Customer Reviews

Androgyny: The Opposites Within (Jung on the Hudson Book Series)

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June Singer's "Androgyny: The Opposites Within) is a metaphysical journey through the concept of androgyny, which will largely go over the heads of most casual readers who are not conversant with the works of the late Carl Jung, and the "intrapsychic forces" associated with masculinity and femininity. It is actually a reprint of the earlier edition, published in 1977, and large components focus on the womens' liberation movement and feminism, a topic June admits she is to some extent uncomfortable with. It is incredibly dated, spending much time arguing basic principles to which few if any of the generation who experienced the movement would accept as basic facts, and could have been condensed and updated for a modern audience, with modern issues.

It focuses tangentaly on Jung's conceptions, but largely ignores psychological research in the area of androgyny and elaboration since Jung's earlier work by psychologists. Moreover, she comes across as an advocate of androgyny but without citing evidence to justify it as a fully desirable state, only supposition.

What June does do very well, however, is offer a metaphysical guide to archetypes of androgyny throughout many cultures, drawing on Taoism, Gnosticism, Kabbalah and Yoga interpretations. It offers a cross-cultural perspective on androgyny throughout the ages, and shows androgyny to be a part of human nature that rises and falls periodically throughout the ages, which has been called "the hidden river ... nourishing religion and literature... bringing a torrent of reaction against an overwhelmingly one-sided political situation". As such, it is a powerful reference for the student of the arts in offering cultural interpretations, but its contribution to the field of Jungian psychology and sexuality is rather meager. Psychologists and students who follow the reference of Singer's book from other resources will be largely disappointed and dissatisfied that the "hype" doesn't match the content. I would dearly love to see a follow-up or second edition, to see the contribution June Singer could bring to the modern use, and mis-use, of androgyny as a concept.