Animus:
The male component of the unconscious female psyche. Like the anima (Eros), but he personifies “spirit” and “intellect” (Logos). His negative aspect gives a woman her irrational convictions and opinions. He’s usually plural because women focus on one man only in conscious relationships. He also compensates the basic female faculty for unity. He seems to lack the anima’s historical quality and is more concerned with present and future, which Jung saw as compensation (its women who think more about roots, the past, etc.)–but in his deepest qualities he is as history-oriented as the anima.
Anima:
The feminine component of the unconscious male psyche and inner counterpart to the persona. Possibly she reflects a man’s smaller number of female genes. Ultimately an archetype of Eros and of life itself, this “woman within” functions as a filter, bridge, guide, and mediator between the ego and the deeper layers of the unconscious. As long as she’s not differentiated she stands for the unconscious; later, she stands apart, a daughter to the Wise Old Man who compensates her and sometimes mate of the shadow. Because she carries a man’s “soul” and his “relatedness,” she can be fully realized only with a female partner. “If a man cannot project his anima, then he is cut off from women” (Analytical Psychology).
First projected onto the mother and always mixed with the mother archetype, she usually appears after a man confronts and integrates his shadow. Unless he addresses her as an autonomous personality-fragment and gets to know her, integrating, not her, but her products, he will project her onto an outer woman and confuse the image with the external reality. (Jung didn’t need to consult his anima once he’d learned to read the meaning of his dreams directly, without requiring a mediator, and to accept whatever surfaced from the unconscious. When she vanishes into the unconscious, the collective contents are constellated. The anima seems immortal until she “brings forth”; then she dies.)
Anima images are usually singular (as opposed to animus images) to compensate both the male habit of seeing a mate as one woman among many and the basically male faculty of discrimination, as opposed to the basically female faculty of unifying and synthesizing. (Jung felt that for the collective state to arise, the anima had to be suppressed.)
The anima passes through four stages corresponding with a man’s maturity: Eve, Helen of Troy, Mary, and Sophia.
Anima and Animus
A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play. For most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung, like Freud and Adler and others, felt that we are all really bisexual in nature. When we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only gradually, under the influence of hormones, become male or female. Likewise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male nor female in the social sense. Almost immediately — as soon as those pink or blue booties go on — we come under the influence of society, which gradually molds us into men and women.
In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, usually based on our different roles in reproduction, but often involving many details that are purely traditional. In our society today, we still have many remnants of these traditional expectations. Women are still expected to be more nurturant and less aggressive; men are still expected to be strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung felt these expectations meant that we had developed only half of our potential.
The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together, they are referred to as syzygy. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, even argumentative.
The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our other half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that “fills” our anima or animus archetype particularly well!
Jung’s Archetypes
Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung described several archetypes that are based in the observation of differing but repeating patterns of thought and action that re-appear time and again across people, countries and continents.
Jung’s main archetypes are not ‘types’ in the way that each person may be classified as one or the other. Rather, we each have all basic archetypes within us. He listed four main forms of archetypes:
- The Shadow
- The Anima
- The Animus
- The Self
The Shadow
The Shadow is a very common archetype that reflects deeper elements of our psyche, where ‘latent dispositions’ which are common to us all arise. It also reflects something that was once split from us in early management of the objects in our lives.
It is, by its name, dark, shadowy, unknown and potentially troubling. It embodies chaos and wildness of character. The shadow thus tends not to obey rules, and in doing so may discover new lands or plunge things into chaos and battle. It has a sense of the exotic and can be disturbingly fascinating. In myth, it appears as the wild man, spider-people, mysterious fighters and dark enemies.
We may see the shadow in others and, if we dare, know it in ourselves. Mostly, however, we deny it in ourselves and project it onto others. It can also have a life of its own, as the Other. A powerful goal that some undertake is to re-integrate the shadow, the dark side, and the light of the ‘real’ self. If this can be done effectively, then we can become ‘whole’ once again, bringing together that which was once split from us.
Our shadow may appear in dreams, hallucinations and musings, often as something or someone who is bad, fearsome or despicable in some way. It may seduce through false friendship or threaten with callous disregard. Encounters with it, as an aspect of the subconscious, may reveal deeper thoughts and fears. It may also take over direct physical action when the person is confused, dazed or drugged.
The Anima and Animus
The second most prevalent pattern is that of the Anima (male), Animus (female), or, more simply, the Soul, and is the route to communication with the collective unconscious. The anima/animus represents our true self, as opposed to the masks we wear every day and is the source of our creativity.
The anima/animus may appear as someone exotic or unusual in some way, perhaps with amazing skills and powers. In fiction, heroes, super-heroes and gods may represent these powerful beings and awaken in us the sense of omnipotence that we knew in that very early neonatal phase.
Anima and animus are male and female principles that represent this deep difference. Whilst men have an fundamental anima and women an animus, each may also have the other, just as men have a feminine side and women a masculine. Jung saw men as having one dominant anima, contributed to by female members of his family, whilst women have a more complex, variable animus, perhaps made of several parts.
Jung theorized the development of the anima/animus as beginning with infant projection onto the mother, then projecting onto prospective partners until a lasting relationship can be found.
The Syzygy
(The Divine Couple)
In combination, the anima and animus are known as syzygy (a word also used to denote alignment of planets), representing wholeness and completion. This combining brings great power and can be found in religious combination’s such as the Christian Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy ghost).
A perfect partnership between man and woman can occur when not only are our physical forms compatible but also the anima and animus. Thus you might find your soul-mate. Finding our matching other half is a lifetime of search for many of us, and few of us succeed in this quest. Love of another indicates an actual, perceived or hoped-for close match.
