Jung

by Phil Goss

  8 What is shadow projection?

  a We project into our shadow to avoid exposing our weaknesses

  b We project our shadow aspects on to others and think they belong to them, not us

  c Where we are walking with a light behind us and our shadow projects in front of us

  d Where our shadow projects into the future and creates confusion about it

  9 What is our ‘golden shadow’?

  a Where our shadow has a fringe of sunlight around it

  b Where we reveal our shadow side to someone and, surprisingly, they like it

  c Aspects of our personality that are effective at dealing with shadow

  d Aspects of our potential we have not lived out, as they are trapped in shadow

  10 When can shadow and persona work together to support individuation?

  a When persona uses shadow elements to trick others

  b When shadow hides behind persona to protect itself

  c When a worn-out persona falls away and an authentic one emerges, drawing on shadow

  d When shadow dissolves and turns into a number of personas

  7

  Anima and animus: inner partners or adversaries?

  This chapter gives an overview of Jung’s ideas on the presence of feminine and masculine influences in the human psyche. His notions of anima as the feminine in men and animus as the masculine in women are explained and applied via case studies and reflective exercises. There is an initial consideration of whether these are relevant or otherwise to current analytic practice and to personal development. This includes an investigation into the question: was Jung sexist?

  Contra-sexuality: personal and collective

  There has been long-standing criticism of the way Jung characterized the differences between the feminine and the masculine, especially how he portrayed this in terms of essential distinctions between men and women (e.g. Goldenberg, 1976). We will look at these criticisms more closely in this chapter, as they can help to explain why Jungian thinking is swiftly discounted in some quarters. Here, Jung’s name can become shorthand for retrograde attitudes, towards women in particular. However, there is much more to Jung’s work in this area and real value to his attempts to draw on gender to provide insight into psyche’s workings.

  As Susan Rowland (2002, p. 93), who writes about the value of Jungian approaches for feminist perspectives, puts it, Jung is now perceived by some to: ‘…connect to progressive debates on gender’. How has this broadening of perspectives on the value of Jungian theory regarding the influence of gender come about? We address this question in this chapter and in Chapter 20, where we will consider the relevance of post-Jungian ideas on ‘gendered otherness’ for contemporary thinking on culture, politics and society.

  We start with some crucial terms and definitions in this area of Jungian thinking. The term contra-sexuality literally means ‘opposite’ sex/gender and suggests that, within the binary (where ‘binary’ refers to the duality or ‘two-ness’ of a relationship) of the male–female relationship, each carries the opposite within them. Put more simply, for Jung, each man carries an image and influence of the feminine within them, and each woman likewise carries an image and influence of the masculine. In saying that this applies to all of us, Jung is again referring to something archetypal. He took names from Latin to represent these archetypal dynamics. For the feminine in men Jung applied the term anima, and used animus for the masculine in women.

  Anima and animus

  Jung’s upbringing in the conservative atmosphere of early twentieth-century Switzerland (see Chapter 2) meant that his approach was inevitably influenced by the monolithic thinking of that time and place, heavily seasoned by the mores of the Christian church. This was a purely heterosexual lens on relationships and gender identity (the idea, let alone the expression, of variances in sexuality, was not permissible). This came with a fixed notion of where man and woman each ‘belonged’ – he out in the world, making, achieving and protecting (in the worlds of business, government and the military); she firmly ensconced in the home (tending to the domestic environment, family and motherhood). This historical and cultural ambience permeates Jung’s thinking on anima and animus but does not obscure the creative intelligence of their utility, in making sense of the complexity of being human.

  Both terms in Latin allude to notions of the ‘soul’, but with feminine and masculine inflections, respectively. As Samuels et al. (1986, pp. 23–4) point out, Jung was trying to say something important about what these opposites represent and how this plays out in women and men. More than just soul images, Jung came to see anima and animus as each:

  ‘the not-I. Being not-I for a man probably corresponds to something feminine, and because it is not-I, it is outside himself, belonging to his soul or spirit. The anima (or animus, as the case may be), is a factor which happens to one, an a priori element of moods, reactions, impulses in man; of commitments, beliefs, inspirations in a woman – and for both something that prompts one to take cognisance of whatever is spontaneous and meaningful in psychic life.’

  We will explore Jung’s distinctions hinted at here, between anima and animus. An important theme arising from Jung’s ideas, which has enabled Jungian thinkers to work creatively with gender, is of anima and animus representing – as a further step beyond the discarded and unseen aspects of self in the shadow – the presence of the genuinely ‘other’ in the human psyche. Anima in man and animus in woman are unconscious opposites, but they can nonetheless be made more consciously available if we notice and work with them. From a post-Jungian perspective, it is often thought more helpful to see both anima and animus as present in both men and women, for example where a woman has unexpressed aspects of her identity, e.g. sexuality (anima), or a man likewise (animus) (Gordon, 1993).

