Carl Jung On "Anima" "Soul" - Anthology - Quotations

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Carl Jung on “Anima” “Soul” – Anthology – Quotations

Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group

That indeed is reality if it is not a reality in ourselves, an esse in anima? Living reality is the product neither of the actual, objective behaviour of things nor of the formulated idea exclusively, but rather of the combination of both …through esse in anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 77

His [Prometheus’s] soul is Minerva … The Prometheus of mythology has his soul-relation with Pandora or Athene. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 289

… Pandora has the value of a soul-image … ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 305

… in schizophrenia the movement is more centripetal … During the incubation of his illness the schizophrenic … turns away from the outer world in order to withdraw into himself … ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 859

… aesthetic formulation needs understanding of the meaning, and understanding needs aesthetic formulation. The two supplement each other to form the transcendent function. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 177

… primitives assume the existence of several souls … I am therefore inclined to think that autonomous complexes are among the normal phenomena of life and that they make up the structure of the unconscious psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 18 217–18)

… it is frequently supposed that people have two or more souls … ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 577

The plurality of souls indicates a plurality of relatively autonomous complexes … ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 587

… the archetypes appear as active personalities in dreams and fantasies. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 80

… the Kore as observable in man, the anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 357

Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 56

… the motif of polyophthalmia … point[s] to the peculiar nature of the unconscious, which can be regarded as a “multiple consciousness.” ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 614

The anima/animus stage is correlated with polytheism … ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 427

[The animal … in accordance with her Eros nature, wears the features of Aphrodite, Helen (Selene), Persephone, and Hecate ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 41

… a man’s consciousness projects all perceptions coming from the feminine personification of the unconscious onto an anima figure … This explains the fateful quality of the anima … ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 713

The plurality of UFOs … is a projection of a number of psychic images of wholeness which appear in the sky because on the one hand they represent archetypes charged with energy and on the other hand are not recognized as psychic factors. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 635

The classical world thought of this pneuma as Dionysus … whose divine substance is distributed throughout the whole of nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 387

… the soul (anima) released at the “death” is reunited with the dead body and brings about its resurrection, or again the “many colours” … or “peacock’s tail” … lead to the one white colour that contains all colours. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 334

The dreamer is surrounded by a throng of vague female forms … The figures that appear in the dream …pointing to the feminine nature of the unconscious. They are fairies or fascinating sirens or lamias … who infatuate the lonely wanderer and lead him astray. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 58

Christian civilization has proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched and therefore unchanged … Inside reign the archaic gods, supreme as of old … ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 12

… the harbinger of fate, the anima …They [“Syrena”] cause storms … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 218

In psychotherapy it is a well-known fact that neurotic symptoms which seem impossible to attack can often be rendered harmless by conscious understanding … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 436f

… we lack all knowledge of the unconscious psyche and pursue the cult of consciousness to the exclusion of all else. Our true religion is a monotheism of consciousness, a possession by it, coupled with a fanatical denial of the existence of fragmentary autonomous systems. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 51

On the one hand the anima is the connecting link with the world beyond and the eternal images, while on the other hand the emotionality involves man in the chthonic world and its transitoriness. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 457

Psychologically, this doctrine testifies to the personality- or ego-character of psychic complexes: just as the distinguishing mark of the ego-complex is consciousness, so it is possible that other, “unconscious” complexes may possess, as splinter psyches, a certain luminosity of their own. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 47

… the motif of dismemberment is well known in alchemy. The atoms are or become “white sparks” shining in the terra foetida. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 64

… the anima, as she personifies the plurality of the archetypes … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 218

… scintilla, the “little soul-spark” of Meister Eckhart …Similarly Heraclitus … is said to have conceived the soul as a “spark of stellar essence” …Alchemy, too, has its doctrine of the scintilla … “For all things have their origin in this source …” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 42

… the four female figures of the Gnostic underworld, Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 211

… in the end it makes very little difference whether the doctor understands or not, but it makes all the difference whether the patient understands. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 314

… lack of knowledge … has exactly the same effect as unconsciousness. ~Carl CW 16, Para 546

The goal [unity] is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 400

The withdrawal of projections makes the anima what she originally was: an archetypal image which, in its right place, functions to the advantage of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 504

Personality, as the complete realization of our whole being; is an unattainable ideal. But unattainability is no argument against the ideal, for ideals are only signposts, never the goal. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 291

I am indeed convinced that creative imagination is the only primordial phenomenon accessible to us, the real Ground of the psyche, the only immediate reality. Therefore, I speak of esse in anima, the only form of being we can experience directly. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 60

