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A Framework for Understanding Gay Soul
The popular book, Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature (see review) is one which reflects many disturbing themes.
Two recent books provide a particularly thought-provoking perspective by which to understand these themes--Feathers of the Skylark, by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. (1996), and especially The Empty Self: C.G. Jung and the Gnostic Transformation of Modern Identity (also by Jeffrey Satinover, 1996).
From Feathers of the Skylark, by Jeffrey Satinover: (1996):
"Today the most widely accepted philosophy of morals, which is more commonly implicit than explicit, comes from psychoanalysis as rooted in Freud. This view holds that conscience and guilt are culturally relative, and derive from nothing more...than learned restrictions. Because these restrictions oppose the natural impulses, they [supposedly] engender needless emotional conflict...increasingly often, as the quest for pleasure and immediate gratification spreads widely, they are held to be unnecessary. In this view, these restrictions are passed on from one generation to the next, foolishly and uselessly, with no absolute basis...until enlightened would-be liberators arise to free us from them.
"...the psychoanalytic point of view has deeply reinforced a widespread, modern version of pre-Christian, pre-Judaic, pagan morals in our society...many leaders...consider paganism as not at all going 'backward," but going 'forward.'
"One of the great confusions of the modern world is the resymbolizing as sacred of that which is merely natural...The typically modernist error . . . leads to . . the redefining as sacred of not just the profane [natural], but evil as well."
In The Empty Self, Dr. Satinover explains the origin of this resurgence of paganism in our society. Paganism is essentially poly-theism in the form of worship of human instincts. "The modern, psychologized manifestation of polytheism is the plausible idea that since people differ, there must be different standards of behavior--hence of morality--to apply to each type of person...For each type of person, there is a god among the many gods. There is a god for the tribe of women for the tribe of warriors...for the tribe of homosexuals . . . " Character flaws are then redefined as virtues by placing them within their own particular framework.
Gratification of the instincts is soon identified with spiritual progress. Eventually this progress of degradation is "dressed up in lofty-sounding rhetoric" as we "dignify with fancy language that which, in an earlier age, would simply and unselfconsciously have been named as depraved." Sexual license masquerades as spiritual superiority. Through "re-imagining" we find new meaning--one which exacts no moral cost. We see a resurgence of the age-old symbolism of the "vulture as mother-goddess...sex and death in a sanctified embrace."
"When a neutral psychology becomes the authoritative worldview, then an empty, inflated self with relativized values and relativized standards of behavior --polytheism--will swifly become the new religion, as indeed it already has, whether recognized as such or not."
The most profound examples of modern resymbolization, Dr. Satinover says, are the transformation of God into self, and of evil into wisdom. What makes this new form of evil so seductive, says Dr. Satinover, is the fact that it is a mixture of truth and falsehood; concepts like "tolerance" and "diversity"--undeniably worthy in the proper context-- are often used as seductive wedges.
Dr. Satinover describes how psychoanalyst Jung was influential in transforming modern thought via Gnosticism. Jung believed that spiritual progress consists not of conquering evil, but of moving mankind into a "higher synthesis" by incorporating evil into good, says Dr. Satinover. Salvation was seen in terms of acquiring a special knowledge, or "gnosis," rather than through atoning sacrifice.
By displacing God with self, mankind began to redefine the creation as divine, thus falling into nature worship.
Gnosticism is responsible for many modern re-symbolizations, including an attempt to synthesize gender. The result of the distortion of masculine and feminine, says Dr. Satinover, is a widespread disordering of relations between the sexes. (The French psychoanalyst Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel expresses a similar view in Creativity and Perversion; the pervert, she says, blurs the boundaries between the sexes, and between the generations.)
"The pagan psycho-theology that lurks behind Jungianism...is simply the psychologized worship of instinct." Pagans make idols that are mere representations of their own impulses--"gods of power, money, fame, violence and sexuality. In primitive societies, these are idols of wood and silver and stone.
"In civilized ones, they are of words and concepts."
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Updated: 14 July 2002