Although I accept that there are some typical neurological difference between men and women, and that these are bound to have some kind of influence on psychology, I just don't feel that either neuroscience or psychology is at a point where it can accurately map physiological brain structures and functions to psychological phenomena. From what I've read (admittedly, my reading in neuroscience is limited), neuroscientists generally aren't willing to make these leaps either (usually only psychologists are).
Perhaps someday we will be able to do this scientifically. But until then, until the science becomes more precise, I'm disinclined to make these kinds of speculations. I think it is unavoidable, when making these brain-to-mind speculations to introduce a personal fantasy of the "shape" of the mind. Although such personal fantasies are abundant in Jungian thought, in psychoanalytic thought, and in much philosophy of consciousness, these fantastic efforts are what Jung would have called the "metaphysics" he claimed not to engage in. These frequent claims of Jung's were at times spurious, but for the most part, I think he was true to his word. That is, Jung was primarily a psychological phenomenologist. He observed, described, and attempted to classify the psychic phenomena he encountered in his own psyche (dreams, visions, fantasies, etc.), in the psychic material of his clinical patients, and in the numerous texts (myth, folktale, religious, literary, etc.) he analyzed.
This phenomenological Jung is the one I "descend from" intellectually and in my orientation toward the psyche. Where Jung speculated ("metaphysically", perhaps), I disagree with him. For instance, in concocting a theory of synchronicity or in constructing a "racial unconscious" or in applying cultural and personal stereotypes and prejudices to Jews/Germans, gender, "primitives", blacks, children, and so forth. He felt, I am fairly sure, that these observations were also "phenomenological" or "empirical", but I don't agree. Yes, he was observing phenomena, but he did not differentiate his own cultural-egoic baggage from the the actual other or object he observed. This stance tended to devalue otherness or the legitimacy and autonomy of that otherness. Perhaps sensing this devaluation, Jung (at times quite "heroically") developed complex philosophical methods of "approaching the Other" (he once called this the "approach to the numinous" instead of to the Other, but I think he meant essentially the same thing; it was the numinousness of the Other that he could allow himself to approach without moralistic rejection; that numinousness felt "familiar-enough" to him to engage with) . . . the Other he had initially pushed away by failing to adequately factor out his egoic projections.
For example, he developed the idea that archetypes are polar . . . on a more or less ethical continuum. So, an anima archetype or a Self archetype had to have a "good/light" pole and a "bad/dark" pole. In approaching these polarized archetypes (Others, essentially), Jung practiced and prescribed maintaining a degree of egoic detachment and "strength". This detached approach results in a kind of contained self-conflict. Vulgarly (but it just popped into my mind
), it is like dogs meeting and sniffing each other's butts . . . instead of leaping straight into a fight or mating. Jung advocated what I think we can technically and ceremoniously call a "butt-sniffing approach to the psychic Other". Any mating or fighting after that sniff would then be considered "possession by the archetype" and was proscribed. Sniffing, as if one should always approach the other with scientific restraint, was the alpha and omega of such relationships.
A more mythic allegory for Jung's approach to the Other could be derived from the Odyssey and Odysseus' decision to have himself strapped to the mast of his ship while he sailed by the Sirens. All of the other sailors were supposed to keep their ears well-stoppered, but heroic Odysseus wanted to hear the Sirens' song without it pulling him into a watery death. Jung was in many ways a very Odyssean hero. Especially in the Red Book, where the psychic Other is consistently treated as a distant Siren song, fascinating, but ultimately terrible and destructive. The autonomous psyche is to be treated as toxic but valuable, like some kind of deadly bacteria that, if properly and carefully studied, could lead to the invention of a miracle cure for various diseases. In other words, through human processing and transformation, the poisonous is rendered into medicine. But (in Jung's imagination) nothing Other could be medicinal in its natural state.
As I've pointed out before (in analyses of the Red Book), although Jung's approach to the psychic Other is compatible with a kind of scientific attitude, it stands in stark contrast to a "mystical" approach, in which an individual in initiated into a different state of being through destructive and regenerative merging with an Other.
In any case, despite some of Jung's missteps, I think his phenomenological approach is meant to stand in contrast to a more "interpretative" approach to psychic phenomena, which he associated with Freud (and consistently reacted against after his "break up" with Freud). Most famously, perhaps, he prescribed a non-interpretive approach to dream analysis (preferring "amplification" to interpretation). For Jung, a psychic content or image is what it is. It is not a disguised "something else".
Despite this psychological phenomenology (and even its proclaimed advocacy in every contemporary Jungian school), analytical psychology has become much more interpretive than it was under Jung. Part of this is likely due to the influx of and assimilation into psychoanalytic schools like object-relations (where what Jung called "reductive" interpretations of psychic phenomena are contextualized with infantocentric metaphors). But I think there is an additional component to the "post-Jungian" falling away from phenomenology. Namely, phenomenology is a little more like science. It's more "experimental". One gets to "commune" regularly with data. Jungians after Jung have been less interested in science and data analysis than in using the Jungian approach for what it can do
for them (and later, for their patients . . . which is also in some ways
for them, i.e., for the analysts).
Essentially, Jungianism has become more self-help oriented, more concerned with constructing tribal identity, with cultivating personal sacred space and even "religious experience". The analysis of identity construction (which would have initially been a part of analytical psychology), is now clearly tabooed (as is always the case in tribal cultures). I mean Jungian identity construction, of course. The identity construction of others is still open to analysis and various criticisms.
