On the Evolution of Intimacy by Charles M. Johnston

Author:Charles M. Johnston [Johnston, Charles M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2019-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

Historical Perspective

CST calls its creatively based framework for understanding change and its workings developmental/evolutionary perspective. A brief outline of what it describes over the course of culture’s story follows. To have a concise and precise language for stages,3 I will use CST’s formal nomenclature: Pre-Axis (for creation’s “incubation” stage), Early-Axis (for creation’s “inspiration” stage), Middle-Axis (for creation’s “perspiration” stage), and Late-Axis (for creation’s “finishing and polishing” stage). I will focus primarily on the evolution of “vertical” polar relationships to keep things simple (though we could as easily emphasize the horizontal).4

Again, as with Chapter’s Two’s introduction to the concept of gender archetype, I will draw heavily on the language of myth and symbol. Doing so provides a way to think about culture’s evolutionary picture that gives a direct voice to both archetypally masculine and archetypally feminine sensibilities.

For these descriptions to help us, it will be critical throughout that we keep the essential distinction between gender and gender archetype clearly in mind. Again, these are qualities that both men and women possess. Indeed, as I’ve suggested, depending on a person’s personality style, men can manifest more of the archetypally feminine and women more of the archetypally masculine. But as long as we don’t forget this essential distinction, the evolution of gender archetype provides perspective for understanding identity, gender, and love that is very hard to achieve in other ways.

Creative “Incubation” (Pre-Axis)

As a poet, I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the Paleolithic; the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.

—Gary Snyder

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