Sometimes we get caught in an archetypal story, where our personal lives play out a universal and typical pattern. I suppose in some ways, all our lives are expressions of archetypal tales where there is a greater meaning being played out than just the facts of our everyday lives. In this chapter, a dream by my analyst suggested that I was contained in such a tale.
My analyst tells me that he had a dream about me. He dreams that
I call him and tell him that I’m being held at Calvary Church. I say “They really have me. Therefore, I can’t make it to my session.” My analyst says that he understands and when I can talk about it, to call him and we will reschedule. (Journal, 7-29-87)
In response to this dream, my analyst asks me if I feel caught in some kind of a closed, rigid system. At the time of this dream I was caught in the struggles between my heterosexual and homosexual selves, between staying married or divorcing, between continuing to teach high school Spanish or to leave teaching and purse my interest in becoming a Jungian analyst. I was also experiencing a growing conflict about whether or not to continue or stop my therapy and analysis.
Our discussion that particular day centered on the conflict between my heterosexual self and my desire to remain married and my homosexual self with its desire to be free of the marriage so it could spontaneously pursue same-sex relationships. Living within the bounds of marriage and my commitment to my wife felt like a system that I was caught in from the perspective of my homosexual self. But my analyst’s dream didn’t say I was being held by my marriage or by my relationship to my wife, but by Calvary Church. What if my association to my literal marriage was a projection of the inner marriage?
The “inner marriage” is the often stated goal of a Jungian analysis— the union of the opposites, the union of the masculine and feminine, the conscious and the unconscious—which brings about the birth of the Self and one’s unique individual destiny. His dream said that I was “being held at Calvary Church.” “Being held” suggests “beyond my control.” Something had me. Some power was holding me against my will, against my ego’s will, or my conscious will. The dream said this power was Calvary Church, suggesting this system was the “church system.” The dream also said, “They really got me.” Why did the dream say “they?” Why didn’t the dream say “it,” since “it” would be the natural and appropriate pronoun to refer back to the word church as a singular noun?
Could it be that my analyst’s unconscious had picked up on these conflicts and viewed them as an archetypal story, like the one played out in the Christian Church? Certainly my psychic system had been indoctrinated into and contained in the Christian story by the mere fact that I was born into and lived in a fundamentalist Christian minister’s home. Was I still caught in the personal story of the parsonage from which the earlier dream had told me I must free myself in order to heal the homosexual self? Or did my analyst’s dream point to something else—an archetypal story playing out in me that transcended the literal church and my own personal story?
During this time my wife and I had many intense and serious conversations about our relationship and my same-sex attractions and whether to divorce or remain married. She was becoming clearer that she was no longer able to carry my homosexual energies. At times she felt that she was just a substitute for my same-sex attractions, and even felt that sometimes the sex we had was nothing more than masturbatory fantasies on my part. We also had many discussions about my desire to leave teaching and move to Indianapolis in order for me to go back to school and become a therapist. Either one of these decisions—to divorce after twenty-one years of marriage or to leave teaching after twenty years—would disrupt our lives.
As mentioned above, if we ignore a conflicting situation from the outside and look at it from within with a kind of relative exclusion of the outer situation, this forces the situation into an inner vessel where it can be understood as a drama playing out inside us. The question, of course, is what was the drama? If my analyst’s dream suggested that I was being held in some archetypal story, what was the story?
The church is a mother symbol. We speak of mother church. To the extent that the church serves the collective purposes, it corresponds with Moore’s definition of the feminine as the active, group, procreative purpose of the psyche that serves the survival of the group or species.269 Calvary refers to the place of the Crucifixion of Christ on the cross. The cross or tree is another mother symbol. This is the archetypal story of the death of son-ego and his return to the mother for rebirth and transformation. Numerous myths tell how the hero was enclosed in the maternal tree trunk.270 The various meanings of the tree as sun, Tree of Paradise, mother, and even as phallus are explained by the fact that it is a symbol of libido. The basic underlying reality is the libido. However, it is not the real mother who is symbolized here but the libido of the son whose object was once the mother.