The “mother” corresponds to the “virgin anima,” who is not turned towards the outer world and is therefore not corrupted by it. She is turned rather towards the “inner sun” … Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 464

The dissolution of the anima means that we have gained insight into the driving forces of the unconscious, but not that we have made these forces ineffective. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 391 )

To the degree that the patient takes an active part, the personified figure of anima or animus will disappear. It becomes the function of relationship between conscious and unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 370

… the immediate goal has been achieved, namely the conquest of the anima as an autonomous complex, and her ansformation into a function of relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 374

The richness of the human psyche and its essential character are probably determined by this reflective instinct. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 242

In elfin nature wisdom and folly appear as one and the same; and they are one and the same as long as they are acted out by the anima. Life is crazy and meaningful at once. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 65

When, therefore, an alchemist conjured up the spirit of Saturn as his familiar, this was an attempt to bring to consciousness a standpoint outside the ego, involving a relativization of the ego and its contents. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 11

Consciousness can only exist through continual recognition of the unconscious … ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 178

Together they [the anima and animus] form a divine pair, one of whom … is … rather like Hermes … while the other … wears the features of Aphrodite, Helen (Selene), Persephone, and Hecate. Both of them are unconscious powers, “gods” in fact … ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 41

To the men of antiquity the anima appeared as a goddess or a witch, while for medieval man the goddess was replaced by the Queen of Heaven and Mother Church. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 61

Through reflection, “life” and its “soul” are abstracted from Nature and endowed with a separate existence. (Reflection is a spiritual act that runs counter to the natural process; … it should, therefore, be understood as an act of becoming conscious.) ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 235, fn 9

The anima is nothing but a representation of the personal nature of the autonomous system in question. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 61.

As I see it, the psyche is a world in which the ego is contained. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 75

It is not we who personify them [unconscious figures]; they have a personal nature from the very beginning. Only when this is thoroughly recognized can we think of depersonalizing them, of “subjugating the anima” … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 62

Melusina, the deceptive Shakti … should no longer dance before the adept with alluring gestures, but must become what she was from the beginning: a part of his wholeness. As such she must be “conceived in the mind.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 223

Consciousness consists in the relation of a psychic content to the ego. Anything not associated with the ego remains unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 522.

… there can be no consciousness without the perception of differences. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 603

… sulphur is the soul … of all living things; … it is equated with “nostra anima” (our soul) … Paracelsus likewise calls sulphur the soul. (CW 14: 136)

In his quest for wholeness … Michael Maier … has found the animal soul and the sibylline anima, who now counsels him to journey to the seven mouths of the Nile … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 287

The sibyl, the guide of souls … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 300

Our author was led in the first place by the anima-sibyl to undertake the journey through the planetary houses … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 313

… Michael Maier’s journey to the seven mouths of the Nile … is a description of the dreamer’s ascent to a world of gods and heroes, of his initiation into a Venus mystery … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 297

Atrophy of feeling is a characteristic of modern man and always shows itself as a reaction when there is too much feeling around, and in particular too much false feeling. ~Carl CW 15, Para 183

The unconscious anima is a creature without relationships, an autoerotic being whose one aim is to take total possession of the individual. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 504

At the top of the whole picture is the personification of the unconscious, a naked anima-figure who turns her back. That is a typical position; in the beginning of the objectivation of these images the anima-figure often turns herk. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 412

… the anima emerges in exemplary fashion from the primeval slime, laden with all the pulpy and monstrous appendages of the deep. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 84

Anima – Anatomy of a Personified Notion

Take for instance animus and anima. No philosopher in his senses would invent such irrational and clumsy ideas. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 192

Green, the life-colour, suits her [the anima] very well … ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 678

… the feminine belongs to man as his own unconscious femininity, which I have called the anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 678

… the character of the anima can be deduced from that of the persona. Everything that should normally be in the outer attitude, but is conspicuously absent, will invariably be found in the inner attitude. This is fundamental rule … ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 806

To the young boy a clearly discernible anima-form appears in his mother … An infantile man generally has a maternal anima; an adult man, the figure of a younger woman. The senile man finds compensation in a very young girl, or even a child. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 357

… the soul, that glancing, Aeolian thing, elusive as a butterfly (anima, ψυχή). ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 391

… the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 29

Anima is “the glamorous, possessive, moody, and sentimental seductress in a man” ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 422

… if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 429

… the anima is bipolar and can therefore appear positive one moment and negative the next; now young, now old ; now mother, now maiden ; now a good fairy, now a witch ; now a saint, now a whore. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 356

When the shadow, the inferior personality, is in large measure unconscious, the unconscious is represented by a masculine figure. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 714, Fn 21

… man will be forced to develop his feminine side, to open his eyes to the psyche and to Eros. It is a task he cannot avoid, unless he prefers to go trailing after woman in a hopelessly boyish fashion, worshipping from afar but always in danger of being stowed away in her pocket. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 259.

