Exploring the Mythic Dimensions of Sexuality

“Our sexuality is never merely physical—it is mythic. It is the place where our complexes meet our archetypes, where our hunger for transcendence collides with our fear of dissolution.”
— James Hollis (The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other)

A Return to the Soul of Sex

I recently wrote the following reflective paper as part of my graduate training in human sexuality. While it was originally intended as a personal academic submission, I have chosen to share it here because it touches on themes that I believe need to be spoken of more honestly, more symbolically, and more soulfully. The true essence of sex was lost long ago and has been buried beneath the pollutants of inadequate social standards and shallow scripts that we have inherited throughout time. Thus, I encourage its come-back that is no longer dripping in taboo and shameful disgust.

It is a common misconception that sex is simply physical. To the absolute contrary, it is psychic, mythic, and raw. Below is my original piece, unedited in content, written from that liminal space between scholar, seeker, and clinician-in-training.

Journal #1: Understanding Sexual Development

Upon reflecting on my own sexual development and the shaping forces behind my internal “sexual script,” I am struck by how deeply both the elements of evolution and experience have etched themselves into the narrative. Gagnon and Simon’s Sexual Script Theory resonates with me in that it acknowledges sexuality not merely as a private, isolated phenomenon, but as a relational, symbolic, and socioculturally embedded experience (1973). It echoes a notion that I wholly believe that is no human arrives at their sexuality tabula rasa. Rather, we are inscribed with a primal blueprint, one that is then sculpted by our biology and then layered with meaning, shame, fantasy, myth, trauma, and desire through our individual lived experiences and in turn, our inner world.

As someone high in openness and agreeableness, I approach sexuality with a deep sense of curiosity and respect. My views of sex are not through a moralistic or binary lens, but instead through one that honors complexity. I believe that what consenting adults choose to engage in is not only their choice and business but is also, more often than not, an expression of deeper, symbolic truths, whether that be wounds seeking healing, fantasies expressing power dynamics, or mythic archetypes emerging through the body. Even practices like consensual non-consent (CNC) are rich with meaning. Thus, I see sexual kinks and sexuality as a whole, as a reflection of the psyche in motion. I find both (sexuality and the psyche) to be beautiful, endlessly fascinating and worthy of exploring through a symbolic lens.

However, I do hold strong boundaries around harm – a rather commonsensical approach. Pedophilia, for instance, is a domain where my openness narrows. While I acknowledge that urges are not chosen, and while I also believe that behavior is not always fully conscious (often influenced by unresolved trauma, psychological possession, or overwhelming emotional states, or what may also be called the Shadow aspect of the self (Jung, 1959)) it does not negate the reality that children cannot consent. The neurological and emotional development of a child ensures this, and any sexual exploitation of a minor represents a violation of power and innocence that I cannot condone (Seto, 2008). My moral compass is anchored in the principle of harm and the centrality of consent, which remains the non-negotiable line in both clinical work and ethical reasoning. That said, I reject the idea that individuals should be flattened into their worst behavior or vilified without psychological inquiry. I do not believe in ranking sins as if some are redeemable and others are not. Every individual has a story, and sexuality does not arise in isolation and is shaped by biology, psyche, environment, developmental trauma, and cultural imprinting (Buehler, 2021; Levine, 2003). To dehumanize someone is to sever the possibility of healing, and in doing so, we often reinforce the very cycles of shame and unconscious compulsion that fuel these behaviors in the first place. Thus, I believe the ultimate task of the clinician is to hold space for truth, even (and especially) when it is difficult, and to meet individuals at the level of soul; not to excuse harm, but to understand its roots and help prevent its repetition.

Culturally, I come from a long lineage of sexual suppression. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household where sex was cloaked in shame, spoken about in hushed tones, and governed by strict rules. It was not presented as something sacred in the empowering or life-affirming sense, but rather as something to be feared, controlled, and weaponized. It was surrounded by anxiety and silence (rarely was it discussed except through judgment or moral warning) and made explicitly clear that it was to only occur between a man and a woman within a heterosexual, physically committed marriage. There was no room for curiosity, nuance, or safety in those conversations. Desire was treated as dangerous; however, while the purity pill was perpetually force-fed, I was at the same time, taught to think critically, even if only within a narrow framework.

