Overview

Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist who broke with Sigmund Freud in 1913 and founded analytical psychology: a school of depth psychology that treats the unconscious as more than a store of repressed wishes. For Jung, the unconscious is also a source of images, meaning and growth. His vocabulary — persona, shadow, anima, animus, archetype, individuation — has spread far beyond the consulting room, and it turns up often in detransitioners' accounts of what their wish to change sex had been "about".

This page explains those ideas as Jung set them out in his Collected Works (CW), shows how later Jungians have revised them, and looks at how some contemporary analysts apply them to gender dysphoria. It then looks at how detransitioned and desisted people use the framework, how some trans people use it, and where the framework is weak. It is one of several lenses covered under philosophical frameworks. For the Freudian and object-relations tradition, see psychoanalysis.

Jung's map of the psyche

Ego, unconscious and complexes

Jung divided the psyche into three layers:

• Ego: the centre of consciousness, the "I" that thinks and chooses.
• Personal unconscious: forgotten or repressed material from one's own life, organised into complexes. A complex is an emotionally charged cluster of memories and images, such as a "mother complex", that can act almost like a separate personality.
• Collective unconscious: a deeper layer that Jung believed all humans share. It is structured by archetypes, which are inherited tendencies to form certain typical images and patterns (the mother, the hero, the trickster, the wise old man).

In Aion (CW 9ii) Jung named three archetypes as the ones that matter most in clinical work: "The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego. These are the shadow, the anima, and the animus" (Jung, CW 9ii, para. 13).

Persona

The persona is the social face. Jung called it "a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual" (CW 7, para. 245, quoted by Toyoda, IAAP). Jung did not think the persona was bad in itself; everyone needs one. The trouble starts when a person identifies with the mask and loses touch with what lies behind it.

Shadow

The shadow holds the parts of ourselves we refuse to see: traits, impulses and memories that clash with our self-image. Jung wrote that "the shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort" (CW 9ii, para. 14). In Jung's scheme the shadow is always the same sex as the person (para. 19). In popular use, shadow work means deliberately bringing these disowned parts into awareness.

Projection

Projection is the unconscious habit of seeing one's own disowned contents in other people or in the world. Jung stressed that it is not a deliberate act: "it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them." The cost is isolation, because "Projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face" (CW 9ii, para. 17). Jungians apply the same idea to the body: unwanted feelings can be projected onto one's own flesh.

Anima and animus

The anima is, in Jung's original scheme, the unconscious feminine image in a man, and the animus the unconscious masculine image in a woman. Together they form the syzygy (a paired opposite). Jung called them contrasexual archetypes. Unlike the shadow, they appear as figures of the opposite sex: "The source of projections is no longer the shadow—which is always of the same sex as the subject—but a contrasexual figure. Here we meet the animus of a woman and the anima of a man" (CW 9ii, para. 19).

Two points matter for what follows:

• The anima or animus is an inner image, not the person's identity. Jung saw it as a bridge to the deeper unconscious, first met by projecting it onto real people (falling in love, idealising, resenting). Psychological maturity meant withdrawing those projections and relating to the figure as part of oneself.
• Jung warned against possession: being taken over by the archetype instead of relating to it. In Aion he describes men who "are anima-possessed" (para. 29). Many detransitioners' readings of their own experience start from this idea.

The Self and individuation

The Self is Jung's term for the whole psyche, conscious and unconscious, and also its organising centre. Individuation is the lifelong process of becoming that whole person. Jung wrote that "Individuation means becoming an 'in-dividual,' and, in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self" (CW 7, para. 266). In practice it means facing the persona, integrating the shadow, and building a conscious relationship with the anima or animus. Jung also insisted that individuation needs a grounding in ordinary life: a person must be able to "grow in the soil in which it is planted" (CW 6, para. 761, quoted in Marchiano 2021).

