Patriarchy Transformed Through Listening to the Suffering Feminine

Abstract

The purpose of this hermeneutical study is to examine the shadow of Christianity as it appears in culture and in therapeutic settings. Western culture has been dominated by Christianity as its cultural perspective for two thousand years. Acknowledging this opens possibilities for analysis of this culture’s shadow, and the conscious-unconscious synthesis that might seek to emerge through the process of shadow integration. A culture’s conscious perspective presents risks of one-sidedness similar to, yet exceeding in complexity and consequence, those that affect individuals. Identification of the shadow of one’s culture or tradition entails epistemic humility and ethical self-daring. It can render a positive service, though, particularly for a culture or tradition that enshrines self-critique amongst its values—as the author argues is true with Christianity. It can also accentuate the act of therapeutic listening, suggesting a hypothesis concerning the nature of repressed material that may arise in a patient’s dreams, fantasies, and symptoms. With this intention, the author utilizes the Sumerian myth of the underworld descent of the goddess Inanna as representative of material that has been historically, literarily, and archetypally repressed by Christianity, and explores possibilities for the transcendent third that may be striving for expression, given this particular phrasing of conscious perspective and shadow.