The Non-Binary Soul: Growing Towards a Liberatory Jungian Gender Stance

The non-binary soul is a new concept, offering both a collective and an individual symbol for the human potential to individuate in ways that transcend and complicate the gender binary. The disowned "other" that resides deep in the unconscious-what Jung conceptualized as the anima/animus-emerges in our era as the trans/non-binary person. This concept of the non-binary soul creates an invitation to the Jungian field to describe and facilitate an emerging capacity within all human bodies to house a fluid, complex, and sacred quality that trans people are pointing us all towards. Dream material from both trans and cis individuals, featuring trans/non-binary figures, amplifies the dynamic vitality of this human potential. The initiatory threshold that the non-binary soul signifies often elicits fear and resistance-resistance that, if not consciously acknowledged and integrated, can have lethal consequences for trans lives. Jungian analysis holds a unique opportunity and responsibility to address these resistances with conscious and rigorous effort. This requires adopting a courageous attitude that challenges the soul-deadening aspects of the gender binary, especially when it is held too rigidly or concretely. Such work requires an attitude of surrender and humility from Jungian analysts and scholars. Only with such an attitude can we harness its potential for a collective paradigm shift, wherein gender-and embodied life more broadly-are recognized as a fluid process of becoming, discovery, and simultaneous imagining; reaching for the possible while surrendering to the given.