Symbol, sign and concretism

Jung drew a sharp line between a sign and a symbol. A sign stands for something already known, like a road sign or a military badge. A symbol, he wrote, "always presupposes that the chosen expression is the best possible description or formulation of a relatively unknown fact, which is nonetheless known to exist or is postulated as existing" (CW 6, para. 814, quoted in Samuels, Shorter & Plaut via Jungian Directory). Dream images, fantasies and strong longings are treated as symbols: they point beyond themselves to something not yet understood.

The opposite tendency Jung called concretism, "a peculiarity of thinking and feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction" (CW 6, para. 696, About Psyche summary). Concretistic thinking takes an inner meaning as an outer, physical fact. Jung saw it as an archaic mode of mind, though one that everyone falls back on.

This distinction is the hinge of the Jungian debate about gender. Suppose a young woman dreams and fantasises intensely about being a man. A Jungian can read that image in two ways:

• Symbolically: the masculine figure stands for qualities she needs to develop — assertion, freedom from danger, separation from a parent, permission to be ambitious. These are qualities a woman can grow into as a woman.
• Concretely: the image means she is male in some inner sense, and the body should be changed to match.

Jung himself did not write about transsexualism as it is understood today. Applying his ideas to it is the work of later analysts.

Post-Jungian revisions of anima and animus

Jung's contrasexual theory was built on the gender assumptions of early twentieth-century Switzerland, and later Jungians have taken much of it apart. Jung associated women with Eros (relatedness) and men with Logos (reason and discrimination), and wrote that "In women, on the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while their Logos is often only a regrettable accident" (CW 9ii, para. 29).

Revisions include:

• Feminist Jungians. Demaris Wehr's Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archetypes (Beacon Press, 1987) argued that Jung often presented male projections onto women as facts about women's psychology. Polly Young-Eisendrath and Florence Wiedemann proposed a developmental, less negative animus (Jung Page).
• Decoupling from biological sex. James Hillman's Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion (1985) treated the anima as an archetype of soul and interiority in anyone, not a "feminine side" of men. Andrew Samuels, in Jung and the Post-Jungians (1985) and later work, challenged deriving psychological "principles" from bodies. He is quoted as writing: "The fact that a penis penetrates and a womb contains tells us absolutely nothing about the psychological qualities of those who actually possess such organs" (Jung Page).
• Gender as emergent. Susan McKenzie proposed that "Gendered feeling … would be an emergent aspect of mind and not an archetypal inheritance, and the experiencing body would be key to gender emergence" (McKenzie 2006).
• Queer revisions. A 2024 Psychological Perspectives issue, "Queer Jungian Voices", collected papers from the C. G. Jung Institute of Zurich's 75th anniversary conference (Carter 2024). In it, James Perrin argues that traditional anima/animus theories "have remained unworkable" for LGBTQI+ people because of "their drive to uncover essentialist, binarist 'truths'" (Perrin 2025).

These revisions cut two ways in the transition debate. If anima and animus are not tied to sex, then a man's strong "feminine" inner life is not evidence that he is a woman. It is simply part of being a whole person. That supports the detransitioner reading below. But the same move also lets trans-affirming Jungians argue that the classical theory's sexed binary should not be used to judge anyone's identity.

Jungian analysts on gender dysphoria

Lisa Marchiano and "psychic epidemics"

Lisa Marchiano is a Philadelphia-based Jungian analyst and co-host of the podcast This Jungian Life. She is one of the most prominent clinicians applying Jungian ideas to the rise in youth gender distress, and she is an advisor to Genspect, a gender-exploratory advocacy group (Genspect, advocacy source).

Her 2017 essay "Outbreak: On Transgender Teens and Psychic Epidemics" draws on Jung's writing about mass movements. Jung, who lived through both world wars, wrote often about psychic epidemics: waves of shared belief or emotion that pass through a population, which he discussed in the essays collected in Civilization in Transition (CW 10). Marchiano wrote: "Currently, we appear to be experiencing a significant psychic epidemic that is manifesting as children and young people coming to believe that they are the opposite sex, and in some cases taking drastic measures to change their bodies" (Marchiano 2017). She linked this to rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD), a proposed presentation in which gender distress appears suddenly in adolescence, often alongside peer and online influence (see rapid-onset gender dysphoria).

