Visions of the Anima
[Carl Jung on Visions of the Anima]
To Mr. O.
My dear O., 7 May 1947
Your material is, as I feared, much too rich ! It needs a tremendous amount of mental work to reduce it.
Your first vision where your Beatrice appears contains a point where I can show you how you can come in.
Beatrice, as an anima figure, is most certainly a personification; that means, a personal being created in this shape by the unconscious.
You can safely assume that this is the shape your anima has chosen in order to demonstrate to you how she looks.
Such a huge Beatrice is surely an unexpected sight. Instead of reacting to this rather amazing sight, you are satisfied with continuing your vision.
But the natural thing would be that you make use of the opportunity and start some dialogue with your anima.
Anybody who feels natural about such things would follow his surprise and put a question or two to her: why she appears as Beatrice? why she is so big? why you are so small? why she nurses your wife and not yourself? Etc.
You also might ask her-since she is the “messenger of the grail”-what that funny thing is with that orange? what the magic ring means? What is the matter with all those animals?
Treat her as a person, if you like as a patient or a goddess, but above all treat her as something that does exist.
Moreover, in this vision you get right under the influence of your anima, and that’s the reason why she begins to feed your wife, because your wife becomes underfed when you fall for your anima.
Therefore you must talk to this person in order to see what she is about and to learn what her thoughts and character are.
If you yourself step into your fantasy, then that overabundance of material will soon come to more reasonable proportions.
But since you are giving free rein to your intuitions you are just swamped by it.
Keep your head and your own personality over against the overwhelming multitude of images and aspects.
You can do that, as I tell you, by stepping into the picture with your ordinary human reactions and emotions.
It is a very good method to treat the anima as if she were a patient whose secret you ought to get at.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Volume II, Page 461.