Healing Masculine and Feminine Wounds
The idea that our psyches are divided into two gendered polarities is not something everyone accepts or understands. Pain is pain isn’t it? What makes a wound particularly masculine or feminine?
Jungian psychology as well as other traditions hold that there are archetypal patterns that correspond with gender. Two sides of a coin that, when in harmony, work together to keep the world balanced. The masculine, characterized by action, making decisions, and using reason, is the energy that helps us feel drive, structure and focus. The feminine involves resting, connecting, and feeling.
Think of it like a garden where there is a gardener who plants the seeds and builds a fence to protect them. This is masculine energy. Meanwhile, the feminine energy is the rain and the soil that nourishes the seed to grow. Both energies need each other but both can also negatively affect the seed’s growth by either underperforming or overwhelming it.
You might ask, “why does it have been masculine and feminine? Isn’t it a touch sexist and old fashioned to use metaphors that are based on such outdated gender stereotypes?” First of all, language is always socially constructed to some extent but whether its yin and yang, masculine and feminine, or sun and moon, using gendered language at the very least makes intuitive sense. When we reference the reproduction of plants there is are male and female, and so it goes with our human psychology. Some plants are the pollinators and it makes sense to label them male but we don’t confuse them with human men. The same goes with using gendered language to describe the human spirit. We all have masculine and feminine energy and we all suffer when it is not balanced.
Secondly, while gender stereotypes can be misleading and regressive, discussing the human psyche in terms of masculine and feminine is drawing on archetypes instead. A stereotype is a shallow, limited and often simplified over-exaggeration, whereas an archetype is based on deep, universal patterns that have been established across cultures and throughout time. A stereotype comes from society’s assumptions and often feel constraining but an archetype reflects the deeper part of human nature like instincts, themes, and stories that are relatable.
If we all have a masculine and feminine side it is possible that some psychological injuries could affect one side more significantly, or that a certain event could impact each side in different ways.
A masculine wound has to do with having the archetypal masculine qualities being repressed, distorted or wounded. These would effect elements like agency or the ability to take action. Perhaps a masculine injury would feel like failing to prove one’s worth, or feeling lost and without direction. A masculine injury might occur when one is injured by an authority figure or when being blocked or restricted from being able to take action or make a decision.
For my purposes here, I am focussing on psychological injuries of public shaming, cancellation and social death. While there may be some masculine elements to a social injury like this, the more one learns of archetypal patterns, the clearer it becomes that being disgraced publicly is largely a feminine wound because it is more associated with the neglect and harm to the archetypal qualities of the feminine like nurturing, relationships, and deep connection. Feminine wounds usually entail emotional abandonment or neglect and they might come from a loss of deep connection.
In reality there is probably a mix of both elements so both masculine and feminine approaches to healing will be worth looking into but if you are reading this to recover from a publicly shaming experience there is likely going to be more feminine healing required, whether you are a man or a woman.
In archetypal language, a masculine wound is healed through action. The hero’s journey (which is an archetypal masculine story pattern) is about a low status person gaining a higher status through adversity. The underdog battling and vanquishing the dragon in order to get the gold, or the princess, which bestows upon him esteem and status from his community when he returns. Whether it’s Harry Potter or Bilbo Baggins, a once weak and insignificant reject becomes the most esteemed hero of the story. The masculine wound is healed through setting goals, taking actions and little by little proving to one’s self that they are indeed of worth.
A feminine wound does not stand to benefit much from the setting of goals and the passing through more adversity. While the masculine looks to ascend, the feminine needs to descend into more introspection and more body awareness. The feminine wound require rest and meditation. It needs to connect with nature and with rituals that speak to the cyclical nature of the feminine.
Imagine a person (male or female) who had an embarrassing video of them go viral and garner thousands of nasty comments about their personal appearance. A totally masculine attempt to heal would involve something like, setting a goal to improve their physical appearance and gaining more confidence through exposure to social situations. In theory you could probably imagine this helping in the long run but if you were in this position and were mortified due to constant ridicule, it is unlikely that you would follow through with any of these goals. The treatment plan is too masculine.
A more feminine approach to healing would include some rest and renewal, likely in nature. A greater focus on building or rebuilding social connections and deeper intimacy with others. Using intuitive practices like art or music would also be beneficial.
Once again, this does not mean that men should always be slaying dragons and women should always be resting in nature after a catastrophe. Men have feminine wounds and women have masculine wounds. This is only a way of categorizing the effects of what has happened to you so that your capacity to heal is more specific and nuanced, but for our purposes here, I argue that a social injury is likely to have a greater feminine impact on anyone, regardless of their gender.