  Whichever formulation is used, the notion of ‘inner-partner’ or ‘inner-partnership’ (e.g. Sanford, 1980) provides much material to work with in terms of therapy and personal development. Jung formed the view that the two contra-sexual others (anima and animus) could be observed at work in their differentiated ways in the women and men he encountered in the hospital and private-practice spheres of his professional life, as well as in the general issue and flow of human activity and relations to be found in day-to-day life. He also linked these concepts to the crucial influence of mother and father. How a son experienced mother would reflect and inform the presence of the feminine (anima) within him. Likewise this formula pertained to a daughter’s relation to father and the masculine (animus) within her. In turn, this would inform how the anima or animus got projected on to the later partner chosen for a long-term heterosexual relationship. Descriptions of how anima and animus (according to Jung) operate in practice will be given.

  From his personal and professional insights, Jung came to view anima and animus as the gatekeepers to the collective unconscious, which enable us to access its archetypal processes and imagery. In terms of location in the human psyche, they sit between the area occupied by the more active players in the human psyche (persona/ego/shadow) and the territory of the collective, as shown in the following diagram. The self straddles all aspects of psyche, as well as being its centre.

  Spotlight: Anima and animus in The Red Book

  Through interior ‘voyages’ into his own unconscious, Jung was struck by the prominence of feminine and masculine figures he met on his travels. This comes across in The Red Book (Jung, 2009), where the appearances of Elijah are counterbalanced by those of Salome, each seeming to point to archetypal polarities in the human psyche around different versions of wisdom: truth-seeking higher religiosity in Elijah’s masculine manifestation; and the bringing of Eros and bodily based feminine spirituality in the shape of Salome. Certainly, Salome could be seen as a manifestation of Jung’s anima, and if one applies a post-Jungian lens to Elijah, he may represent unexpressed animus aspects of Jung’s identity.

  Anima, animus and the human psyche

  In some ways, anima an
d animus are elusive, like the self. We experience encounters with these where ego needs to redirect its focus, or when the numinous unexpectedly breaks into our lived experience. To get in touch with anima and/or animus, we have to work hard on our self-knowledge. Jung posited that, analytically, we cannot properly get to ‘meet’ our contra-sexual opposite within until we have worked sufficiently on our personal shadow. This has to be sufficiently acknowledged and integrated first, otherwise we will not be able to ‘see’ through our own darkness. By gatekeepers to the collective unconscious, it is implied that anima and animus are archetypes of the feminine and masculine, which enable us to experience an awareness of the depth and scale of this archetypal layer. Jung puts it thus:

  ‘They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially in that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they bring into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods and men.’

  Jung, 1968, para. 518

  Here, Jung is also alluding to what he called the syzygy, which is a term referring to a conjunction of opposites, but which he applied specifically to anima–animus. In this sense, the relationship itself between the two is also archetypal. At a deep level of unconscious operation, he also referred to the ideal form of this syzygy as the ‘androgyne’ – which describes a state where the feminine and masculine are in perfect balance. This provides a template for the individuation and analytic processes, though it is one which can never be ‘perfectly’ achieved, in this imperfect world.

  When we are able to notice and work with our ‘inner partner’ (anima for a man and animus for a woman) – say, via work with images of the masculine or feminine in our dreams – then we have a powerful resource available to facilitate our personal growth and individuation. However, when we are not conscious of their influence on us, this might spark unconscious activity that is challenging and at times disruptive to our most intimate personal relationships. Here, the anima and animus of each partner (in Jung’s formulation heterosexual, but these ideas can equally be applied to same-sex and bisexual relations) can clash in a maelstrom of unconscious energies.

  As Jung (1968a, para. 31) powerfully observes: ‘The anima/animus relationship is always full of ‘animosity’, i.e. it is emotional, and hence collective… often the relationship runs its course heedless of its human performers, who afterwards do not know what happened to them.’

  Discussion about gender is charged with the risk of stereotyping and over-generalization about possible distinctions between men and women. The key here is to hold on to the importance of archetypal process with regard to the continuum between the feminine and the masculine and how that can present in a myriad and mixture of forms. The richness this can offer can sometimes be lost in our reactions to assertions about gender, and the fear of falling into essentialist stereotyping. As we go on to explore Jung’s formulations of anima and animus, I invite you to notice your reactions and responses to these, and allow for all possibilities in thinking about ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ gender, plus influences on your own life experience in this area. This should help you make sense of at least some of the complex and at times contentious ideas in this area of the Jungian framework.

  ANIMA

  As mentioned already, anima refers in Jung’s original formulation to the presence of the feminine in a man. This ‘otherness’ can show itself through his ways of relating to himself and how he behaves in personal relationships and wider social activity. ‘She’ also reveals herself in images of women, or creatures or objects associated with the feminine – to be found in dreams or in the imagination – for example, the idealized lover, a heroine such as a famous female political leader (positive), or an unreliable or rejected lover or helpless girl (negative).

