Addressing the Anima

As I discussed in my Mysterium Coniunctionis series, the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung — that's him at left, on the cover of his autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections — applied his theory of the human psyche to the healing of the contemporary Christian church.

Jung felt the church in his day was suffering from a pernicious "one-sidedness," which to him was tantamount to a neurosis. A neurotic person blocks the deep powers of the psyche out of conscious awareness, so these powers' energy — their inbuilt "numen," the root word of numinous — lacks adequate outlet.

Instead of having their built-up pressure tapped and vented by appearing in consciousness as the proxy symbols which typically emerge in dream, reverie, and myth, these archetypes of the collective unconscious can fester and grow septic. They are prone to erupt into our day-to-day attitudes and behaviors in unseemly ways.

As with individuals, so with institutions such as churches and other religious bodies. In particular, Jung felt the contemporary Christian church lacked adequate symbols for representing the individuated Self, that archetype of archetypes which, duly realized through the raising of the psyche's consciousness, replaces one-sidedness with wholeness.

Setting aside for the moment the question of whether Jung was right about Christianity's shortcomings, I'd like to say yet more about the hidden potencies of the human mind, à la Jung's theory. In particular, I'd like to begin discussing Jung's idea of the "Anima."


In Jung's view, the unconscious mind is populated by hidden powers which he called the "archetypes," of which the Anima is one. These serve as templates for images: durable, ubiquitous, cross-cultural motifs depicting universal human experiences.

For example, Jung said we all carry in our deep unconscious an innate image of what a mother is like. That mother-image is generated by the Mother archetype, and we all possess it identically well in advance of any personal experience we have of our actual mothers.

Similarly, we all have an innate idea of a Redeemer, of which Jesus Christ is the primary symbol recognized among Christians.

Some of the archetypes are not personifications. Thus, our archetypal images for Light and Darkness need not be symbolized as human persons. But the archetypes which are not personifications are generally, Jung said, "transformative." When we are fully in touch with their hidden powers — balanced and augmented by the powers associated with their polar opposites — our psyche is necessarily strengthened and enhanced.

The images and symbols associated with the Self, representing psychic wholeness, can be personifications. In fact, Jung held that the Christian God is a symbol of the Self.

The images and symbols of the Self can likewise be non-personal and transformative. The Self archetype, then, is both personal and transformative. God symbolizes the personified Self, Jung said.

If the Self symbol is a transformative, non-personifying one, it serves as an image of wholeness and balance. In that the soul's wholeness results from bridging between all pairs of archetypal opposites, including the seemingly unbridgeable distinction between God and Man, the cross of Christ, by its very form, symbolizes the requisite bridging of opposites.


Of course, there was a person on the cross, so in the crucifix we have a symbol that is both personifying and transformative.





If not personified, the Self can also be symbolized by the image of a mandala, a circular figure suggesting by its completeness and essential symmetry that, again, all pairs of opposites in the mind can be bridged and brought into harmonious balance.


Or, as already mentioned, the cross of Christ (especially a Celtic cross, with its mandala-like circle motif) serves the same transformative function, in that the center of the cross-and-circle where the vertical cross-member intersects the horizontal upright represents a point of perfect balance.


Thus, archetypes, images, and symbols exist or arise in the collective unconscious. The ultimate goal of psychological development is to realize the Self, to bring hat archetype-of-archetypes into the field of conscious awareness. But before that can happen, another hidden archetypal image must first be developed. This is, for male individuals like me, the unconscious structure which Jung called the Anima.

The Anima is a man's innate image of the feminine, of what it is to be a woman. It is a primordial archetype which may or may not capture what women in general are "really" like, much less what any particular woman is like, today or at any time in the past.

The Anima is not culturally derived, not learned. To the extent that it is sexist, it cannot be aligned with feminist thought. If it characterizes femininity as passive, yielding, and sensitive to personal relationships, while the masculine is seen as active, penetrating, and insensitive to personal relationships, so be it.

The counterpart in women to a man's Anima is her Animus. It too represents an innate image, this time of the masculine ideal, of what it is to be a man. If the development of the unconscious Anima is a man's gateway to Self-realization, the development of the equally unconscious Animus is a woman's.