Even science is often used by Jungians today in the service of identity construction or to support and protect beliefs that are already established (rather than using science scientifically, i.e., as suggesting possible correlations in data that may either support or contradict hypotheses). I just had a debate about this with a JAP (Journal of Analytical Psychology) Jungian in an IAJS seminar, so I apologize if I still have my hackles up. My ultimate opinion is that we (as either psychologists or philosophical speculators on the psyche, meaning both you and me and well as certified Jungian analysts) do not have the scientific credentials and expertise required to draw far-reaching psychological conclusions from neurobiological data and research. More precisely, we are not really entitled to make scientific research say something it does not say to scientists in that field.
We may certainly and validly note parallels (one I feel is warranted is comparing what memory specialists in neuroscience call "memory" with what depth psychologists call psyche . . . it is clear in reading the literature that both parties are describing the same object, each imperfectly and from different perspectives). What I mean to critique is the displacement of scientific data and arguments. What my debate partner in the IAJS seminar was doing, for instance, was taking the ideas from a specific school of thought in the field of biology (namely, developmental emergentism) and presenting them to an uninformed Jungian audience as if they were "the word of science". In fact, in biology, debates still rage between a developmental/emergentist school and a more evolutionary/nativist school (marked by evolutionary psychology, for instance). The Jungian "developmental school" (focused around London's Society of Analytical Psychology and its journal, the
Journal of Analytical Psychology), of which this particular Jungian is a luminary author and pundit, has originated from an object-relations base in which developmentalist constructivism of the personality/self is the core dogma. Time and again (as a regular JAP reader) I have seen Jungian developmentalists reject and ignore the biological research that favors innate predispositions to thought and behavior while trumpeting developmentalist studies and arguments that suggest personality and self are culturally constructed.
Yes, most of the developmental biology they cite is valid science (whether its conclusions are right or wrong), but in order to look at this data scientifically, one has to counterbalance these theories and their data with the theories and data (equally scientific) of those biologists who have had different results and formed fundamentally different stances. I am not personally qualified to determine which group of biologists is "right" (if either) . . . and neither was my JAP opponent. As an individual, one can hold an opinion (rational or otherwise), but as a scientist (or as a rigorous thinker in general), one must entertain both opinions and weigh them empirically. My developmentalist opponent based his argument on an unfounded declaration that biologists favoring "nativism" (like evolutionary psychologists) were unscientific crackpots and ideologues. But his basis for making this assessment was partisan (or tribal) opinion and prejudice.
I produced numerous text references and links to online articles in which his misrepresentation of nativism/EP was clearly refuted (by EPs themselves). Of course he refused to read these, a refusal that enabled him to continue holding unscientific, unsupportable, and prejudiced opinions. This guy wasn't some "crank on the internet" (like me!), but a certified Jungian analyst with a PhD in philosophy. But his use of science was unethical (by the standards of conventional research conduct . . . something I actually deal with a bit in my day job).
I just want to make clear why I am so touchy about speculations leaping off from biological sciences into psychology. I don't mean to dissuade anyone from intellectual play, but the risks of quasi- and pseudo-scientific speculations are greater than I think you and many Jungians seem to believe. Sometimes "freeing the mind" to ramble over abstract ideas can have ethical consequence. Science, as a pursuit of objectivity, does require an ethical approach to research and data as well as intellectual adventurousness.
I think Jung didn't perfect but introduced the key to this problem where psychology is concerned. His psychological phenomenology was, despite his various spiritual and religious speculations and reputation for "mysticism", fundamentally scientific (to the degree he actually managed to practice what he preached). That Jung drew a number of erroneous theories or hypotheses from his phenomenological research does not itself make his approach either dysfunctional or unscientific. To disprove a hypothesis (even one one hoped was valid) in science is progressive and constructive because it adds to our knowledge base regarding certain phenomena. Science grows and improves with each negative result . . . even as one's personal ideology might suffer.
I know this is a much larger contextualization of your points, and again I apologize for this displacement and "use" (or usurpation). But I do think that the kind of speculation you are promoting, even when it draws from valid science, almost certainly will lead to "pseudo-science" or the misuse of science . . . which I realize is not your intention. You are an excellent observer, but you long for a perfect paradigm to cleanse and simply your observations. Here, I am (in my signature way) the "universal atheist", the devout non-believer . . . where you are the faithful one. I don't think either of us should "convert" or even reconcile. We are like two others or even opposites in these fundamental attitudes. I think there is value in presenting "ourselves" to one another. I don't think I will ever accept that your "faith" in intellectual paradigms ("divine" master plans of mental puzzle solving) is valid. But I am glad to know it and you exist, glad to feel your otherness (even if my relational mode for it is argument . . . and yours, at least from my perspective, is aloofness). What I mean is I don't want to discourage you. I have always happily "hosted" your thought and freedom of expression. But I still feel that this is a relational space. We can all "co-exist here", but not with the expectation that we will be protected from otherness and its relational "complications".
My own approach is quite different than yours, of course. My own relational "neurosis" would have me do my monstrously lewd and offensive dance in front of an audience armed with rotten tomatoes. But my pathology isn't exhibitionism or some kind of arrogant bullying. Rather, it's masochism. I have utterly given up hope on meeting the other gracefully and cordially at some mythic half-way point of collaboration (that seems a tissue paper fantasy to me, albeit one I still want to believe could be true). Instead I aggravate and wear a large target on my chest. I'm an agonist.
I feel like where I want engagement with the other at almost any cost (even abuse and scapegoating), you would equally but oppositely like to abscond to some private chamber of meditation and great thoughts, like Jung's Bollingen tower, where no one could penetrate. And here I come hurling rocks and dung at your windows, pissing in your garden, maybe even terrifying "the neighbors". It's a weird relationship we have, isn't it? Only two people as ridiculous as us could persist in our respective and habitual intensities.
To our ridiculousness, then
!
-Matt