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.