The Anima/us archetype typically serves as the center of a structure or complex in the unconscious mind, called be the same name: Anima or Animus. I'm going to discuss the situation from the point of view of a man with an Anima, but an entirely analogous situation exists for a woman with an Animus. If the Self is ever to be "realized" — brought fully into conscious awareness — first the Anima or Animus has to be developed.


By "developed" Jung meant something very specific (if hard for a lay person to imagine). Take the male perspective: a man quite naturally builds the attitudes and attributes associated with masculinity into the outward mask of the psyche. The Persona, as Jung called this mask, contains the attitudes we men advert to socially and interpersonally. If men are supposed to be active and not passive, for example, this trait of activeness typically shows up in a man's conscious Persona.

But all the while, there is a bundle of attitudes and attributes associated with his hidden, feminine Anima of his. They don't go away, and neither does the power of the Anima. For many men, the Anima is apt to thrust its way into conscious behavior from time to time, resulting in bouts of sullen moodiness, even weepiness, as in "blubbering in one's beer." Though these particular attitudes do not characterize ideal femininity to the exclusion of other, more constructive ones, they are the ones that tend to surface in a man who is for the moment "in his Anima."

The nub of the problem is that his Anima, because it has been shoved into his unconscious psychic depths in favor of the complementary masculine attitudes of the conscious Persona, remains undeveloped. The "functions" of the Anima are, in Jung-speak, deemed "inferior." This is not meant to imply that feminine traits don't measure up to the "superior" masculine attitudes and functions in any absolute sense. After all, in a woman's psyche it is the masculine Animus which is "inferior" and the feminine attitudes and functions in the Persona-mask which are "superior."

When an archetypal image remains undeveloped and inferior, it stays "undifferentiated." What this item in Jung's theoretical lexicon means is a bit on the subtle side. Here is one way I have of explaining it to myself:

Starting in earliest childhood, men "project" their Anima outward upon just about anyone or anything which can duly reflect its image back to them. In the simplest case, the Anima image is projected on girls and women. Whether a male's mother is a candidate for Anima projection, I'm not sure. But little boys certainly project their Anima onto little girls. Teenage boys project their Anima on teen girls. And so on.


Falling in love could not happen, in fact, without Anima projection. And, of course, the same is true of the projection of their Animus by girls and women upon appropriate targets of the male persuasion.

It seems, furthermore, that we all project the Anima/us lurking within us onto recipients other than members of the opposite sex. I'm not here talking about gay relationships, a subject which I as yet know nothing of Jung's take on. Rather, I'm talking about anyone or anything about which we find ourselves feeling zealously enthusiastic. Jung showed that our passions and enthusiasms are generally speaking the result of Anima/us projection. And depression, he said, represents one's inability to project the Anima/us.

But, getting back to the idea that romantic love is an Anima/us projection on both lovers' parts, a potential problem soon crops up. What happens when it turns out, as it always does, that our lover is not actually like the unconscious image we have projected onto her or him?

If the romance is to survive, there has to ensue a dialogue about this reality. The lovers have to mutually face up to the discrepancies between their Anima/us ideals and the real personality of the other person. This dialogue is the means, Jung said, by which each participant begins to consciously "differentiate" the Anima or Animus — i.e., learn its features and how they differ from the actual features of the other person.

In so doing, each lover begins to "develop" the initially undeveloped Anima or Animus lurking within the soul. And this becomes the basis for the great Jungian desideratum of "individuation."


Individuation is the royal road to Self-realization, said Jung. The term comes from the word "individual." As we raise our conscious awareness of what lies buried deeply in the psyche, we become more unique as individuals.

This has to do with the fact that the attitudes and attributes of the persona are intrinsically collective, not individualistic. The mask we wear for the benefit of others is made up of socially approved traits which "everyone" is supposed to have. Quirks of individuality raise warning flags: perhaps this person is not reliably a part of the group.

When the differences between a person's visible attitudes and attributes rise to the level of being more than mere quirks, there can be social sanctions imposed, even ostracism or worse. In such a setting, it becomes hard to "individuate": to develop parts of the psyche, such as the Anima/us and ultimately the Self, which are not accepted by the Persona.


The above represents a brief introduction to the Anima/us, how it fits into the realm of the archetypes in general, and how its development is essential to individuation and Self-realization. In subsequent posts I talk more about the Anima/us and how it functions as a "spirit guide" for seekers of the Self.