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Imagine a shimmer of ephemeral dust trailing on the breeze. Fleeting in its appearance, it holds the promise of something new seeking to be given form, much like the experience of a dream. To enter into such imaginative realms, myriad things can be set to whirl. Fairy tales are closely related to such - dreams, myths, indeed, unconscious processes overall -in that they speak in the same metaphorical tongue. It's a language of symbo1s and images - a shadowy world - as well as a particular narrative structure. Edward C. Whitmont, a Jungian analyst, described these shadowy realms quite well. He said they contain "everything that has been rejected during the development of the personality because it did not fit into the ego ideal."l Fairy tales signify much of the same, illustrating things we already know, or things that need to be remembered, as they lead us on a journey through stages and phases of psychological growth. The symbolism of the unconscious, the language of fairy tales and dreams, elicits identification with this matter, portraying life-span issues and event, related to psyche, as a means of reflecting the human condition itself. Fairy tales define elements of experience related to personal concerns, such as emotional development, side-by-side with problems of self-identity, giving voice to common experiences shared by one and all. It's part of their universal appeal. Yet, they can also be said to be uniquely tuned to the perspectives of difference, as well. The story of "The Ugly Duckling," as such, is perhaps a therapeutic metaphor, par excellence, charting a course through the difficulties faced by individuals from many diverse groups. The trials and travails of "The Ugly Duckling” may be especially well suited to serve as a mirror for the experiences of gay identity formation in men. Hans Christian Anderson, author of "The Ugly Duckling," (as well as 160 others) is the single-most prolific writer of fairy tales, ever. His stories have enchanted young and old for over 160 years. Like "The Ugly Duckling" many of Anderson's fairy tales reflect the life experiences of gay men. Indeed, for Anderson was a gay man himself.
So the story begins, an apt expression of the gay man's experience of being born gay into a non-gay world. To wit, "children who will eventually be... homosexual often develop an awareness of being different at an early age. They may not understand the sexual nature or precise meaning of their 'differentness,' but they soon learn it is negatively regarded."3 Indeed, subtle, less conscious formative processes are set to work at the very earliest of age, such as the lack of mirroring responsiveness, in which the gay child's expressions, the very nexus of his being, are dimly recognized and interpreted as injurious to the parent's sense of well-being. The father's uncomfortable reactions, especially, to the gay child is confusing, with the father withdrawing at unexplained moments, repeated over and over again. Worse, because such original experiences take place on a level of being not yet available for conscious interpretation, or even preconscious integration, it can be likened to trauma itself. Unlike being Black or Jewish, for example, the gay child is also typically alone: with his "differentness;" as well as unclear and confused by "it," increasingly conflicted by the outer world's response, and ultimately horrified by "it."4 "One would expect that a person so frustrated in his emotional and sexual life would [grow up] to be bitter at a society and a family structure that have defined his potential happiness as sin, social malady, or mental disorder. But he is not angry." Instead, the gay man internalizes such disparaging labels as the truth about himself.5 That's not to say that anger does not play it's part. It's usually turned inward, however, in the form of depression, or something much worse. Such negative, internalized forces find their way out in many ways, the most pernicious of which is to distort the gay individual's sense of identity, to disenfranchise them from any sense of self, "in many cases experienced as a drastic sense of loss, of... esteem, initiative and legitimate entitlement. The self is prone to fragmentation, enfeeblement, and disharmony." Tony Lee, a 40 year old gay man, grew up in Manchester, England. His earliest pre-sexual recollections of difference began with a crush on a male teacher when he only 9 years old.. He was later introduced to intimacy and romance by way of television and movies. His earliest sexual fantasies followed, ''as if I was one of the characters in the movies. If only I could be one of those women in order to have one of those guys! That made me feel good. But it also made me feel weird." Tony's later masturbation fantasies similarly related to men, but the contradictions continued to whirl, "... A crazy mix of feelings. I felt dizzy, I felt good, But I also felt kind of embarrassed~ like I had done something wrong, Sex with men was forbidden and dirty. I don't know if anyone really told me that, but it's definitely something I understood to be true." So he asked his best friends if they were having the same sorts of feelings. “No! And they would laugh at me and taunt me. I was humiliated and ashamed. You know we were just kids, and I wanted to be the same as my friends, as the rest of the
people in the world. It made me feel so bad to be so different... I thought I had to correct this thing, this problem. But I didn't know what I could do." Outcast due to difference, much like the ugly duckling, Tony was pecked and chased and made to feel like he didn't belong anywhere. And so, unable to fit in, he ran away from the others, misunderstood, sad and alone. In the depths of a bitter winter, the barren grip of depression itself, just as the fairy tale duckling became frozen in the ice on a pond, Tony was ready to give up Tony "had sex" for the first time with another person when he was in high school. He was in the library one day, after school, when an older guy, in his mid-thirties, propositioned him. "I was shaking., so scared" of course, but the idea really turned me on. I thought, 'this is my dream come true. The chance to be with someone like me, and so I told myself, 'just go for it!' And I did. Again and again!"10 These are all words Tony used to describe his thoughts while growing up gay. Feeling good fostered guilt. Different meant a huge problem. But out of such bewildering contradictions came triumph, a process of "coming out," much like the ugly duckling transformed, Once he began to raise his wings, Tony flapped with much greater strength than ever before. Such is the marvelous transformative power inherent in the affirmation of self.