It is normal for a man to resist his anima, because she represents … all those tendencies and contents hitherto excluded from conscious life. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 129

With this anima, then, we plunge straight into the ancient world. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 112

[Anima] is a subtle imperceptible smoke. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 394, fn 105

The anima … is the “energy of the heavy and the turbid”; it clings to the bodily, fleshly heart. Its effects are “sensuous desires and impulses to anger.” “Whoever is sombre and moody on waking … is fettered to the anima.” ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 57

… on a low level the anima is a caricature of the feminine Eros … Eros is an interweaving … Eros is relatedness … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 60

“Soul” represents a higher concept than “spirit” in the sense of air or gas. As the “subtle body” or “breath-soul” it means something non-material and finer than mere air. Its essential characteristic is to animate and be animated …Mercurius is often designatedas anima … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 261-262

… the anima iliastri can burst forth from the heart when it lacks “air”; that is to say, if psychic remedies are not applied, death occurs prematurely. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 201

The colour green … is associated with Venus. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 393

The fact that the rotundum is … contained in the anima and is prefigured by her lends her that extraordinary fascination … At a certain level, therefore, woman appears as the true carrier of the longed-for wholeness and redemption. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 500

It [salt] represents the feminine principle of Eros, which brings everything into relationship … [S]alt, as the soul or spark of the anima mundi, is … the daughter of the spiritus vegetativus of creation. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 322

Apart from its lunar wetness and its terrestrial nature, the most outstanding properties of salt are bitterness and wisdom … Salt, as the carrier of this fateful alternative, is co-ordinated with the nature of woman. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 330

Confirmation of our interpretation of salt as Eros (i.e., as a feeling relationship) is found in the fact that the bitterness is the origin of the colors … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 333.

The whore (meretrix) is a well-known figure in alchemy. She characterizes the arcane substance in its initial, “chaotic,” maternal state … “That noble whore Venus …” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 415

As regards the psychology of this picture, we must stress above all else that it depicts a human encounter where love plays the decisive part. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 419,

Whenever this drive for wholeness appears, it begins by disguising itself under the symbolism of incest, for, unless he seeks it in himself, a man’s nearest feminine counterpart is to be found in his mother, sister, or daughter. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 471

In both cases [anima and animus] the incest element plays an important part: there is a relation between the young woman and her father, the older woman and her son, the young man and his mother, the older man and his daughter. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 521

The anima has an erotic, emotional character … Hence most of what men say about feminine eroticism, and particularly about the emotional life of women, is derived from their own anima projections and distorted accordingly. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 338

… every man “carries Eve, his wife, hidden in his body.” It is this feminine element in every man (based on the minority of female genes in his biological make-up) which I have called the anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 429

The feelings of a man are so to speak a woman’s and appear as such in dreams. I designate this figure by the term anima, because she is the personification of the inferior functions which relate a man to the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 187

No man is so entirely masculine that he has nothing feminine in him … The repression of feminine traits …causes these contrasexual demands to accumulate in the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 297

Take, for example, the “spotless” man of honor and public benefactor, whose tantrums and explosive moodiness terrify his wife and children. What is the anima doing here? ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 319

… it is essentially the overvaluation of the material object without that constellates a spiritual and immortal figure within (obviously for the purpose of compensation and self-regulation) … [ A] compensatory relationship exists between persona and anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 303-304

… another fact to which I have already alluded, [is] the characteristically historical aspect of the soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 33

If she is old, this is an indication that one’s consciousness has become considerably more childish. If she is young, then one is too old in one’s conscious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 189

Of course, I did not invent the term Eros. I learnt it from Plato. But I never would have applied this term if I hadn’t observed facts that gave me a hint how to use this Platonic notion. With Plato Eros is still a daimonion or daemonium …~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 464-465

The anima, being psychologically the female counterpart of the masculine consciousness, based upon the minority of female genes in a masculine body … ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 483

“The anima is presumably a psychic representation of the minority of female genes in a man’s body” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 48.