The essay drew a formal reply. Clara Schaertl Short argued that it "misrepresents current research, including its own cited references" and treats adolescent gender dysphoria "as a psychic epidemic rather than a legitimate medical condition" (Short 2019). Marchiano answered in the same issue that Short's framing "completely closes down the complexity of the multiple possible meanings of transgender experience" (Marchiano 2019). The exchange shows the core disagreement: is gender dysphoria a medical condition with a known treatment, or a symptom whose meaning has to be explored?

The case of "Maya" and concretisation

Marchiano's 2021 paper in the Journal of Analytical Psychology describes "Maya", a young woman who took testosterone for about 20 months before detransitioning (Marchiano 2021). Maya had a history of an eating disorder, grief and a difficult relationship with her mother. Marchiano reads both the eating disorder and the trans identification as attempts to move unbearable feelings into the body:

Pursuing transformation through disordered eating and then gender transition had the effect of concretizing her emotional losses. Displacing painful losses onto her body seemed to allow Maya to avoid her intolerable grief and gain the illusion of control. — (Marchiano 2021)

She draws on Jung's remark that "the body is often the personification of the shadow of the ego" to suggest that some people try to escape reviled parts of themselves by altering the body. Her wider argument is about symbol and concretism:

When gender identity is taken as empirical fact, the metaphor becomes concretized and we lose the ability to relate to our inner world in a symbolic way. When metaphors are made literal, the literal body becomes a vehicle for metaphoric expression. — (Marchiano 2021)

Marchiano does not argue that transition is always wrong. She writes that "for some people, living life in the opposite sex role – even to the point of undergoing physical transition – may be what the psyche requires of them", and that clinicians should affirm "the significance of their experience but without explicitly endorsing a specific course of action". Her objection is to the affirmative model, which she describes as making the therapist's role "to affirm – or confirm – what the patient 'knows'". She calls that principle "in direct opposition to usual and best psychotherapeutic practice". This is close to the position of gender-exploratory therapy.

The paper is a single case written by a clinician with a known view, and its interpretations were built after detransition had already happened. It cannot show how common such dynamics are, or whether they distinguish people who detransition from those who do not.

Related psychoanalytic voices

Outside the Jungian school, the London psychoanalyst Alessandra Lemma makes a similar point. Working with under-18s seeking medical treatment, she warns that "premature embracement of the empowering potential of the transgender identification" can undermine "the painful psychic work required to establish what transgender means for any given young person" (Lemma 2018). She argues for "equidistant curiosity" rather than either affirmation or scepticism. This tradition is covered on the psychoanalysis page.

Trans-affirming Jungian voices

Not all Jungians read trans identity as concretisation:

• Michael Marsman, a New York analyst, describes the emergence of transgender identity as "a collective shift towards a new or more differentiated way of experiencing and expressing sex and gender, a movement of world soul". His clinical examples show "dissociated aspects of the personality" seeking expression (Marsman 2017). He reads the same material Marchiano does — fantasy, anima and animus, psyche and body — in a teleological way: as pointing towards a goal.
• Lin Fraser, a depth psychotherapist involved in education work for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), has been described as fostering individuation in depth psychotherapy with trans clients (Fraser 2009, as summarised in Advocates' Forum, University of Chicago).
• The queer Jungian writers above argue that the classical anima/animus model encodes sex stereotypes and should not be used to rule identities in or out.

Both camps claim Jung's emphasis on the symbolic. Marchiano says transition literalises a symbol. Marsman and others say the symbol may be pointing towards a real transformation, of which bodily change is one expression. Jung's framework does not settle the question by itself. That is part of what critics say is wrong with it.

