Jung
Page 12
In developing the concept of animus, Jung found himself making generalizations about women and their attributes and behaviours that at times are thoroughly out of tune with contemporary Western and feminist perspectives. He was convinced women were dominated by the eros principle (i.e. feelings), while men were strongly influenced by thinking (logos). Following the ‘logic’ of this line of thinking, combined with the traditionalist beliefs about gender and gender roles which dominated the society in which Jung had grown up in, led him to make assertions that to us might seem at the very least awkward, and possibly shocking in places. For example, he asserted that men had to do women’s thinking for them. He thought clear thinking was generally beyond women’s capacity – as it would be infused with feeling and therefore would be skewed by emotions and uninformed conclusions.
Here again, one can see where ‘essentialist’ social perspectives on gender roles (where there are seen to be fixed ‘essences’ to being a man or a woman) affected Jung’s thinking. The presumption was that women were, in the main, one step removed from the intellectual and vocational streams of thought ‘out there’ in the world, while they tended to domestic responsibilities inside the home. But where he asserts that a woman’s ‘Logos is often a regrettable accident’ (Jung, 1982, p. 171), it appears dismissive, if not insulting.
However, as Susan Rowland (2002, p. 41) points out, Jung makes such misogynist distortion(s) about women and negative animus through his own subjective viewpoint, which in turn is strongly coloured by his negative anima. As she also points out, he makes it clear in his writings that he is aware of this problem. These are views which, using his own formula, are tinged with oversensitivity and charged with unhelpful emotional energy. (The influence of his mother complex is also suggested.) That does not excuse sloppy – and what we may now see as sexist – thinking about women, but it does help to explain why Jung got himself into difficulty alongside his innovations about contra-sexual influences.
• Positive animus: spirit and mind
As Jung explains, in its positive form, animus ‘gives to women’s consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation and self-knowledge.’ (Jung, 1966, para. 33). He uses the symbol of father as representative of this, where a father is able to (he says) distinguish between conventional wisdom and his own ideas, based on informed knowledge of philosophy and culture.
This positive animus quality, for Jung, provides a counterbalance to what he saw as a tendency in women to follow collective ideas from society (e.g. through newspapers) and not form a distinct view of their own (!). Again, in the face of this awkward perspective (to put it politely), hold in mind the historical and social context in which he took this view. This capacity to be self-informed also arises for Jung from the notion of animus as ‘spirit’, not unlike anima as ‘soul’, except that, for women, the unconscious offers the capacity for using one’s mind more fully and skilfully through the presence of positive animus.
This also reflects an observation Jung made about women’s dreams; he thought animus tended to appear in a collective form – a group of men, or male animals, and so on. So, the presence of ‘spirit’ could support the efforts of a woman to distinguish herself from the collective by pointing out in dreams where she might need to become more individual (or individuated), so becoming more self-informed in her dealings with the world. As you may have noticed, the awkward tinge of presumption about women’s capacity to think independently is evident, even where Jung is writing about positive animus.
• Negative animus: opinions and emotions
We have already got a sense of the difficulty around this side of animus, where Jung applied it to women’s ways of thinking and relating. For example, he thought: ‘in women it expresses itself in the form of opinionated views, interpretations, insinuations and misconstructions, which all have the purpose (sometimes attained) of severing the relations between two human beings’ (Jung, 1966, para. 32). It is important to mention here that Jung felt that both negative anima and negative animus have this capacity to damage relationships. However, in the case of negative animus, the emphasis is more on faulty thinking, rather than feeling, doing the damage – although it is the infusion of thinking with strong emotions that Jung felt lent it the potentially destructive flavour. Although his wife Emma Jung (1957) wrote well about animus, including the negative side, the sense of this being an idea tarnished with traditional misogynistic views has never left it.
Negative animus at work
A woman who ran a small voluntary organization helping children from low-income families and unsettled backgrounds had a reputation for being very efficient, as well as being a passionate defender of the rights of the children she helped to look after. She also got into confrontations with local politicians and policy-makers. When she criticized a well-respected politician for ‘not caring one iota for children’ when a funding bid was turned down (despite that politician having previously helped acquire funding for the organization), this created a storm in the local paper.
In Jung’s formulation, she had spoken from her negative animus.
Anima and animus – still relevant?
It is important to note that either of the case studies could have been describing a man or a woman; we can all be over-sentimental, or unhelpfully opinionated. However, what Jung was trying to do was make sense of possible, subtle, distinctions in how men and women experience themselves and their relationships. His thinking on this can appear outdated and unacceptable.
However, this framework has provided the basis for innovative approaches in psychotherapy and personal development, as well as valuable contemporary thinking on the internal and external impacts of gendered and sexed identity.