The most striking feature about the anima-type is that the maternal element is entirely lacking. She is the companion and friend in her favourable aspect, in her unfavourable aspect she is the courtesan … But the anima-type is presented in the most succinct and pregnant form in the Gnostic legend of Simon Magus … [who] was always accompanied on his travels by a girl, whose name was Helen. He had found her in a brothel in Tyre; she was a reincarnation of Helen of Troy. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 75

We speak of a definite “anima type.” The so-called “sphinx-like” character is an indispensable part of their equipment, also an equivocalness, an intriguing elusiveness … an indefiniteness that seems full of promises, like the speaking silence of a Mona Lisa. ~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 339

… Michael Maier’s journey to the seven mouths of the Nile, which signify the seven planet … is a description of the dreamer’s ascent to a world of gods and heroes, of his initiation into a Venus mystery … Our author was led in the first place by the anima-sibyl to undertake the journey through the planetary houses … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 297f.

Hermes, originally a wind god, and his counterpart the Egyptian Thoth, who “makes the souls to breathe,” are the forerunners of the alchemical Mercurius in his aerial aspect. The texts often use the terms pneuma and spiritus in the original concrete sense of “air in motion.” … He is the … stone uplifted by the wind … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 260

The inner personality is the way one behaves in relation to one’s inner psychic processes; it is the inner attitude, the characteristic face, that is turned towards the unconscious. I call the outer attitude, the outward face, the persona; the inner attitude, the inward face, I call the anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 803

… in a man the soul, i.e., anima, or inner attitude, is represented in the unconscious by definite persons with the corresponding qualities. Such an image is called a “soul-image.” Sometimes these images are of quite unknown or mythological figures. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 808

We might compare masculinity and femininity and their psychic components to a definite store of substances of which, in the first half of life, unequal use is made. A man consumes his large supply of masculine substance and has left over only the smaller amount of feminine substance, which must now be put to use. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 782

Either sex is inhabited by the opposite sex up to a point, for, biologically speaking, it is simply the greater number of masculine genes that tips the scales in favour of masculinity. The smaller number of feminine genes seems to form a feminine character, which usually remains unconscious because of its subordinate position. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 58

The anima is the archetype of the feminine and plays a very important role in a man’s unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 406, fn 142

It is principally among women that I have found the predominance of introverted feeling. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 640

… the archetypes are not found exclusively in the psychic sphere … ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 964

Although there is no form of existence that is not mediated to us psychically … it would hardly do to say that everything is merely psychic. We must apply this argument logically to the archetypes as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 420

In the case of the individual, the problem constellated by the shadow is answered on the plane of the anima, that is, through relatedness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 487

The “maiden” corresponds to the anima of the man … But as long as a woman is content to be a femme à homme, she has no feminine individuality. She is empty and merely glitters – a welcome vessel for masculine projections. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 355.

… to the degree in which the shadow is recognized and integrated, the problem of the anima, i.e., of relationship, is constellated. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 485, fn 18

When projected, the anima always has a feminine form with definite characteristics. This empirical finding does not mean that the archetype is constituted like that in itself. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 120

Intellect and feeling … conflict with one another by definition. Whoever identifies with an intellectual standpoint will occasionally find his feeling confronting him like an enemy in the guise of the anima … ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 58

… the anima becomes, through integration, the Eros of consciousness, … the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man’s consciousness … ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 33

What, then, is this projection-making factor? The East calls it the “Spinning Woman” – Maya, who creates illusion by her dancing. (I have defined the anima as a personification of the unconscious.) ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 50, fn 1

… she is the great illusionist, the seductress, who draws him into life with her Maya…… I have suggested … the term “anima”… ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 24-25

Feeling is a specifically feminine virtue … ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 79

… a man’s consciousness projects all perceptions coming from the feminine personification of the unconscious onto an anima figure, i.e., a real woman … ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 714

As a psychopomp she [Sophia] leads the way to God and assures immortality. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 613

Looked at theologically, my concept of the anima … is pure Gnosticism … ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 460

The unknown woman or anima [in dreams] always represents the “inferior,” i.e., the undifferentiated function, which in the case of our dreamer is feeling. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 150

In Eastern symbolism the square … has the character of the yoni: femininity. A man’s unconscious is likewise feminine and is personified by the anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 192

… the heavenly bride … is a typical anima projection … Spitteler also likens the “Lady Soul” to a tiger. (In China, the tiger is a symbol of yin.) ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 460, fn 14

… the anima of a man consists of inferior relatedness, full of affect … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 60

The spiritual man was seduced into putting on the body, and was bound to it by “Pandora, whom the Hebrews call Eve.” She played the part, therefore, of the anima … just as Shakti or Maya entangles man’s consciousness with the world. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 126

The emotional state of Sophia sunk in unconsciousness … , her formlessness, and the possibility of her getting lost in the darkness characterize very clearly the anima of a man who identifies himself absolutely with his reason and his spirituality. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 454

