Gender ideology is usually criticized on philosophical or medical grounds: Is there evidence? Is the definition correct? Does the theory hold up? Clinical psychologist and Jungian Bret Alderman takes a different approach in a conversation with Sarah Mittermaier in the gender:hacked newsletter. In his book Eternal Youth and the Myth of Deconstruction: An Archetypal Reading of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, he reads the postmodernism of Derrida and Butler not as philosophy, but as the expression of a psychological pattern: the archetype of eternal youth, the puer aeternus, which refuses to accept the time, boundaries, and body that come with growing up.

Who is Bret Alderman and what does he argue?

Alderman is a Jungian psychologist, educated at Evergreen State College, and hosts the podcast Beyond Gender. In his conversation with Mittermaier, he argues that "deconstructionism is a philosophical expression of psychological dissociation"—a way of thinking in which, in his words, "there is no perception, there are no phenomena, everything is always already representation". According to him, this complete doubt about a reality that can be known independently of language and interpretation is not neutral philosophical reasoning, but an exaggeration of a psychological state: the self detaching itself from what it is physically and factually.

Neverland as a metaphor for gender identity

Alderman sums up the core of his argument in a single sentence: "In Neverland, to make-believe something is to make it true"—in Neverland, pretending makes something true. He places gender identity within that logic: the eternal-child archetype refuses entry into a world with time, boundaries, and consequences, and declares a feeling to be a fact because the fact itself is too restrictive. He is ambivalent about Judith Butler: he acknowledges that "she can build much more complex labyrinths than I can", but ultimately calls the result "ridiculous", because, in his view, "a philosophy that makes sense... will come from a person who is coherent themselves". His point is not that Butler is stupid, but that a system of thought that continually undermines itself—claiming construction and essence at the same time, wanting fact and fiction simultaneously—reveals a psychological mechanism beneath its philosophical packaging.

What gets lost in the consulting room

Alderman works with clients himself and warns that both affirming and rejecting a gender identity carry the same risk: "what gets lost is the question: what is the psyche trying to say here? The metaphor gets lost". As an example, he mentions how contemporary approaches to masculinity "flatten its anima" by reducing the feminine to "the most superficial outward appearances" rather than achieving genuine psychological integration. In this reading, gender identity becomes a symbolic solution to a developmental question, presented as a literal fact rather than as a signal calling for explanation.

What this does and does not show

It is important to distinguish between the two: Alderman provides no new empirical evidence on desistance, regret rates, or brain research—he offers an interpretive framework drawn from analytical psychology. His claim is not that transgender people are lying or inauthentic, nor does he interpret it that way himself; his argument is that the philosophical foundation of "gender identity as an established inner fact"—the toolkit of Butler and Derrida that GenderID.nl analyzes elsewhere—does not itself provide solid ground, and that the metaphor of eternal youth explains why that foundation nevertheless retains its appeal. This is a psychological and philosophical interpretation, not a clinical statement about individuals, and it should be read as such: as an additional explanation alongside, for example, social contagion or cultural pressure, not as a substitute for medical and scientific research.

A recurring theme

Alderman's criticism connects with a structural problem that comes up more often on this site: the queer theory underlying current gender policy was never intended as an empirical discipline, but as an academic and activist movement. Anyone wishing to follow the broader intellectual trajectory—from John Money's assumption that gender is learned, through Butler's performativity, to the translation of those ideas into laws and educational materials—will find a more extensive overview at Genderideologie.nl.