; trickster, hero and initiate; the 'gods in everyman'; and the father, whose nature has to be configured anew with each generation. Zoja's historical study pointed to the insecurity of the father in maintaining his position as guide to the effective use of masculine consciousness. Collins emphasised that father and son represent, intrapsychically, a fused selfobject relationship that he calls 'fatherson'. Father and son transmit and split persona, ego, shadow and anima attributes, and fathers affect their daughters by projecting archetypal attributes on to them. The child's experience of the father's body helps to internalise masculine consciousness. The role of father can be played by either sex, and masculinity itself can be expressed in both holding and penetrating ways.
In the United States, the mythopoetic men's movement, drawing on Jungian ideas, led to a resurgence of initiation practices in the late twentieth century and debate on what men should be, want and become. Moving beyond simple notions of heroism, a number of Jungian authors offered a range of models for the self-construction of masculine consciousness, from the individuating Arthurian knight Parsifal to the triad of constructors from Greek mythology—the inventive Daedalus, the brooding, introverted Hephaistos and the tricksterish Hermes—and the destructive senex-god Saturn. More human images of masculinity, such as phallic and priapic preoccupations, fantasies of rape, and the roles men play within heterosexual and homosexual couples, were also addressed by Jungian authors, drawing upon novels and films to elucidate the archetypal patterns. The goal by the end of the first century of Jungian thought was not to pathologise so much as to contextualise contemporary expressions of maleness within a range of archetypal and cultural options for what masculinity can be.
References and further reading
Collins, A. (1994) Fatherson, Wilmette, IL: Chiron.
Henderson, J. (2005) Thresholds qf Initiation, Wilmette, IL: Chiron.
Hill, G. (1992) Masculine and Feminine, Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Hillman, J. (1989) Puer Papers, Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.
Hopcke, R., Carrington, K.L. and Wirth, S. (eds) (1993) Same Sex Love, Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Jung, C.G. (1989) Aspects ofthe Masculine, edited J. Beebe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, E. (1969) Animus and Anima, New York: Spring Publications.
Moore, R. and GiUette, D. (1990) King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, San Francisco, CA: Harper-Collins.
Samuels, A. (ed.) (1985) The Father, London: Free Association Books.
Tacey, D. (1997) Remaking Men, London: Routledge.
Von Franz, M.L. (1970) The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, New York: Spring.
Zoja, L. (2001) The Father, East Sussex: Brunner-Routledge.