  Negative anima at work

  Jung reported a young male patient who spontaneously produced drawings depicting his mother, first as superhuman and then as a mutilated and distressed figure (Jung, 1968b). This seemed to reflect the man’s process of first idealizing the mother, and life in general, and then coming down to earth with a bump, as he grew up. He then struggled to come to terms with the mundane reality of life. Here, anima is strongly wrapped up with a mother complex, and is showing herself in polarized (idealized vs degraded) imagery. But this insight into the man’s anima problem gave Jung the basis of a crucial understanding into this patient’s situation and therefore helped the analytic process. What Jung would term negative anima is at work here. We will now look at what Jung believed we could observe where either positive or negative anima present.

  • Positive anima: life-giving, feminine ‘soul’

  Anima, where it constellates in a positive way, enables what Jung saw as the traits readily available to women to likewise become available to a man. Qualities such as tenderness, patience, care, consideration, kindness and compassion may be activated in the man. Again, it is worth bearing in mind the time in which Jung was formulating these ideas, because to us it may be obvious that men should be as capable of offering these qualities as women anyway. However, early twentieth-century Europe was much more reliant on attitudes towards gender which split capacities and qualities in a ‘black-and-white’ way between women and men. This informs Jung’s approach and is seen most baldly in the way he allocated the domain of ‘thinking’ to men and that of ‘feeling’ to women, something which got his approach into difficulty, as we shall see. However, in relation to positive anima, this explains why the positive attributes he associates with it are connected to feeling and relating, as his perception was that, in general, men were more disconnected from these areas than women.

  For Jung, a man who is able to contact his capacity for feeling and empathy (though he did not use the latter word) would be healthily in touch with his anima and able to draw on her presence to resource his offer of care and consideration towards others. This means that the anima is the ‘inner partner’ who provides the complementary qualities to the man’s (so-called) natural capacity for logical and useful thinking. More profoundly than this, however, is the notion of anima as ‘soul’. This relates to the point made about the contra-sexual ‘other’ as gatekeeper to the collective unconscious. For Jung, anima brings life to the psyche of a man (literally represented by his passage into life via his mother). In his thinking, ‘she’ made it possible for a man to get in contact with his spiritual maturation, particularly in midlife as he begins to turn inwards and work on the deeper soul demands and possibilities.

  Spotlight: James Hillman on anima

  A key thinker heavily influenced by Jung’s ideas about archetypal influences, James Hillman (1979) applied the influence of anima to both genders, but concurred with Jung’s premise that anima provides access to the work of the soul, and was therefore a crucial player in the psyche. There is more on Hillman’s ideas, rooted in archetypal psychology, in Chapter 19.

  • Negative anima: self-sabotage through feeling?

  If positive anima draws on the best attributes of how Jung characterized the feminine, then the negative version pulled on the opposite, and manifested itself in a man’s way of relating to himself and others. This is where Jung got himself into more awkward territory, which he then followed to a logical but unhelpful conclusion in his framing of negative animus (see below). He perceived the negative feminine, in what now seems a big generalization (not to mention an uncomfortable one), as relating to characteristics such as: vanity, moodiness, promiscuity, bitchiness and over-sentimentality. He described negative anima within this frame of reference:

  ‘When the anima is strongly constellated she softens the man’s character and makes him touchy, irritable, moody, jealous, vain, and unadjusted. He is then in a state of “discontent” and spreads this discontent all around him.’

  J
ung, 1968b, para. 144

  The negative anima therefore sabotages a man’s capacity to think straight and to engage at a feeling level. Instead, he is flooded by exaggerated and over-sensitive emotions, which affect his relationships. Here, anima projection can creep in, in unhelpful ways:

  • If he is in a close relationship with a woman, she may catch the projections of his moodiness or irritability, through him blaming her for these very traits which he is unable to notice in himself and deal with.

  • He may become jealous for no good reason as a projection on to her of his tendency towards promiscuous activity or fantasies. This correlates with the idea that we may fall in love with someone who personifies our anima (negative or positive); and the same applies to animus.

  ANIMUS

  Animus operates generally to the same principles in women as anima does in men, according to Jung. That is, it provides a presence of the ‘opposite’ to a woman’s characteristics and interacts with other features of psyche such as ego, self and shadow, to generate ways of operating in the world, and responding to others. Animus likewise presents himself in image form – in women’s dreams and imagination in the shape of male figures and masculine imagery: for example, the idealized lover or a hero such as famous male political leader (positive), or an unreliable or rejected lover or helpless boy (negative).

  Like anima, animus can therefore act as a resource to reveal aspects of unconscious activity and meaning for a woman, highlighting what her masculine attributes have to offer, as well as where they may be undermining her.

  Spotlight: Was Jung sexist?