How detransitioners use Jungian ideas

On /r/detrans, Jungian vocabulary comes up repeatedly, usually picked up from books, YouTube lectures or podcasts rather than formal analysis. The comments below are a small, self-selected sample. They show recurring themes, not how many detransitioners think this way.

Wanting to become the anima or animus

Some commenters describe their wish to transition as a wish to become their contrasexual image rather than relate to it — what Jung would call identification or possession.

I felt like I wanted to become my animus when wanting to transition. He actually talks about embracing both parts of psyche somewhere, both genders, which is one thing that made me reject the whole transition idea in the end. As I figured it's the state I need to achieve in my mind not via altering my body. —New-Yoghurt-1179, desisted female

A detransitioned man replying in the same thread found the idea explained an idealised image he had been chasing:

Finding screenshots/saved pics from years ago reveals I've been trying to make myself looked like my "idealised" version of a girl - which is something I never even noticed, especially since I have no sexual attraction towards women —your_transgirl_dream, detrans male

Others use the "possession" language directly, and some apply it to other people with real confidence. One detransitioned man advised a questioning man that "Part of individuating is learning to dis-identify from and harness our impulses and drives instead of letting them harness us to the point where we identify completely with them" (AlviToronto, detrans male).

Integration instead of transition

The most common use is a reframe: the "other sex" inside is a part to be integrated, not a self to be turned into. This fits Jung's own picture of individuation, and also the site's view that gender non-conformity needs no label.

When I used to crossdress, my female persona allowed me to feel desired, pretty, soft, feminine, all the things that I thought I couldn't access as a man. But then I was able to integrate those things into myself more holistically and feel more whole as a human being, so I didn't need to change persona anymore to access those feelings. —AlviToronto, detrans male

Personally I started to notice that the urges to transition happen a lot for me when I’m burnt out. —ponyclub2008, detrans male

The same commenter goes on: "Maybe instead of transitioning we just need to recognize the unconscious nature of the “anima” and try to realize that it has its own needs and desires." Read this way, the urge to transition becomes a signal — of exhaustion, or of needs that a narrow masculine role does not allow — rather than an instruction.

Persona and the mask

Some detransitioned women describe their trans identity as a persona in Jung's sense: a mask that protected a vulnerable self.

But trans allowed for a layer between me and others. If this brash, loud, assertive (even aggressive)persona was rejected or not liked, it was no big deal because it wasn't really me. I didn't know how to healthily integrate or develop parts of my personality that I wished I had - like being more outspoken and confident. So I packaged it all up into a whole other person that I could play act. —Tall-Pool-9004, desisted female

This is close to the Jungian account: qualities a person wants to develop get split off and given to an "other" figure, instead of being grown into. A questioning male commenter made the social side of this explicit: "we tend to incorporate personas that are made my society like the trans woman archetype, and I realized that I could just be myself without tending to follow a pattern created by society" (Own-Code5856, MTF currently questioning gender).

Shadow work and early memories

"Shadow work" is the most practical form these ideas take. Several commenters describe it as part of how they found what they saw as the roots of their dysphoria. These are often trauma, shame, or internalised misogyny (see also reframing dysphoria).

And through bringing those old memories out of their shadow and into my consciousness (by simply actively thinking about them and asking myself questions) I learned that the thing that likely caused my dysphoria was just some embarrassing things that my 5 year old self had blown way out of proportion, and misinterpreted wildly. —Werevulvi, detrans female

Another detransitioned woman wrote that after this kind of inner work, "I realized that this trans journey was not truly about the body or gender for me" (nel_222, detrans female). One commenter used Jung's language of the unconscious directly, describing trans identity as "an escape from one's own demons-- yet those demons follow and take new forms as the new identity solidifies" (will-I-ever-Be-me, detrans).