Coming out as a gay men entails not only openly revealing one's sexual orientation to family and friends, as well as forming affirmative social alliances with people of one's own kind, but also unearthing and integrating into the totality of one's personality all the influences and experiences - shadow material, as it were - which colluded to set one off track. Combined, they are each part and parcel of an overall process of understanding and growth. It provides a healthier sense of identity; internal structure, and balance with the concomitant ability to more fully participate in intimate relatedness to others, including a rightful experience of homosexual behavior itself. That's not to say, of course, that simply getting into somebody else's pants - as divine as that might - is an end unto itself, but it does invariably lead closer to a meeting with the reflection in the fairy tale pond, so to speak - the recognition of one's own true Self. The meaning of such was put well by the Jungian analyst, Edward Edinger, who said "the Self as the center and totality of the psyche - which is able to reconcile all opposites - can be considered as the organ of acceptance par excellence. Since it includes the totality, it must be able to accept all elements of psychic life no matter how antithetical they may be. It is this sense of acceptance of the Self that gives the ego its strength and stability. "12 Much like the underpinnings of contemporary Jungian thought, the psychology of native peoples is similarly a psychology of the sacred, identifying the Divine as a naturally occurring phenomenon - that is to say that the Divine is in Nature, including human nature. The divinity of gay people in such cultures, what they call the Two-Spirit people, is that they possess both a male and female spirit inside, possessing "the original unity of humans, their differentiation into separate genders, and the potential for reunification as well."13 While seemingly far afield from the story of "The Ugly Duckling" it is not. That is, transformed into the swan, as the lucky duckling is, communicates many different levels of meaning, including in which is the fact that the symbol of the swan has come to be seen as an image of Hermaphrodite, the androgynous Greek deity in which masculine and feminine no longer stand apart. Indeed, the swan on the mystical plane has always alluded to the androgynous people of many so-called "primitive" religions, such as the Two-Spirit ones.14 Carl Jung wrote that homosexuality is an "incomplete detachment from the hermaphroditic archetype, coupled with a distinct resistance to the role of a one-sided sexual being.”15 Insofar as Hermaphrodite itself, he said “it preserves the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost."16 William James, the eminent American psychologist, spoke of the same such unitary reality of Hermaphrodite present in the psyche: "It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better one, is itself the genus [Original Man] and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself."17
"Some little children came into the garden with corn and pieces of bread which they threw into the water, and the smallest one cried out, 'There is a new one! A new one has come! And he is the prettiest one of them all! And the old swans bent their heads and did homage before him. The lilacs bent their boughs right down into the water before him, and the bright sun was warm and cheering. He rustled his feathers and raised his slender neck aloft, saying with exultation in his heart, 'I never dreamed of so much happiness when I was the Ugly Duckling! "18 "The Ugly Duckling" thus gives voice to a powerful vision, symbolically representing the full range of problems and possibilities inherent in the understanding and treatment.of gay men. Many in the gay community suggest that the solution begins where the fairy tale actually ends. By reclaiming and reintegrating a heritage to be found everywhere present - including held deeply within -the potential is that gay men will experience the boundless sense of joy which comes from an increased sense of self, a deeper and more complete experience of life, and, along with it, a decline in the self-destructive behaviors still evident in segments of the gay community today. Indeed, just like the mortal who partakes of the food of fairyland, you can never return untransformed to such an earthly life again. End FOOTNOTES: Full Citations The Ugly Duckling
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