… I have reserved the term “animus” strictly for women … Feminine psychology exhibits an element that is the counterpart of a man’s anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 60

He will learn to know his soul, that is, his anima and Shakti who conjures up a delusory world for him. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 673

… Helen as an anima figure … ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 361

It often happens that the patient is quite satisfied with merely registering a dream or fantasy … Others try to understand with their brains only … That they should also have a feeling-relationship to the contents of the unconscious seems strange to them … ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 489

The feelings of a man are so to speak a woman’s and appear as such in dreams. I designate this figure by the term anima … ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 187

“She” [the anima] consists essentially in a certain inferior kind of relatedness to the surroundings and particularly to women … ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 429

This spiritual inflation is compensated by a distinct inferiority of feeling, a real undernourishment of your other side, the feminine earth (Yin) side, that of personal feeling. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. I, Page 52

Now comes the first transformation: he [Goethe] discovers his countertype (“feeling is all”) and at the same time realizes the projection of the anima … Behind Gretchen stands the Gnostic sequence: Helen-Mary-Sophia. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 265

The archaic souls, the ha and ka of the Egyptians, are complexes of this kind. At a still higher level, … this complex is invariably of the feminine gender – anima … Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 295

… the Kore often appears in woman as an unknown young girl, not infrequently as Gretchen or the unmarried mother … [or] the dancer, … the corybant, maenad, or nymph. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 422

… [in] classical Chinese philosophy … the anima (p’o or kuei) is regarded as the feminine and chthonic part of the soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 119

Anima means soul … The soul is the magic breath of life (hence the term “anima”) … ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 55

Anima means soul and should designate something very wonderful and immortal. Yet this was not always so. We should not forget that this kind of soul is a dogmatic conception whose purpose it is to pin down and capture something uncannily alive and active. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 55

… Prakṛti dancing before Purusha in order to remind him of “discriminating knowledge” does not belong to the mother archetype but to the archetype of the anima … ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 158

… the anima appears equally as maiden and mother, which is why a personalistic interpretation always reduces her to the personal mother or some other female person. The real meaning of the figure naturally gets lost in the process … ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 356

Soul, from Old German saiwalô, may be cognate with αἰόλος, ‘quick-moving, changeful of hue, shifting.’ It also has the meaning of ‘wily’ or ‘shifty’; hence an air of probability attaches to the alchemical definition of anima as Mercurius. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 381, fn 5

… Mercurius is the anima mundi. Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 212

Nor is she [the anima] a substitute figure for the mother. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 26

… the queen and the king are one, in the sense that body and soul or spirit and soul are one … the queen corresponds to the soul (anima)…. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 243

Here I would like to guard against a misunderstanding. The concept of “soul” which I am now using can be compared more with the primitive idea of the soul … than with the Christian idea of it which is an attempt to make a philosophical construct … My conception of the soul has absolutely nothing to do with this … ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 84

… the unconscious is often personified by the anima … ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 107

We may … assume that the transferring of the water of life to the sister really means that the mother has been replaced by the anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 92

… two empirically very common archetypes, namely the anima and the Wise Old Man, flow together in the symbolic phenomenology of Mercurius ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 218

As the anima mundi, Mercurius can in fact be compared with the Gnostic … (virgin of light) and with the Christian Virgin Mary … ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 506

The soul functions … in the body, but has the greater part of its function … outside the body … ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 396

… I used the term “anima” in a way quite analogous to the Chinese definition of p’o … [T]he affective character of a man has feminine traits. From this psychological fact derives the Chinese doctrine of the p’o soul as well as my own concept of the anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 58

“Anima,” called p’o, and written with the characters for “white” and “demon,” that is, “white ghost,” belongs to the lower, earthbound, bodily soul, the yin principle, and is therefore feminine. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 57

Mythologically, nymphs, dryads, etc. are nature- and tree-numina, but psychologically they are anima projections … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 70

… outwardly Mercurius corresponds to quicksilver but inwardly he is … an anima mundi … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 699

… the anima … represents the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 128

… the queen and the king are one, in the sense that body and soul or spirit and soul are one … the queen corresponds to the soul (anima) and the king to spirit … the secret of the work was some- times called the “Reginae Mysteria.” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 536

… I caught sight of two figures, an old man with a white beard and a beautiful young girl. … The old man explained that he was Elijah, and that gave me a shock. But the girl staggered me even more for she called herself Salome! She was blind. What a strange couple: Salome and Elijah. But Elijah assured me that he and Salome had belonged together from all eternity. (MDR: 181)

