10 Mar Anima / Animus: The Inner Other / Lover
C.G. Jung believed that deep within each psyche, there is an inner other, an opposite sex spirit that stands between the ego and the archetypal unconscious. He called this entity the anima for men or animus for women (Stein, 1998). To illustrate opposing and dynamic features of the psyche I now invoke the Roman god Janus, as the ancients did, as the embodied symbol of duality and the guardian of doorways, passages, and transitions. In Roman Antiquity, Janus was depicted with two identical faces positioned back-to-back, with both faces looking outward in opposite directions.
The forward face of Janus can be likened to the visage of the ego, the persona. The persona is the outward expression of the personality, shaped by familial and cultural norms and expectations. On the flip side of the persona is the shadow which is composed of less conscious features of the ego, such as qualities that are socially unacceptable to express in public (Stein, 1998). In private spaces, when defenses are down, or when a person is under stress, the face of the shadow, which is incongruent with the persona, can emerge through unconscious reactions and behaviors. The relationship of the persona and shadow can be simplistically reduced to light versus dark or good versus bad.
Returning to the image of two-faced god Janus, this time to illustrate C.G. Jung’s concept of anima and animus, I refer the reader to the image of Janus Herm, which has one masculine, face and one feminine face, showing a hermaphroditic profile of Janus. Jung believed that the persona has another complementary face other than the shadow, one that is turned inward toward the deep interior of the psyche.
“The natural function of the animus (as well as the anima) is to remain in (their) place between individual consciousness and the collective unconscious; exactly as the persona is a sort of stratum between the ego-consciousness and the objects of the external world. The animus and the anima should function as a bridge, or a door, leading to the images of the collective unconscious, as the persona should be a sort of bridge into the world.” (Jung, 1989, p. 412)
Archetypal in nature, the primary role of the anima or animus (anima/us) is to relate with the archetypal level of the collective unconscious. The anima/us is not shaped by conscious influences such as family or society, but rather it is a psychopomp facilitating the process of material from the collective unconscious coming into consciousness.
“As the persona faces out into the societal world and assists with necessary external adaptations, so the anima/us faces inward to the inner world of psyche and helps a person to adapt to the demands and requirements of intuitive thoughts, feelings, images, and emotions that confront the ego.” (Stein, 1998, p. 140)
Where the shadow is the negative polarity of the persona, the anima/us and ego differences are typically of gender and typology. Jung’s anima/us theory, now considered by some to be overly heteronormative, claimed that the soul of a man was feminine (anima), and the soul of a woman is masculine (animus) (Stein, 1998). With much more nuance in today’s gender politics, it is helpful to think of the anima/us being opposite and complementary to the persona. For example, a predominantly masculine, extroverted, thinking type would likely have a feminine, introverted, feeling anima/us and vice versa.
Jung believed it was possible to become possessed by one’s own anima/us (Stein, 1998). Possession could be seen as the anima/us archetype seeping into the persona, evidenced by an individual expressing contrasting qualities from their dominant typology and gender. An example of this in a stereotypical cisgender woman could be a behavioral shift to atypical aggression or excessive rationalism.
Another possible risk of the unconscious anima/us is identifying with another’s anima/us projection. Marion Woodman wrote that, in women, identification with an anima projection originates in an unconscious need or desire to please their father.
“A woman whose survival is thus tied to the masculine spirit, has unconsciously sacrificed her femininity to what she believes is the best in life. In relationship with a man, she appears at first to relate superbly because she can so adroitly become what he is projecting on to her. She in turn loves what she is projecting onto him. Their relationship assumes superhuman dimensions: loving father, loving mother, hardly less than god and goddess.” (Woodman, 1985, p. 40)
Opposites attract. “The image of the anima/us usually brings excitement and stimulates desire for union. It engenders attraction” (Stein, 1998, p. 142). Engaging with anima/us can be both transcendental and intensely erotic. In the inner other one might discover their inner lover. “Beyond the sexuality of the body, [anima/us] is the psyche’s sexuality” (Stein, 1998, p. 145). By using active imagination to observe and engage with anima/us figures in dreams and fantasies, it is possible for libidinal, life force energy to increase. The wedding of anima and animus through psychic integration is an inner hieros gamos – sacred marriage – which seeds the Psyche for rebirth: new stages of personal transformation.
C.G. Jung first encountered his anima in midlife as an intrapsychic female voice. For the remainder of his life, he studied her as part of his psyche and through his anima projections on women he was close to.
[S]he was for Jung both a living inner reality, a true inner figure of the first rank, and she was also powerfully experienced by him in projection and in relationship… [T]he anima was a constant companion in Jung’s inner and outer life. To him, she seemed to be the guide of his fate. (Stein, 1998, p. 149).
To show possibilities for playing with the inner other, the inner lover, the animus, below are three vignettes, amplified through mythic and legendary themes. I have chosen to use Joan of Arc to illustrate animus possession, Circe to illustrate anima projection identification, and a personal dream about Persephone’s abduction by Hades to illustrate the sacred marriage of anima and animus. The triptych shows a progression of anima/us integration through a series of three lives lived by one soul.
Animus Possession: My affair with the animus began when I was Joan of Arc, and he was the King of France. I was just a plain peasant girl raised in the damp oak forests of northern France, until I heard the saints talking. My voices had plans for me. They instructed me to go to the king and pledge myself to him in service of his authority over the homeland. When he accepted me into his ranks, I became more than a helpless country girl, I became greater than a common man, I became a warrior and a defender of the throne. I was possessed by the power of the patriarch and believed his power was also my power. My duty to serve and to protect became my passion and I was undefeatable. I was the image of a boy in armor, but I became the heroine of France. Then I was captured by the enemy and my lord, the King, for whom I sacrificed everything, never came to my rescue. He let me burn.
Anima Projection Identification: “After the ashes of the pyre cooled, the bitterness of betrayal followed me. I became a femme fatale and the first witch. As Kirke, I was exiled to a deserted island as punishment for practicing baneful sorcery. My bitterness toward my persecutor, my father Helios, King of the Sky, turned to hatred for all men. I lured fisherman and pirates alike to my island; I drugged them, and with a little glamor, I became their wildest fantasies and their worst nightmares. Both beautiful and fearsome, I saw a distorted reflection of myself in their lusting eyes as I turned them to shrieking swine then slaughtered them all.“
Inner Marriage: “On the Nysian Plain, at the mythic site of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, in a dream, my animus and I were attending a wedding, yet nobody was there but us. I wondered where the bride and groom, and the other wedding guests were. Curiously, I was wearing all white and I wondered if it was I who was the bride. Unsure, I scanned the landscape, taking in a vast expanse of grass on a coastal plateau that ended abruptly at the edge of a cliff, high above the sea. I contemplated the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of the Gods of the Underworld who dwelt below my feet. I realized it must be them who invited us to the wedding, but was the ceremony theirs, or ours?”
The sacred marriage is the inner marriage of animus and anima, the masculine and feminine soul counterparts within each psyche. Hades’ abduction of Persephone is a metaphor for the feminine psyche falling asleep, going underground into the unconscious, to be seeded by her animus, her masculine soul, the archetypal, creative principle, so that she can bloom again into consciousness, perennially. This is the cycle of psychic renewal called individuation.
Catherine Brooks, 2023
Image: Janus Herm