Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
[The “woman within me” does not have the same speech center as I have]
When I was writing down these fantasies, I once asked myself, “What am I really doing? Certainly this has nothing to do with science. But then what is it?”
Whereupon a voice within me said, “It is art.” I was astonished. It had never entered my head that what I was writing had any connection with art.
Then I thought, “Perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that is not me, but which is insisting on coming through to expression.”
I knew for a certainty that the voice had come from a woman.
I recognized it as the voice of a patient, a talented psychopath who had a strong transference to me. She had become a living figure within my mind.
Obviously what I was doing wasn’t science. What then could it be but art?
It was as though these were the only alternatives in the world. That is the way a woman’s mind works.
I said very emphatically to this voice that my fantasies had nothing to do with art, and I felt a great inner resistance.
No voice came through, however, and I kept on writing.
Then came the next assault, and again the same assertion: “That is art.”
This time I caught her and said, “No, it is not art! On the contrary, it is nature,” and prepared myself for an argument.
When nothing of the sort occurred, I reflected that the “woman within me” did not have the speech centers I had. And so I suggested that she use mine.
She did so and came through with a long statement.
I was greatly intrigued by the fact that a woman should interfere with me from within.
My conclusion was that she must be the “soul,” in the primitive sense, and I began to speculate on the reasons why the name “anima” was given to the soul.
Why was it thought of as feminine? Later I came to see that this inner feminine figure plays a typical, or archetypal, role in the unconscious of a man, and I called her the “anima.”
The corresponding figure in the unconscious of woman I called the “animus.” ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
