Sex divested of its biological function serves the purpose of the soul. From a psychological point of view, we often project repressed, split off and unconscious parts of ourselves onto objects. These objects can be people and situations that attract the energies of these repressed parts. We find ourselves caught in compulsory or repeating behaviors in an attempt to get these parts into life. We also project these parts on to people with whom we engage in sex all with the unconscious longing to get these parts into life. We also meet these split-off parts in our sexual dreams and fantasies.
In this chapter, I explore the unconscious, symbolic and spiritual meanings of three main sexual behaviors of gay and bisexual men: oral sex, anal sex and masturbation. The material in this chapter contains explicit and graphic sexual content. The dreams, fantasies and other reports are not meant in any way to be erotic or pornographic but are used within the context of a therapeutic frame only to demonstrate how our repressed and split-off parts manifest sexually in an attempt to become recognized and get into life. For example,
I dream that
I perform oral sex on a man who is an officer in the military. When I finish I turn to go. The man orders me to go out into the field and perform oral sex on all the soldiers. Because I had performed oral sex on him, I have been initiated into this group and am now under the command of this officer. This is a military unit and I am to perform oral sex on all the soldiers. (Journal, 1-3-85).
Later that night I dream that I am in the military. I am lined up with other soldiers on a field. We are doing drills in the nude. We are told to bend over. As I do, the man behind me performs anal intercourse on me. (Journal, 1-3-85)
Sex divested of its biological function serves the purposes of the soul.155 Anal intercourse, oral sex, and masturbation are central themes in same-sex dreams, fantasies, and behaviors. Operating on the idea that spiritual meaning is born when images and behaviors are recognized as carriers and therefore symbols of patterns of energy at work within the individual, we can begin to explore the symbolic meaning and spiritual intent or unconscious purpose of such desires, fantasies, and attractions. Symbolism reveals aspects of reality that escape other modes of expression.156
As pointed out earlier, most human thought and behavior is symbolic rather than literal.157 The symbol carries the unconscious projection,158 and it is the symbol that moves the energy from one realm to another.159 To understand the meanings of the symbols that carry this energy as it plays within the man who has same-sex attractions is to gain some insight into what it is that he actually seeks through these acts and fantasies. To give symbolic meaning is not intended to diminish the sexual aspect, nor is it to negate or deny the biological and environmental determiners of homosexuality and same-sex attraction. Rather, it is an attempt to bring meaning and understanding to these same-sex fantasies and behaviors, a meaning that might contribute to the actual realization and fulfillment of their unconscious purpose and spiritual intent. When the unconscious purpose of a behavior has been fulfilled, the energy moves to another level of development.160
In the dreams and fantasies of men, unconscious masculine energy may express itself in the image of a homosexual.161 As a phallic expression of the unconscious, he simultaneously represents the chthonic aspect of the masculine and ultimately the initiating spirit.162 In certain expressions of homosexuality it seems that some part of the man is under the influence of this chthonic aspect of the masculine. This part seeks a sexual relationship with a man onto whom this unconscious masculinity is projected. Thus, same-sex attraction can be understood as the longing for the concrete manifestation of that potential that is contained in the Soul and corresponds to the quest for the soul’s realization. In homosexual love, the partner often becomes the carrier of the soul image and through the power of the relationship may unconsciously assist his lover, as the initiating spirit, in bringing that potential to birth in himself.163
The anima as the feminine image and urge for life in a man’s soul initiates the development of the personality164 and brings about not only feminine elements but also a dominant masculinity.165 In the previous chapter I suggested that this soul image may initiate a same- sex relationship at times by falling in love with a man right through the ego in an attempt to establish a relationship between the man and this unconscious other living in his soul. The soul longs for the inner unity and wholeness of the personality and becomes the agent for this union.166As symbol, the same-sex partner becomes the carrier of the unconscious image that longs for consciousness.
I am operating on the assertions of quantum physics that everything is energy, both the physical plane of matter and the more abstract plane of the mind. I’m also operating on the idea that all behavior and thought are symbolic. Therefore, sexual fantasies and behaviors are symbolic expressions of energy at work in an individual but whose purposes are for the most part unconscious.
In discussing so-called perversions, the late noted Jungian psycho- analyst and homeopathic physician, Edward Whitmont. in his book Return of the Goddess says that same-sex oral and anal sexuality can be understood as meaningful patterns of energy as it plays at creation and development, expressing basic, unconscious, and unacknowledged urges for the purpose of balancing a one-sided position. As such, they are archetypal in that they express the call of a basic power that is essentially of a religious and numinous or spiritual character.167
The focal point of the energy in anal intercourse, fellatio, and masturbation is the penis. This yearning for contact with the male organ represents symbolically a deep need for connection with the soul, represented by the phallus, which I have shown elsewhere is a symbol for the Divine Masculine and the creative masculine spirit.168 The symbol and the libido or psychic energy associated with it are unknown quantities, hard to recognize, never quite definable,169 something little known or completely unknown.170 Psychic energy is the common denominator of all symbols. Their common meaning lies in the fact that they are all analogies of the same thing.171
For example, phallic symbols are supposed to stand for the penis and nothing more. However, psychologically speaking, the penis is indeed itself but also a symbol of something more, the meaning of which is not necessarily easy to determine. Primitive people, like the ancients, would never confuse the phallus as a ritualistic symbol with the penis. For the primitive, “the phallus always means the creative mana, the power of healing and fertility, the ‘extraordinarily potent,’ . . . whose equivalents in mythology and in dreams are the bull [italics mine], the ass, the pomegranate, the yoni, and the he-goat, the lightening, the horse’s hoof, the dance, the magical cohabitation in the furrow, and the menstrual fluid, to mention only a few of the thousand other analogies. That which underlies all the analogies, and sexuality itself, is the archetypal image whose character is hard to define, but whose nearest psychological equivalent in perhaps the primitive mana-symbol.”172
As detailed in chapter 1, the phallus is the source of life and libido, the creator and worker of miracles, the inseminator of the earth. It stands for the creative divinity working in darkness to create a living thing.173 No matter how clearly a phallus symbol appears as such, it does not denote the sexual organ. It is always a symbol for the libido. A symbol points to something real or to a structure in the world. The phallus, the erect penis, is the symbol of archetypal masculine and points to archetypal masculinity as an originating psychic force.
Given that sexuality is “a fundamental expression of psychic energy”174 and “in its symbolic dimension has a spiritual function,”175 same-sex anal intercourse can be understood as the sexual manifestation of the spiritual desire of an aspect of the individual to surrender to the masculine spirit of the soul, which contains his unconscious masculine image that longs for relatedness and connection but gets projected onto the other man. The desire inherent in anal intercourse is to surrender to the soul’s longing for some unconscious and unrealized aspect represented by the phallus. In my own experience of anal intercourse, whether in fantasy or acting it out with another man, I had the experience of complete abandonment of myself, a giving of myself over to this other man without reservation, saying “do with me as you want. I am yours.” I longed to be ravished by him, carried off and raped by him, impregnated by his spirit, and indoctrinated into his mysteries so that I could give birth to the other man in me—the man I imaged him to be.
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