That early exposure to disciplined thinking ultimately allowed me to question what I had been taught. As I grew older and approached the realm of sexuality on my own terms, I began to see how disconnected these teachings were from the actual landscape of human experience. I came to reject purity culture and be drawn to the erotic, to the symbolic, and to the mythic dimensions that often emerge in sexual experience. My own experiences of love and sex have been transformative. They have mirrored archetypes such as the forbidden fruit, projections of the anima and animus encountering one another, and the longing for both union and ego dissolution (Jung, 1969). Sexuality is never just about sex, it is a story told through bodies, reactions, and silent scripts, often written in response to the very systems that tried to silence them.

Becoming a therapist who can work with sexuality, especially as a future sex therapist, feels like a calling that merges my personal openness with my professional identity. People have always confided in me about things they have never told anyone: fetishes, affairs, traumas, confusions. In those confessions, I never recoil. I lean in and not because I am titillated, but because I am reverent of how socially taboo and vulnerable that realm is for many. To be able to sit with someone in that space, without judgment, is an honor that I have never and will never take lightly.

Buehler’s (2021) reflective questions led me to notice how even my own comfort edges, albeit, while broad, still exist. I am less reactive to unconventional practices than I am to societal ignorance and hypocrisies surrounding sex. That tells me something: my bias is toward liberation. Through this conscious awareness, I must then be mindful to not impose this bias in sessions, even if it is cloaked in “progress.” Some clients may come from deeply religious frameworks or desire more traditional relational structures. My task is not to lead them toward my values but to help them discover their own authentic alignment.

In Jungian terms, sexuality is the shadow’s playground. It is where the unconscious speaks in moans, rituals, projections, and resistance (Hillman, 1972). If clinicians want to understand one’s inner world, we must listen to how clients speak about sex… or don’t. There, we will find roots to shame, power, longing, and the archetypal struggle between control and surrender.

If I were to illustrate my sexual development as an image, it would be a labyrinth. Not to be confused with a maze where one gets lost, but a sacred path inward: winding and looping through layers of masks, sharp exhales, and meaning. At the center there is not an answer, but rather, a mirror. Much like all sacred mirrors, it asks only one thing: the courage to look.

References

Buehler, S. (2021). What every mental health professional needs to know about sex (3rd ed.). Springer Publishing Company.

Gagnon, J. H., & Simon, W. (1973). Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. Aldine Publishing.

Hillman, J. (1972). The myth of analysis: Three essays in archetypal psychology. Northwestern University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1969). Archetypes and the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press.

Levine, P. A. (2003). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. North Atlantic Books.

Seto, M. C. (2018). Pedophilia and Sexual Offending Against Children: Theory, Assessment, and Intervention (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.

Closing Reflection

What strikes me now, after rereading this piece (and a few others in academic journals and post-modern feminist magazines, whose pages somehow manage to be both self-righteous and self-referential), is how even the most ‘progressive’ conversations around sexuality remain steeped in judgment, veiled beneath the illusion of liberation. It is no longer a matter of sin, but of social acceptability, dictated by ever-shifting ideological standards. As long as a behavior fits neatly inside a shiny identity label, it is celebrated. But if it challenges our comfort zones, or if it cannot be hashtagged or politicized, it is discarded, condemned, or pathologized.

We have traded purity culture for progressive purity. We still rank sins. Still choose who is worthy of understanding, and who is not. And we still fail to ask the deeper questions and to really think.

Sexuality is not a checklist. It is not a gender, nor is it a slogan. It is soul-stuff: a living current of paradox, shadow, trauma, desire, repression, and longing. Sexuality is not meant to be safe. It is meant to be sacred.

Sex and sexuality is another area in which I am tired of the flatness: of the empty performances of sexual liberation that still revolve around control. Of the cowardice in our discourse, the refusal to sit with what disturbs us, and the rejection of anything that does not come pre-approved by an ideology from either side of the track.

We do not heal by policing people into silence, nor do we grow by judging which wounds deserve compassion. We do not and will continue to not understand sex — truly understand it — until we stop moralizing and start listening.

Life is nuance. Truth is contradiction. And something as sacred, as revealing, and as volatile as sex deserves better than dichotomous thinking. It deserves uncensored honesty.

“Sexuality is the strongest instinctual force that we experience. It carries both the danger of possession and the possibility of transformation. The question is always whether one is possessed by the instinct or is able to relate to it consciously.”
— Marie-Louise von Franz (Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche)