The possible lines of communication are shown by the arrows in the diagram. The existence of the contrasexual complexes means that in any relationship between a man and a woman there are at least four personalities involved. Animus opinions are invariably collective, and they override individuals and individual judgments in exactly the same way as the anima thrusts her emotional anticipations and projections between man and wife.
He is adept at putting, in place of the real man, an opinion about him, the exceedingly disputable grounds for which are never submitted to criticism. Like the anima, the animus is a jealous lover. As with the projected anima, this can lead to unrealistic expectations and acrimony in relationships. In mythology this aspect of the animus appears as Hermes, messenger of the gods in dreams he is a helpful guide.Īny of these aspects of the animus can be projected onto a man. On this highest level, like the anima as Sophia, the animus mediates between a woman’s conscious mind and the unconscious. In the fourth stage, the animus is the incarnation of spiritual meaning. In the next stage, the animus is the “word,” personified in dreams as a professor or clergyman. He is behind a woman’s desire for independence and a career of her own.
In the second stage, the animus provides her with initiative and the capacity for planned action. He first appears in dreams and fantasy as the embodiment of physical power, an athlete, muscle man or thug. Jung described four stages of animus development in a woman. Thus the animus is a psychopomp, a mediator between the conscious and the unconscious and a personification of the latter. Through the figure of the father he expresses not only conventional opinion but-equally-what we call “spirit,” philosophical or religious ideas in particular, or rather the attitude resulting from them. Like the anima, the animus too has a positive aspect. The animus becomes a helpful psychological factor when a woman can tell the difference between the ideas generated by this autonomous complex and what she herself really thinks. This sound idea seldom or never occurs to him, because no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming the victim of his own anima. is unaware that this highly dramatic situation would instantly come to a banal and unexciting end if he were to quit the field and let a second woman carry on the battle (his wife, for instance, if she herself is not the fiery war horse). No matter how friendly and obliging a woman’s Eros may be, no logic on earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus. In a woman who is identified with the animus (called animus-possession), Eros generally takes second place to Logos.Ī woman possessed by the animus is always in danger of losing her femininity. It manifests negatively in fixed ideas, collective opinions and unconscious, a priori assumptions that lay claim to absolute truth. Whereas the anima in a man functions as his soul, a woman’s animus is more like an unconscious mind. The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman’s ancestral experiences of man-and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being, not in the sense of masculine creativity, but in the sense that he brings forth something we might call. The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros. This results in a considerable psychological difference between men and women, and accordingly I have called the projection-making factor in women the animus, which means mind or spirit. Woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. Like the anima in a man, the animus is both a personal complex and an archetypal image. (See also anima, Eros, Logos and soul-image.)
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