The Christian principle which unites the opposites is the worship of God, in Buddhism it is the worship of the self (self-development), while in Spitteler and Goethe it is the worship of the soul symbolized by the worship of woman. Implicit in this categorization is the modern individualistic principle on the one hand, and on the other a primitive Polydaemonism which assigns to every race, every tribe, every family, every individual its specific religious principle. (CW 6: 376)

This is an age-old experience of mankind which is reflected in the universal supposition of a plurality of souls in one and the same individual. As the plurality of psychic components at the primitive level shows the original state is one in which the psychic processes are very loosely knit and by no means form a self-contained unity. (CW 8: 365)

It strikes me as significant, particularly in regard to our hypothesis of a multiple consciousness and its phenomena, that the characteristic alchemical vision of sparks scintillating in the blackness of the arcane substance should, for Paracelsus, change into the spectacle of the “interior firmament” and its stars …… it is in my view not too much to assume that these multiple luminosities correspond to tiny conscious phenomena. (CW 8: 392–96)

The transformation of libido through the symbol is a process that has been going on ever since the beginnings of humanity and continues still … This age-old function of the symbol is still present today, despite the fact that for many centuries the trend of mental development has been towards the suppression of individual symbol-formation … [A] step in this direction was … the extermination of polytheism … (CW 8: 92)

I have always been greatly impressed by the character of dissociated fragments as personalities … [I]f such fragments have personality, the whole from which they were broken off must have personality to an even higher degree … Personality need not imply consciousness. It can just as easily be dormant or dreaming. … It may be that all of the [hidden] personality to be found in the unconscious is contained in the fragmentary personifications mentioned before … … in the unconscious of every man there is hidden a feminine personality … (CW 9.1: 508–11)

Both these archetypes [the anima and animus] … possess a fatality that can on occasion produce tragic results … It is only when we throw light into the dark depths of the psyche and explore the strange and tortuous paths of human fate that it gradually becomes clear to us how immense is the influence wielded by these two factors that complement our conscious life. (CW 9.2: 41)

It has been objected that Christ cannot have been a valid symbol of the self … I can agree with this view only if it refers strictly to the present time, when psychological criticism has become possible, but not if it pretends to judge the psychological age. Christ did not merely symbolize wholeness, but, as a psychic phenomenon, he was wholeness. (CW 9.2: 115 n75)

Spiritually the Western world is in a precarious situation, and the danger is greater the more we blind ourselves … with illusions about our beauty of soul. Western man lives in a thick cloud of incense which he burns to himself so that his own countenance may be veiled from him in the smoke. … that megalomania of ours which leads us to suppose … that Christianity is the only truth and the white Christ the only redeemer. No wonder that unearthing the psyche is like undertaking a full-scale drainage operation. (CW 10: 183–86)

In actual fact, however, the psychic substratum, that dark realm of the unknown, exercises a fascinating attraction that threatens to become the more overpowering the further he penetrates into it. [n48: Symbolized by a sorceress or by wanton girls …] The psychological danger that arises here is the disintegration of personality into its functional components, i.e., the separate functions of consciousness, the complexes, hereditary units, etc. …… that is to say, the body and the psychic representatives of the organs gain mastery over the conscious mind. (CW 12: 439–40)

The splitting of the anima into many figures is equivalent to dissolution into an indefinite state, i.e., into the unconscious, from which we may conjecture that a relative dissolution of the conscious mind is running parallel with the historical regression (a process to be observed in its extreme form in schizophrenia). (CW 12: 116)

Only a little more than a thousand years ago we tumbled out of the crudest beginnings of polytheism into a highly developed Oriental religion which lifted the imaginative minds of half-savages to a height that in no way corresponded to their spiritual development … The repressed elements naturally did not develop, but went on vegetating in the unconscious, in their original barbarism. (CW 13: 70)

The Christ-symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology in so far as it is perhaps the most highly developed and She [Eve, Pandora] played the part … of the anima, who functions as the link between body and spirit, just as Shakti or Maya entangles man’s consciousness with the world. (CW 13: 126)

… the man’s opus is concerned with the erotic aspect of the anima … Out of the prima materia grows the philosophical tree, the unfolding opus … Eve [stands] for the man’s anima who, as Sapientia or Sophia, produces out of her head the intellectual content of the work. (CW 16: 519)

On the psychological level, the tangle of relationships in the cross-cousin marriage reappears in the transference problem. The dilemma here consists in the fact that anima and animus are projected upon their human counterparts …But in so far as anima and animus undoubtedly represent the contrasexual components of the personality, their kinship character … point[s] … to the integration of personality … (CW 16: 441)