Key idea: Jung and the gender debate
Jungian writers continue to debate the way Jung thought about gender. A possible developmental schema (Goss, 2010) highlights how anima and animus may influence subtle areas of difference in the life path of females and males. A critique by Barone-Chapman (2014, p. 17) of how both Freud and Jung approached thinking about gender offers this interesting thought about Jung: ‘he read into the reproduction of gender performance and culture as if his identification of its contents was fact, confusing fears and fantasies with real women.’ Such ideas reflect the problematic place of gender in Jung’s thinking, but also the potential that Jungian and post-Jungian ideas have to offer to contemporary debates in this area.
Key terms
Androgyne: Archetypal blending of feminine and masculine, in perfect balance; an idealized state that cannot be attained but which acts as a model for individuation and analysis.
Anima: The feminine in men; also the ‘soul’.
Animus: The masculine in women; also ‘spirit/mind’.
Contra-sexuality: Literally, ‘opposite’ sex/gender, and in Jung’s model the notion that within the psyches of women and men lies the opposite to their, bodily sexed, gender identity.
Syzygy: The conjunction, or ‘yoking together’ of archetypal opposites, applied to anima and animus by Jung, to denote their complementary as well as oppositional relationship.
Dig deeper
Barone-Chapman, M., ‘Gender Legacies of Jung and Freud as Epistemology in Emergent Feminist Research on Late Motherhood’, Behavioural Sciences, 4, 14–30 (2014)
Goldenberg, N., ‘A feminist critique of Jung’, Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2:2, 443–9 (1976)
Gordon, R., ‘Look! He has come through!’, in Bridges: Metaphor for Psychic Processes, Ch. 23 (London: Karnac, 1993)
Goss, P., Men, Women and Relationships, a Post-Jungian Approach: Gender Electrics and Magic Beans (London: Routledge, 2010)
Hillman, J., Anima (New York: Spring, 1979)
Jung, C. G., ‘The Syzygy: Anima and Animus’ in Aion, CW9ii, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1966)
Jung, C. G., ‘Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation’ in The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, CW9i, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1968)
Jung, C. G., Aspects of the Masculine, ed. J. Beebe (London: Routledge Ark, 1989)
Jung, C. G., The Red Book: The Reader’s Edition (London: Norton, 2009)
Rowland, S., Jung: A Feminist Revision (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002)
Samuels, A., ‘Gender, sex, marriage’, in Samuels, A. (ed.), Jung and the Post-Jungians, Ch. 6 (London: Routledge, 1985)
Samuels, A., Shorter, B. and Plaut, F. (eds.), A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis (London: Routledge, 1986)
Sanford, J., The Invisible Partners: How the male and female in each of us affects our relationships (Mawhah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980)
Fact-check (answers at the back)
1 What does Jung’s use of the term ‘contra-sexuality’ refer to?
a The contradictions between masculine and feminine
b The opposition between feminine and masculine archetypes
c The presence of sexual contradiction in the female and male psyche
d The presence of the feminine in men and the masculine in women
2 How did Jung define anima and animus?
a Animus is the masculine ‘soul’ of women and anima the feminine ‘spirit’ in men
b Anima is the feminine ‘soul’ in men and animus the masculine ‘spirit’ in women
c Animus is the masculine ‘soul’ of men and anima the feminine ‘spirit’ in women
d Anima is the feminine ‘spirit’ in women and animus the masculine ‘soul’ in men
3 Why are anima and animus the gatekeepers of the collective unconscious?
a They are like passport control between the personal and collective unconscious
b They don’t let anything through from the collective unconscious
c They can open up collective and archetypal imagery and processes to us
d There are only two gateways so they each look after one of them
4 What did Jung say we must do before we can engage with our anima or animus?
a Confront our shadow, work on it and integrate our awareness of it into consciousness
b Let go of our ego completely, however dangerous that could be
c Circumvent our shadow so that it does not get in the way of anima or animus
d Bring together ego and self to create a route to anima or animus
5 What did Jung describe positive anima as offering a man?
a Contact with his ability to think straight
b Connection with his spirit and body
c Connection with his feelings and soul
d Contact between his ego and self
6 Jung described negative anima as leading a man to be overtaken by what?
a Big ideas which could never be fulfilled
b Moodiness and oversensitivity
c Sexual instincts and desires
d Sadness and depression
7 What idea were Jung’s views on the capacities of women and men based on?
a Men were dominated by ‘logos’ (thinking) and women by ‘eros’ (feeling)
b Women regretted their thoughts and men regretted their feelings
c Men were dominated by ‘eros’ (feeling) and women by ‘logos’
