The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros
The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros.
But I do not wish or intend to give these two intuitive concepts too specific a definition.
I use Eros and Logos merely as conceptual aids to describe the fact that woman’s consciousness is characterized more by the connective quality of Eros than by the discrimination and cognition associated with Logos.
In men, Eros, the function of relationship, is usually less developed than Logos.
In women, on the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while their Logos is often only a regrettable accident.
It gives rise to misunderstandings and annoying interpretations in the family circle and among friends.
This is because it consists of opinions instead of reflections, and by opinions I mean a priori assumptions that lay claim to absolute truth.
Such assumptions, as everyone knows, can be extremely irritating.
As the animus is partial to argument, he can best be seen at work in disputes where both parties know they are right.
Men can argue in a very womanish way, too, when they are anima-possessed and have thus been transformed into the animus of their own anima.
With them the question becomes one of personal vanity and touchiness (as if they were females); with women it is a question of power, whether of truth or justice or some other “ism”—for the dressmaker and hairdresser have already taken care of their vanity.
The “Father” (i.e., the sum of conventional opinions) always plays a great role in female argumentation.
No matter how friendly and obliging a woman’s Eros may be, no logic on earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus.
Often the man has the feeling—and he is not altogether wrong—that only seduction or a beating or rape would have the necessary power
of persuasion.
He is unaware that this highly dramatic situation would instantly come to a banal and unexciting end if he were to quit the field and let a second woman carry on the battle (his wife, for instance, if she herself is not the fiery war horse).
This sound idea seldom or never occurs to him, because no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming
the victim of his own anima.
Anyone who still had enough sense of humour to listen objectively to the ensuing dialogue would be staggered by the vast number of commonplaces, misapplied truisms, cliches from newspapers and novels, shop-soiled platitudes of every description interspersed with vulgar abuse and brain-splitting lack of logic.
It is a dialogue which, irrespective of its participants, is repeated millions and millions of times in all the languages of the world and always remains essentially the same. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Pages 14-15.
The Animus, a Woman’s Inner Man
The embodiment of the unconscious of a woman as a figure of the opposite sex, the animus, also has positive and negative features.
The animus, however, does not express itself so often in women as an erotic fantasy or mood, but rather as “sacred” convictions.
When these latter are expressed loudly and energetically in a masculine style, this masculine side of a woman is easily recognizable.
However, it can also manifest in a woman who appears very feminine externally as a quiet but relentless power that is hard as iron.
Suddenly one comes up against something in her that is cold, stubborn, and completely inaccessible.
The favorite themes that the animus of the woman dredges up within her sound like this: “I am seeking nothing but love, but ‘he’ doesn’t love me.” Or, “There are only two possibilities in this situation,” both of which of course are unpleasant (the negative animus never believes in exceptions).
One can seldom contradict the animus, for it/he is always right; the only problem is that his opinion is not based on the actual situation.
For the most part he gives utterance to seemingly reasonable views, which, however, are slightly at a tangent to what is under discussion.
Just as the mother influence is formative with a man’s anima, the father has a determining influence on the animus of a daughter.
The father imbues his daughter’s mind with the specific coloring conferred by those indisputable views mentioned above, which in reality are so often missing in the daughter.
For this reason the animus is also sometimes represented as a demon of death.
A gypsy tale, for example, tells of a woman living alone who takes in an unknown handsome wanderer and lives with him in spite of the fact that a fearful dream has warned her that he is the king of the dead.
Again and again she presses him to say who he is.
At first he refuses to tell her, because he knows that she will then die, but she persists in her demand.
Then suddenly he tells her he is death.
The young woman is so frightened that she dies.
Looked at from the point of view of mythology, the unknown wanderer here is clearly a pagan father and god figure, who manifests as the leader of the dead (like Hades, who carried off Persephone).
He embodies a form of the animus that lures a woman away from all human relationships and especially holds her back from love with a real man.
A dreamy web of thoughts, remote from life and full of wishes and judgments about how things “ought to be,” prevents all contact with life.
The animus appears in many myths, not only as death, but also as a bandit and murderer, for example, as the knight Bluebeard, who murdered all his wives. Marie-Louise von Franz, Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche, Page 319 – 320
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