… start some dialogue with your anima … 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? … Treat her as a person, if you like as a patient or a goddess, but above all treat her as something that does exist … talk to this person … 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 proportion …. Keep your head and your own personality over against the overwhelming multitude of images … treat the anima as if she were a patient whose secret you ought to get at. (Letter to Mr. O., 7 May 1947)

… the anima is always associated with the source of wisdom and enlightenment, whose symbol is the Old Wise Man. As long as you are under the influence of the anima you are unconscious of that archetype, i.e., you are identical with it and that explains your preoccupation with Indian philosophy. You are then forced to play the role of the Old Wise Man. (Letter to

The psoriasis of the anima figure is due to certain contents which the anima has within her, as though in the blood, and which sweat out on the surface. This is also indicated by the snakelike patterns of the psoriasis. It is a kind of painting that appears on the skin. Very often this points to the need to portray certain contents or states graphically, and in colour … This “art” activity … these works of the anima are products of the feminine mind in a man. The feminine mind is pictorial and symbolic and comes close to what the ancients called Sophia. ~Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. I, Page 189

In the shape of the goddess the anima is manifestly projected, but in her proper (psychological) shape she is introjected; she is … the “anima within.” She is the natural sponsa, … the companion whom the endogamous tendency vainly seeks to win in the form of mother and sister. She represents that longing which has always had to be sacrificed … Layard therefore speaks very rightly of “internalization through sacrifice.” ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 438

[In the German text the word Anima is used only twice … Everywhere else the word used is Seele (soul). In this translation anima is substituted for “soul” when it refers specifically to the feminine component in a man … “Soul” is retained only when it refers to the psychic factor common to both sexes. The distinction is not always easy to make … ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 803, fn 80

stands in sorry contrast to the dazzling persona …[ T]he “nothing but fantasy” attitude will never persuade me to regard my anima manifestations as anything more than fatuous weakness. If, however, I take the line that the world is outside and inside, … I must logically accept the upsets and annoyances that come to me from inside as symptoms of faulty adaptation to the conditions of that inner world. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 428

In the case of an anima-possession, for instance, the patient will want to change himself into a woman through self-castration, or he is afraid that something of the sort will be done to him by force. The best-known example of this is Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Patients often discover a whole anima mythology with numerous archaic motifs. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 82

But I should be carrying brevity too far if I described the anima merely as a primordial image of woman consisting of irrational feelings, and the animus merely as a primordial image of man consisting of irrational views. Both figures present … elementary forms of that psychic phenomenon which from primitive times has been called “soul.” They are also the cause of that deep human need to speak of souls or daemons at all. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 82

… Melusina, the water-nixie, … [can] change herself into human form. Dorn thinks of this as a “vision appearing in the mind” and not as a projection on a real woman …… The anima belongs to those borderline phenomena which chiefly occur in special psychic situations … One is confronted with a hopeless and impenetrable darkness, an abysmal void that is now suddenly filled with an alluring vision, the palpably real presence of a strange yet helpful being …This peculiarity of the anima is found … in the Melusina legend … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 215

… our picture represents the union of the spirit with material reality … The spirit of the gold, [is] only the right half of the king …The queen is a sulphur, … a chthonic spirit … The self or imago Dei … is here united with its chthonic counterpart … This is personified in the psychological anima figure … The alchemical queen … corresponds to the psychological anima. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 736

Luna … is the counterpart of Sol, cold, moist, feebly shining or dark, feminine, corporeal, passive. Accordingly her most significant role is that of a partner in the coniunctio… [S]he is a universal receptacle, of the sun in particular; … she “receives and pours out” the powers of heaven. … Silver is yet another synonym or symbol for the arcanum “Luna.” ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 154

… the feminine figure of the anima … requires a different evaluation and position … [A] personalistic interpretation always reduces her to the personal mother or some other female person. The real meaning of the figure naturally gets lost in the process … She is more or less immortal, because outside time … [T]he archetypes … are unconsciously projected upon more or less suitable human personalities. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 356-357

If a mother-complex in a woman does not produce an overdeveloped Eros, it leads to identification with the mother and to paralysis of the daughter’s feminine initiative … These bloodless maidens … are so empty that a man is free to impute to them anything he fancies. In addition, they are so unconscious that the unconscious puts out countless invisible feelers, veritable octopus tentacle, that suck up all masculine projections; and this pleases men enormously. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 169

If we examine their content, … we find countless archaic and “historical” associations … They [the anima and animus] evidently live and function … especially in that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious … [T]hey bring into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestor … ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 518

