ANIMUS-ANIMA (ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY)

Anima and animus are gender specific archetypal structures in the collective unconscious that are compensatory to conscious gender identity. Thus, animus images primarily depict the unconscious masculine in a woman, and anima images primarily depict the unconscious feminine in a man.

The notion first appears in print in Carl Gustav Jung's Psychological Types, in 1921.

One of the most complex and least understood features of his theory, the idea of a contrasexual archetype, developed out of Jung's desire to conceptualize the important complementary poles in human psychological functioning. From his experiences of the emotional power of projection in his patients and in himself, he conceived first of the anima as a numinous figure in a man's unconscious. Originally, Jung associated anima with mother and animus with father, but he soon began to identify their roots and effects in a broader spectrum. By 1925 he considered these concepts the two most comprehensive foundation stones of the psyche. Anima and animus, Jung says, are inborn as "virtual images" that acquire form "in the encounter with empirical facts which touch the unconscious aptitude and quicken it to life" (Jung, 1928, p. 300). The initial contrasexual content is introjected from the infant's relationship with the parental figures.

Developmentally, then, separation from parental figures as primary objects is followed by the idealizing identification of anima and animus with figures in the environment, usually, but not necessarily, persons of the opposite sex. Subsequently, projections can be withdrawn from their objects and the apperception of anima/animus as intrapsychic objects made conscious. At that point anima and animus can act as the ego's interface to the collective unconscious. In most clinical instances, anima and animus figures personify the struggle between the culture-bound, collective images of masculine and feminine and the developmental urge to liberate one's individuality from collective norms.

The concept includes the potential in women and men to develop both masculine and feminine elements in themselves. The contrasexual archetypes fuel the Oedipal predicament. Differentiation between the parental imagoes and anima and animus projections leads out of the Oedipal fixation. A narcissistic identification with the contrasexual figure may result in positive or negative inflation or, alternatively, deteriorate into a state of flooding of the ego by unconscious contents.

Critics fault Jung for his confusion of outer life realities of women and men and the inner world of anima and animus images; for example, his repeated assignment of relatedness (Eros) both to anima and to women, and rationality (Logos) both to animus and to men. This confusion can lead to the false equation of culturally acquired elements with inborn male and female characteristics.

Betty de Shong Meador

See also: Collective unconscious (analytical psychology); Projection and "participation mystique" (analytical psychology); Analytical psychology.

Bibliography

Jung, Carl Gustav. (1921). Psychological types. Coll. Works (Vol. VI). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

—— (1928a [1935]). The relations between the ego and the unconscious. Coll. Works (Vol. VII). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

—— (1928b [1948]). On psychic energy. Coll. Works (Vol. VIII). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

—— (1928c [1948]). General aspects of dream psychology. Coll. Works (Vol. VIII). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

—— (1928d [1948]). Instinct and the unconscious. Coll. Works (Vol. VIII). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

—— (1951). Aïon: Researches into the phenomenology of the self. Coll. Works (Vol. IX). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Samuels, Andrew. (1985). Jung and the Post-Jungians. London-Boston: Routledge.

Tresan, David. (1992). The anima of the analyst. Its development, gender, and soul. In Psychotherapy (pp. 73-110). Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications.