Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925 (Philemon Foundation Series)

Mrs. Jung: Could you say something about the relation of the animus to immortality in the same way that you discussed the anima and immortality?

Dr. Jung: The animus seems to go back only to the fourteenth century, and the anima to remote antiquity, but with the animus I must say I am uncertain altogether.

Mrs. Jung: It had seemed to me that the animus was not a symbol of immortality, but of movement and life, and that it is man’s attitude that gives that different aspect to the anima.

Dr. Jung: It is true that the animus is often represented by a moving figure—an aviator or a traffic manager.

Perhaps there is something in the historical fact of women being more stable, therefore there is more movement in the unconscious.

Mr. Schmitz: Surely there could have been no repression of the animus at the time of the matriarchy.

Dr. Jung: We cannot be too sure.

Mrs. Zinno: The figures of gods carry the idea of immortality, do they not?

smuch as they are also animus figures and come into women’s dreams, I should think one could say the animus carried the meaning of immortality also.

Dr. Jung: Yes, that is true, but there remains a tremendous difference between the animus and the anima.

Mr. Schmitz: Is immortality in the individual?

Dr. Jung: No, only as the image. Immortality belongs to the child of the anima. Inasmuch as the anima has not brought forth, she assumes immortality.

When she brings forth she dies. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 168.