Marybeth Carter, Ph.D., is a Pacifica Adjunct Faculty in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program, who will be participating in “The 21st Century Queer Psyche Through a Jungian Lens” panel during Journey Week, along with colleagues Naomi Azriel, LMFT, and Chema Jiménez Orvañanos, M.A. 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. Tomorrow, September 25, 2024, is the last day to register for this fantastic gathering of alumni, students, perspective students, faculty, and the larger community of depth psychology.
Angela Borda: Thank you so much for doing this interview with me. Some of the scholarship I see at Pacifica is focused on how to evolve Jungian thought beyond some of the edges that Jung’s time and place created, issues around gender, race, etc. How can a scholar born in 1875, who died in 1961, contribute to present-day queer studies? Is there a similar process of evolution at play with Jung and queer studies?
Marybeth Carter: Jung had theories about homosexuality and heterosexuality. He had some progressive views such as taking the position that homosexuality should not be a crime, which it was at the time. Unfortunately, he also posited some theories that, such as the cause of homosexuality being due to a mother complex, that have fallen into dogma.
Since the 1980s, much has been written by post-Jungian and LGBTQ+ scholars on how to re-conceptualize and implement Jung’s psychology for a more diverse world. Valid critiques are being made that certain theories have been concretized and literalized versus being understood in a symbolic or psychological way.
Many of us are emphasizing the importance of focusing on Jung’s methods, just as Jung did, when working with the diversity of humankind to support them to individuate. Methods such as dream interpretation, active imagination, and working with the transference/countertransference all help to surface the personal narrative of the individual in the consulting room and help them stay true to their individuation experience versus interpreting their psychological content through the lens of Jungian dogma.
Angela: What topics do you anticipate being prominent in the panel discussion? And will audience members be encouraged to contribute to the discussion?
Marybeth: The three of us will present, then we will have time for discussion afterward. My focus is on Jungian psychological method and the importance of personal narrative rather than interpreting every person’s psychic content through a dogmatic theoretical lens. Applying a dogmatic approach is harmful—Jung knew this because he wrote about it as his experience in The Red Book.
Chema is talking about what is it like to be a queer analyst, and then Naomi is talking about non-binary as a transformative, liberative experience that is beyond binary gender.
Angela: Your latest book, The Spectre of the Other in Jungian Psychoanalysis, was the winner of the 2023 Gradiva® Award for Best Edited Book. Does that book inform or reflect on the psyches of people who identify as queer?
Marybeth: The book is applicable to any group that is viewed as “other.” The concept of the “other” is essential in Jung’s psychology because it’s the sense of objective and subjective; the Self is often perceived by the conscious self as an “other.” The conscious self also “others” groups of people it’s uncomfortable with, such as by race or sexual orientation. The book examines this in various ways. From the beginning of time, humanity has sought methods for going from being unconscious to conscious. Similarly, Jung was interested in alchemy because he saw how it paralleled and gave language to the process of individuation he observed in himself and others. For instance, the Axiom of Maria: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.” Third-century alchemist, Maria Prophetissa, was one of the few female alchemists whose work survives, and from it we get the tension between the subjective and objective, and ultimately the psychological dynamic that Jung called the transcendent function. The idea is that there is a tension of opposites, such as examples in current politics around the globe where there are opposing views of how we should live or how government should function. But from these opposites, something new can emerge if we hold that tension.
Angela: What do you most look forward to in Journey Week?
Marybeth: I’m looking forward to hearing from presenters who are faculty and administration at Pacifica. I’m also looking forward to giving our presentation and then the potential discussion about these contemporary ideas bubbling in our minds.
Angela: Is there anything forthcoming for you professionally?
Marybeth: I’ll be presenting a paper on the phenomenon of spontaneous waking visions at the Kristine Mann Library in NYC in early November. And I’m completing work as the Guest Editor on a LGBTQ-focused issue, “Queer Jungian Voices,” that will be published in December 2024 in Psychological Perspectives, the journal of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
Angela: Thank you so much for speaking with me. I look forward to listening to your presentation 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.
Marybeth Carter, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst with a degree in religious studies with honors from Indiana University and in clinical psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where she is now an adjunct faculty. She is chair of the International Association for Jungian Studies (IAJS) and also serves on the board of the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. Marybeth’s interests are in the creative arts, transcendent states, and the process of individuation. Some of her published work includes “Crystalizing the Universe in Geometrical Figures: Diagrammatic Abstraction in the Creative Works of Hilma af Klint and C. G. Jung,” “Satan’s Mouth or Font of Magic What Is It about the Anus?” and “Painting an Especially Bright Spirit: A Jungian Lens on the Art of Agnes Pelton” all published in Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. Her book The Spectre of the Other in Jungian Psychoanalysis, co-edited with Stephen Farah, is published by Routledge.
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.
