In the increasingly polarised discourse around gender identity and psychological care, one dimension remains strikingly under-explored: the philosophical and psychological foundations shaping the assumptions behind gender-affirmative models. Much of the public and professional conversation proceeds as if these foundations are settled, or even irrelevant, when in fact they are deeply contested within psychology and cultural life alike.
As someone informed by Jungian approaches to cultural commentary, I find it necessary to question the unexamined adoption of certain psychological schools of thought—particularly existentialism and phenomenology—as default frameworks for understanding and supporting gender identity. These models are frequently employed in clinical, medical, and policy contexts, yet rarely are their underlying principles subject to critical discussion.
It is worth asking: what happens when ideas from philosophical psychology are applied wholesale to sensitive, developmental areas of human experience, such as gender identity, without transparency about their origins or limitations?
Current models of gender-affirmative care draw heavily from existentialist thought, most recognisably in the assertion that identity is self-created through conscious choice. Sartre’s maxim that “existence precedes essence” has become, whether explicitly or not, a guiding principle in therapeutic and medical settings. To affirm a person’s declared identity is to affirm their existential freedom—a gesture rooted in a philosophy that sees meaning as constructed in the absence of any inherent essence.
This emphasis on freedom is supported by phenomenological methods, which stress the centrality of lived experience. From this perspective, what matters most is how the individual experiences and articulates their identity in the present moment. These insights have clearly helped challenge outdated or pathologising approaches to gender variance, and have offered an important corrective to overly reductive models of the past.
Yet it would be a mistake to treat these approaches as neutral, or beyond critique. Existentialism and phenomenology are not the whole of psychology. Nor are they without their own ideological contours. What these frameworks often sideline is the symbolic, unconscious, and developmental complexity of the human psyche—areas central to depth psychology, and especially to the tradition shaped by Carl Jung.
From a Jungian-informed viewpoint, identity is not constructed solely by conscious will. The psyche is not simply a mirror of choice or experience, but a layered field in which symbols, archetypes, and unconscious dynamics are constantly at play. Jung’s concept of individuation suggests that identity is something that emerges through the integration of opposites, including tensions around gender, and that this process cannot be rushed, bypassed, or wholly controlled by ego assertion.
There is a certain impatience in the existential and phenomenological models—an eagerness to resolve ambiguity, to affirm the surface expression, and to proceed with action. While this may be beneficial in contexts where external validation or legal protection is urgent, it can leave behind the psychic work of interpretation, of allowing symbols to unfold, and of exploring the deeper meanings that suffering and conflict might be trying to express.
These traditions also tend to rely on a narrow conception of the self—a self that is conscious, agentic, and bounded. But what of the shadow, the anima and animus, the collective layers of myth and meaning that influence how gender is experienced and enacted? In focusing almost exclusively on immediate experience and personal narrative, existentialism and phenomenology can inadvertently obscure the very depth and plurality of the psyche they claim to serve.
My concern is not that these frameworks are being used at all, but that they are being used without critical awareness of their implications. In clinical settings, particularly those involving young people, trauma histories, or complex psychological distress, it is not clear that these models are always appropriate or sufficient. When existential freedom becomes a dogma, and phenomenological validation becomes an endpoint rather than a beginning, care can become instrumental and linear—more interested in ratifying identity than in understanding it.
To be clear, I do not propose a return to rigid, pathologising gatekeeping. Nor do I reject existentialist or phenomenological insights outright. There are moments when affirming a person’s felt identity is vital to their safety and dignity. There are therapeutic encounters in which staying close to lived experience is the most humane thing one can do. But these moments must not become the basis for a totalising framework, especially one that displaces other psychological insights and forecloses deeper reflection.
What’s needed, I would argue, is a more plural and reflective conversation—one that brings depth psychology back into the picture, not as a superior system, but as a necessary counterweight to the tendencies of contemporary practice. Jung’s legacy invites us to view gender not only as identity but also as symbol and process—a space in which inner figures speak, opposites interact, and meaning takes time to ripen. It encourages us to see psychic life as unpredictable, non-linear, and sometimes unknowable—qualities that sit uncomfortably with the urgency of political slogans and clinical protocols.
When clinicians, medics, and policy-makers adopt existentialist and phenomenological premises without recognising their limits, they risk imposing a view of the self that is flattened and partial. And when this view becomes codified into law or institutional practice, it becomes much harder to ask essential questions about the nature of psychological suffering, the role of symbolic imagination, and the conditions for genuine transformation.
We need to ask, for instance: what might a person’s experience of gender be trying to communicate on a symbolic level? What unconscious dynamics might be seeking expression through gender identity or dysphoria? What myths or archetypes are being activated—perhaps unconsciously—in the background of these experiences? And crucially, how do we distinguish between an identity claim that emerges from integration and one that may reflect a defence, a dissociation, or an unresolved trauma?
These are not questions with simple answers. But the refusal to ask them at all, in the name of affirmation or expedience, carries its own risks. If care becomes too focused on action without interpretation, or validation without reflection, we may lose touch with the deeper truths the psyche is trying to reveal.
In an age where identity is often politicised and medicalised, the role of cultural commentary grounded in depth becomes even more important. It is not the task of commentators to offer clinical prescriptions, but we can help open spaces for dialogue—especially where questions are being closed down too quickly. A culture that cannot tolerate ambiguity or symbolic complexity will struggle to support psychological growth. It may offer certainty, but not wisdom.
If we are to move forward with integrity, we need a care ethic that honours lived experience without collapsing into literalism, and one that remains open to symbolic meaning without returning to dogmatic interpretation. We need to resist the urge to simplify, and instead make room for the multi-layered nature of human identity—which includes conscious desire, but also unconscious fantasy, collective myth, and developmental process.
In this unsettled terrain, the challenge is not to settle the debate, but to keep the conversation open, especially across traditions that might otherwise ignore or dismiss one another. This means recognising that psychological care is never just a technical task. It is always, at its heart, a philosophical and imaginative one. And it is here—between the known and the unknown, the said and the unsayable—that the deepest work is waiting to be done.
Leave a Reply