Individuation through, not only against, transition

Not every detransitioner uses Jung to dismiss their trans past. Some describe transition as a detour that still did developmental work:

for some of us, our trans parts are what allowed us to, in my case, individuate from my homophobic upbringing and create an unshakeable commitment to living a life that prioritized myself over the opinions of others. —Weird-Experience-123, detrans

I think doing it in the first place was a great thing as it let me unpack a LOT of personal, family, cultural, and social baggage, and let me individuate myself as a person for the first time -- but I also think I held onto it way too long (7 years, even though I worked out 95% of my issues in year three). —GMWorldofMotion, detrans male

These accounts fit Jung's idea that symptoms can serve development. They also raise an obvious question: could the same growth have happened without permanent medical changes? Weird-Experience-123 adds in the same comment that the empowerment "should absolutely not have come with such horrible medical interventions".

Some find that clinicians have little to offer here. One detransitioned man wrote: "Psychologists and psychiatrist are at a loss, personally I found Some answers in the ‘cancelled’ Pioneers like Freud and Jung" (Mdayzhalalayma, detrans male). Lisa Marchiano's essays and podcast appearances are also shared on the subreddit. One desisted woman pointed others to a podcast with her "on this topic, embodiment of distress and psychic epidemics" (Comfortable-Code5235, desisted female).

Trans perspectives

Jungian ideas are used in trans communities too, often to affirm a transition. One trans woman recommends dream work as a guide during transition:

Look into jungian dream work. Dreamwork has been hugely helpful for me during transition. Basically, the woman you are hitting on likely represent aspects of yourself, traits that your unconscious is asking to be integrated or abandoned. —ATWTG, MTF

Others see Jungian language as a tool used against them. A trans man, describing a therapist who used his birth name, suspected "Jungian quackery because that sounds like a bad faith attempt at "shadow work" and by deadnaming you she thinks she's talking to your "shadow self"" (gentlemanandpirate, ftm). That suspicion matches the published criticism of Marchiano by Short and others. The concern is that "symbolic" readings can be imposed on people who have not asked for them.

Critiques and limitations

Essentialism and dated gender views

Jung's own anima/animus theory rests on fixed ideas of what men and women are like. The Eros/Logos passage above is typical. Detransitioners who use the framework often keep its useful core — everyone has qualities their culture codes as belonging to the other sex — while dropping Jung's stereotypes. That is close to what post-Jungians did. The risk of not dropping them is real: a framework that labels assertiveness "masculine" can push a woman towards believing she is "really" male, the same stereotype logic that many detransitioners say misled them.

Weak empirical footing

Jung presented his ideas as empirical, but archetypes and the collective unconscious have never been tested in the way modern psychology expects. Even within the field, a review of recent theoretical debate reports "a strong consensus" that "Jung's assumption of a biological/genetic transmission of archetypes can no longer be supported" (Roesler 2019). A review of outcome studies of Jungian psychotherapy found symptom improvements, but in naturalistic studies without randomised control groups (Roesler 2013). Empirical work on anima and animus specifically is small-scale: one 2023 study analysed 141 dreams from nine people in Jungian therapy (Saiz et al. 2023). No study has tested whether Jungian or exploratory therapy changes outcomes for gender-dysphoric people. See gender-exploratory therapy for the wider evidence picture.

Interpretation can explain anything

Because symbols can be read many ways, a Jungian account can fit almost any outcome. If someone transitions and is content, "the psyche required it". If they detransition, "the symbol was concretised". This flexibility is why both Marchiano and Marsman can claim Jung. It also means the framework is better at making sense of a person's history afterwards than at predicting who will benefit from what. Marchiano's own case study was built after the fact, from a single patient.

"Psychic epidemic" is a strong claim

Calling the rise in youth trans identification a psychic epidemic echoes real concerns about social contagion. But it borrows language Jung used for mass political movements, and the research on ROGD is still contested. Used carefully, the term points to the role of culture in shaping how distress is expressed. Used loosely, it can sound like a dismissal of individual experience.