Every sun myth illustrates the idea of entering into the mother in order to be reborn through her. But here the incest prohibition intervenes. As Jung points out, the incest prohibition acts as an obstacle and stimulates the creative imagination to find avenues for the self-realization of the libido. Consequently, every rebirth myth devises every conceivable kind of mother analogy for the purpose of canalizing the libido into new forms and effectively preventing it from regressing to actual incest.271 In this way the libido becomes spiritualized.
This is also a way of understanding the Christian story—a rebirth and transformation of the soul-image (Christ) through death and resurrection. My analyst’s dream said that I was caught in such a system. If I considered that the tree was basically a mother symbol, then the meaning of this mode of burial became clear. The dead were delivered back to the mother for rebirth. This seemed to be an adequate explanation if we hold that the tree or cross is only a mother symbol. However, the tree is a much more diverse and complicated symbol, representing not only the mother or the feminine, it is also a phallic and masculine symbol. The tree became another symbol for my bisexuality.
The cross itself is a symbol of primordial androgyny and nature’s dualism, again suggesting the bisexuality that is inherent in nature. Beyond that, the cross is a symbol of the union of the opposites, the union of the masculine and feminine, with the vertical line representing the connection with the spiritual, the heavens, the masculine, and the horizontal representing nature, the earth, and the feminine.272 As such, being held on the cross represents the integration of man’s soul into the union of opposing forces: the masculine and feminine, the spiritual and the earthy or, in my case, the heterosexual and the homosexual awaiting the birth of the new man. Being held at Calvary Church suggested containment. Containment signifies the latent state that precedes regeneration.273
According to my analyst’s dream I was caught in the archetypal process of transformation and self-realization of libido, the sacrifice of the ego-self for the realization of this other man living in my soul. Jung has suggested that “No man can change himself into anything from sheer reason: he can only change into what he potentially is. When such a change becomes necessary, the previous mode of adaptation, already in a state of decay, is unconsciously compensated by the archetype of another mode.”274
Seen in this light, it is really the transformation, rebirth, and realization of the masculine God-image that began chasing me as a bull in my dream nine years ago. It seemed that this was a process that would not let me go—thus held in Calvary Church, held in the crucible of the conscious and unconscious energies—awaiting the resurrection of the Self. As Helen Luke so aptly puts it, “. . . the true peace does not come until one has been through all the struggles of the ego, and until one has accepted boundaries and conflict—to the bitter end. That’s what the whole Christian story is about. That’s what the cross is.”
Many men with same-sex attractions find themselves suffering silently in the church. These are often sensitive, loyal, and responsible men who feel a great sense of commitment to their upbringing, their families, and to God. Unfortunately, these loyalties often force an abduction of the Self—an abduction of that true, unique, authentic, individual sacred Self living in the soul. This unconscious Other often becomes projected onto the church, and we fall under the spell of the archetypal Mother/Father complex and God-image.
Yet the longing of this other man breaks through in same-sex fantasies and attractions, compulsive masturbation, and secret homosexual encounters and affairs. Suffering under a conflict of priorities—how to be loyal to both the church, our families, and ourselves—we face the great challenge of withdrawing this projected Self from the church and giving ourselves permission to embrace our own sacred masculine and to live our own lives as determined by our relationship with the Divine living in our own souls. This will most certainly be a Herculean task, but for many it is a necessity task. This process often feels like being nailed to the cross as we hold the tensions of these opposing forces, waiting for the resurrection of the new God-image—one that can embrace our homosexual and bisexual natures.
Holding this tension was frequently extremely difficult for me to maintain. At times there was a strong desire to choose one side over the other—a man over my wife. But something inside me would not permit it. I refused to say that I was one or the other. Somewhere deep inside I knew that I was both, and that I could hold both within. I could relate to the feminine and masculine energies within me and allow them to work in creative ways, bringing to birth the other man living in my soul. How I lived these energies out in my sexual life was another issue that the unconscious continued to speak to.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Other Man in Me to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.