d Women regretted their feelings and men regretted their thoughts
8 What did Jung describe positive animus as offering a woman?
a Contact with her capacity to feel
b Connection with her soul and feelings
c Connection between persona and the collective
d Connection with her independent thoughts and spirit
9 Jung described negative animus as leading a woman to be overtaken by what?
a Hopelessness and lethargy
b Uncontained feelings
c Irrational thoughts and judgements
d A mother complex
10 What has been the positive legacy of Jung’s work in this area?
a It makes people more aware of their strengths and faults
b It provides a model for ‘otherness’ in analysis, and opens up debate on self and gender
c It offers a ‘logical’ challenge to feminism
d It provides a way of narrowing ideas about identity so it’s much clearer
8
From archetype to complex
We have already discussed the concepts of archetype and complex, since they are central to Jung’s model of the psyche and inevitably arise in discussion of other key themes. However, in order to have a fuller understanding of how unconscious influences affect us, we need to explore them in more detail. In this chapter we will look more closely at the notion of the archetype, and how complexes are formed and charged with archetypal energy, as well as how they can affect individuals and relationships. The discussion is supported with a case study portraying how complexes operate, as a scene setter for looking at how we can work with them therapeutically. There is a preliminary link to Jung’s ideas on personality types, as well as a reflective exercise for applying these ideas to ourselves.
Jung, archetype and complex
The development of Jung’s approach to archetypal process and the notion of the complex have their roots in key personal and professional experiences, which have already been highlighted. In Chapter 2, we learned how his childhood and later experiences strongly informed his conviction that there are different layers to the unconscious, and that within the collective layer there are instincts, images and experiences rooted in the history of human development (which have a ubiquitous quality across all human cultures). His own dreams, from the ‘giant phallus’ dream aged three, through to the ‘house’ dream of 1907, threw up symbols which had their roots in depths beyond common personal experience, and which drew on the inheritance of hundreds of thousands of years of human development.
As we also saw in Chapter 3, Jung’s work at the Burgholzi, and elsewhere, brought him closer to the firm view that such phenomena were present in the psyches of all people. This was vividly revealed in the psychotic presentations of patients who reported delusions, florid imagery and hallucinations; but it was also evident in the dreams and imaginations of his private patients (and those who populated Jung’s life away from his clinical work). The link to complexes arose as he noticed archetypal patterns and other influences in how his patients’ mental health problems presented, for example via word-association tests.
Through detailed recording of factors like words used, time taken to respond and excitability in motor and sensory nerves, he gradually established a way of revealing the combination of powerful archetypal and personal influences that could hold a person in a grip of strong, volatile or stuck emotions. This is where the notion of a complex arose: it was a way of depicting the mix of suffering, defences and fantasies that could stand in the way of a person’s well-being. This crucial concept in Jungian psychology will be elucidated further after we have taken a closer look at how archetypes provide the collective root for the complex.
Archetypes: the collective and the personal
Jung did not come to use the term ‘archetypes’ until 1919. Before this, he had referred to notions such as ‘dominants’ in the collective unconscious (meaning elements in psychic life that seem to attract energy and then influence the individual). Earlier, he had described these as ‘primordial images’ (images that crop up everywhere in dreams, art, etc.). In both cases, Jung was striving to find terminology that captured the underlying power of influences which went beyond personal experience. He moved further away from Freud’s emphasis on the libidinal (psychosexual) factors as exclusively determining a person’s state of mind. Instead, he came to the view that it was the innate nature and structure of archetypes which held the power to deeply influence this.
Key idea: What is an archetype?
The crucial thing to state first is that an archetype is an unknowable essence that profoundly influences our experiences, but not the form this essence takes that we then become aware
of – an instinct, image or experience. As he put it: ‘The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its colour from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear’ (Jung, 1968, para. 6). The term ‘archetype’ is now a well-used term to describe familiar behaviours and phenomena, for example in popular films such as Star Wars, where polarities of light and dark, hero and villain are portrayed to dramatic effect, capturing our attention because of their archetypal resonance.
An archetype, then, is not, for example, the image of a house in Jung’s dream described in Chapter 4 – rather, there is some kind of ‘essence’ to the dream image (which in itself is not knowable), which is archetypal about home/self/psyche. We can call this an ‘archetypal image’ but it is not the archetype itself. This has connections across collective experience, which would make an almost unlimited number of interpretations possible except for one important point. That is, the dream image has been generated through the psyche of one particular human being, in this case Jung, and so the constellation of the archetype in this case will be germane to the personal experience, nature and unconscious process of this dreamer. It then becomes possible to read in meanings relevant to the dreamer. In this case, it seemed to relate to a time in Jung’s life when the possibilities of working with collective unconscious phenomena were opening up, and the contents of the different floors in the house were pointing to this.
This is what can make the presence of archetypal images in dreams so powerful, and we will return to this in Chapter 11. However, it is again important to emphasize that images are generated by the individual psyche and provide the ‘clothes’ by which the archetype’s presence might be detected. They are not the archetype themselves. This point corresponds to Plato’s forms and Kant’s noumenal (see Chapter 3), which are unknowable in themselves but nonetheless present, and significantly influence the structuring of our experiences. Jung emphasized this distinction, but it can sometimes cause confusion.