Jung, Irigaray, Individuation: Philosophy, Analytical Psychology, and the Question of the Feminine
Frances Gray
Language: English
Pages: 208
ISBN: 0415431034
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
How do philosophy and analytical psychology contribute to the mal-figuring of the feminine and women? Does Luce Irigaray's work represent the possibility of individuation for women, an escape from masculine projection and an affirming re-figuring of women? And what would individuation for women entail?
This work postulates a novel and unique relationship between Carl Jung and Luce Irigaray. Its central argument, that an ontologically different feminine identity situated in women's embodiment, women's genealogy and a women's divine is possible, develops and re-figures Jung's notion of individuation in terms of an Irigarayan woman-centred politics. Individuation is re-thought as a politically charged issue centred around sex-gendered difference focussed on a critique of Jung's conception of the feminine.
The book outlines Plato's conception of the feminine as disorder and argues that this conception is found in Jung's notion of the anima feminine. It then argues that Luce Irigaray's work challenges the notion of the feminine as disorder. Her mimetic adoption of this figuring of the feminine is a direct assault on what can be understood as a culturally dominant Western understanding. Luce Irigaray argues for a feminine divine which will model an ideal feminine just as the masculine divine models a masculine ideal. In making her claims, Luce Irigaray, the book argues, is expanding and elaborating Jung's idea of individuation.
Jung, Irigaray, Individuation brings together philosophy, analytical psychology and psychoanalysis in suggesting that Luce Irigaray's conception of the feminine is a critical re-visioning of the open-ended possibilities for human being expressed in Jung's idea of individuation. This fresh insight will intrigue academics and analysts alike in its exploration of the different traditions from which Carl Jung and Luce Irigaray speak.
man’s 116 familiar, the 78–9 Father (archetype) 61 Father (God) 91, 107–8, 111 fathers 57–8 Fechner, Gustav 13–14 female body 51–3, 55–7, 61, 101–2, 108–9, 111, 117, 119–22, 127, 130, 156; as atrophied male body 108; and the collective 69; and the feminine divine 108, 110, 119; maternal 56–7, 97, 127; media portrayal 51; myths surrounding 68 female emancipation 107 female embodiment 108, 120, 126, 127 female genealogy 122–3, 127, 141, 147 female inferiority 142 female subjecthood
are as they are by virtue of the characteristics of their members: the morality or justice of a community reflects the collective morality or justice of individual members. Collectives or communities are mirrors of their members and as such are mirrors of their members’ souls. We can see from this why it is that Plato is so concerned about poets and about imitation. The success, moral or otherwise, of a community really depends on the characteristics of its individual members, all of whom should
dependence on the visual and its constitutive nature. One of the central issues emerging from this discussion is that the association between identity, as a form of mimesis, and projection, grounded in mimesis, involves the idea of dialectic as relationship. We might think of projection as a dialectical engagement of between-ness, an engagement between a subject and an object. The relata of this engagement, subject and object, need, however, to become disengaged if projection is to be recognised
of themselves through imitating their own being by making an other from their own substance. Gods consciously, actively, constitute or create an object, their image in human form, where before there was not one. They concurrently produce the mirror and the image in it. These images are animated and capable of existence independent of their makers. In these stories the Gods project their being, and importantly they know that they do. For them, projection is deliberate creation and is actively
dialectical process in Plato’s Dialogues, as I have already suggested, is aimed at definition of abstract ideas or universals like justice, truth and knowledge. Following Socrates and Plato, this focus on definition in a general sense has become a central preoccupation of Western philosophy. If a definition can be given, then it acts as a clarification, reference point and measure of whether or not something is an instance of the definition. In spite of his protests that he was not a philosopher,