Why the framework resonates

Despite these limits, it is not hard to see why Jung appeals to some people trying to understand a change of heart about transition:

• It takes the longing seriously. Unlike a purely biomedical model, it does not ask whether the feeling is "real". It asks what the feeling is pointing to. Detransitioners often say this was missing from their care.
• It offers a way to keep what was valued. A man who loved feeling soft and beautiful does not have to disown that; he can integrate it as a man. A woman who wanted strength and safety can claim those as a woman.
• It separates image from body. Jung's symbol/concretism distinction gives language to a realisation many describe: that the problem was never located in their breasts or genitals. One detransitioned woman quoted by Marchiano said that "it felt like I had asked a doctor to just cut off one of my fingers because I thought that finger was where the depression was stored" (Marchiano 2021).
• It frames growth as lifelong. Individuation does not end with a single decision, which fits the long, uneven process of healing and recovery.

Read as a set of metaphors for self-understanding rather than a proven science, Jungian psychology gives some detransitioners and desisters a language for what they lived through. It also sits alongside other frameworks people use to explain gender distress (see gender as an explanatory framework). Whatever its value, it is not a treatment protocol, and people in distress should look for qualified support (see the support directory).

References

• Jung, C. G. (1968). Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Collected Works Vol. 9ii, 2nd ed. Princeton University Press. publisher page.
• Jung, C. G. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Collected Works Vol. 7. Princeton University Press (persona, para. 245; individuation, para. 266). Persona passage quoted in Toyoda, S. "Persona", International Association for Analytical Psychology. IAAP.
• Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological Types. Collected Works Vol. 6. Princeton University Press ("Definitions": concretism, para. 696; individuation, para. 761; symbol, para. 814). CW 6 summary; symbol definition (Samuels, Shorter & Plaut).
• Jung, C. G. Civilization in Transition. Collected Works Vol. 10. Princeton University Press. edition details.
• Marchiano, L. (2021). Gender detransition: a case study. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 66(4), 813–832. study page, full text.
• Marchiano, L. (2017). Outbreak: On Transgender Teens and Psychic Epidemics. Psychological Perspectives, 60(3), 345–366. DOI.
• Short, C. S. (2019). Comment on "Outbreak: On Transgender Teens and Psychic Epidemics". Psychological Perspectives, 62(2–3), 285–289. DOI.
• Marchiano, L. (2019). Response to Comment on "Outbreak: On Transgender Teens and Psychic Epidemics". Psychological Perspectives, 62(2–3). DOI.
• Lemma, A. (2018). Trans-itory Identities: some psychoanalytic reflections on transgender identities. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. study page, PubMed.
• Marsman, M. A. (2017). Transgenderism and transformation: an attempt at a Jungian understanding. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 62(5), 678–687. DOI.
• McKenzie, S. (2006). Queering gender: anima/animus and the paradigm of emergence. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 51(3), 401–421. DOI.
• Perrin, J. (2025). The Animum: Making the Anima and Animus Theories of Jungian and Post-Jungian Psychology Fully Queer-Compatible. Psychological Perspectives, 67(4), 394–402. DOI.
• Carter, M. (Guest Ed.) (2024). Perspective: Queer Jungian Voices. Psychological Perspectives, 67, 327–331. PDF.
• Wehr, D. S. (1987). Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archetypes. Beacon Press. book record.
• Hillman, J. (1985). Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion. Spring Publications. Samuels, A. (1985). Jung and the Post-Jungians. Routledge. Both discussed in "Dismantling the Animus", The Jung Page. article.
• Fraser, L. (2009). Depth psychotherapy with transgender people. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 24(2), 126–142. author CV.
• Roesler, C. (2019). Theoretical foundations of analytical psychology: recent developments and controversies. Journal of Analytical Psychology. DOI.
• Roesler, C. (2013). Evidence for the Effectiveness of Jungian Psychotherapy: A Review of Empirical Studies. Behavioral Sciences, 3(4), 562–575. DOI.
• Saiz, M. et al. (2023). The Syzygy, Reformulation and New Perspectives: Dreams, Anima-Animus and Gender. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 68(2), 301–326. IAAP listing.
• Genspect (2021). A detransition case study: Concerns about affirmative care (advocacy organisation). article.