But how do we dare to call this elfin being the “anima”? Anima means soul and should designate something very wonderful and immortal. Yet this was not always so. We should not forget that this kind of soul is a dogmatic conception whose purpose it is to pin down and capture something uncannily alive and active. The German word Seele is closely related, via the Gothic form saiwalô to the Greek word αίολος, which means ‘quick-moving,’ ‘changeful of hue,’ ‘twinkling,’ something like a butterfly – ψυχή in Greek – which reels drunkenly from flower to flower and lives on honey and love. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 55

The ground principles, the archai, of the unconscious are indescribable because of their wealth of reference … The discriminating intellect naturally keeps on trying to establish their singleness of meaning and thus misses the essential point; for what we can above all establish as the one thing consistent with their nature is their manifold meaning, their almost limitless wealth of reference, which makes any unilateral formulation impossible. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 80.

According to these Gnostics, … the feminine figure of Wisdom, [was] Sophia-Achamoth … Sophia, partly by an act of reflection and partly driven by necessity, entered into relation with the outer darkness. The sufferings that befell her took the form of various emotions – sadness, fear, bewilderment, confusion, longing; now she laughed and now she wept … The emotional state of Sophia sunk in unconsciousness …, her formlessness, and the possibility of her getting lost in the darkness characterize very clearly the anima of a man who identifies himself absolutely with his reason and his spirituality. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 452ff.

Four stages of eroticism were known in the late classical period … The series is repeated in Goethe’s Faust: in the figures of Gretchen as the personification of a purely instinctual relationship (Eve); Helen as an anima figure; Mary as the personification of the “heavenly” … ; and the “eternal feminine” as an expression of the alchemical Sapientia. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 361

Just as the persona is the image of himself which the subject presents to the world, and which is seen by the world, so the anima is the image of the subject in his relation to the collective unconscious … One could also say: the anima is the face of the subject as seen by the collective unconscious … If the ego adopts the standpoint of the anima, adaptation to reality is severely compromised. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 521

… valuable reference to Tristram Shandy [1759–67]. [“The two souls in every man living, – the one … being called the ANIMUS, the other, the ANIMA” (London, 1911, p. 133).] To begin with I did not have the feeling at all that I was guilty of plagiarism with my [anima/animus] theory, but in the last 5 years … I have discovered … traces of it also in the old alchemists … I can only think that Laurence Sterne drew upon the secret teachings (presumably Rosicrucian) of his time. They contain the Royal Secret of the King and Queen, who were none other than the animus and anima, or Deus and Dea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 248

… a man in trying to attain his ideal of manhood represses all feminine traits – which are really part of him, just as masculine traits are part of a woman’s psychology … If we carefully examine the uncontrolled emotions of a man …we soon arrive at a feminine figure which I call … the anima. On the same ground the ancients conceived of a feminine soul, a “psyche” or “anima” … … An alluring nixie … is today called an “erotic fantasy,” and she may complicate our psychic life in a most painful way. She comes upon us just as a nixie might; she sits on top of us like a succubus; she changes into all sorts of shapes like a witch … [and] causes states of fascination that rival the best bewitchment … She is a mischievous being who crosses our path in numerous transformations and disguises, playing all kinds of tricks on us, causing happy and unhappy delusions, depressions and ecstasies, outbursts of affect, etc. … the nixie has not laid aside her roguery. The witch has not ceased to mix her vile potions of love and death; her magic poison has been refined into intrigue and self-deception, unseen though none the less dangerous for that. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 53-54

As to the common human qualities, the character of the anima can be deduced from that of the persona … But as regards its individual qualities, nothing can be deduced … We can only be certain that when a man is identical with his persona, his individual qualities will be associated with the anima. This association frequently gives rise in dreams to the symbol of psychic pregnancy … The child that is to be born signifies the individuality, which, though present, is not yet conscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 806

… I have noticed that people usually have not much difficulty in picturing to themselves what is meant by the shadow … But it costs them enormous difficulties to understand what the anima is. They accept her easily enough when she appears in novels or as a film star, but she is not understood at all when it comes to seeing the role she plays in their own lives, because she sums up everything that a man can never get the better of and never finishes coping with. Therefore it remains in a perpetual state of emotionality which must not be touched. The degree of unconsciousness one meets with in this connection is, to put it mildly, astounding. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 485

… sex is determined by a majority of male or female genes, as the case may be. But the minority of genes belonging to the other sex does not simply disappear. A man therefore has in him a feminine side, an unconscious feminine figure – a fact of which he is generally quite unaware. I may take it as known that I have called this figure the “anima” … ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 512

The growing youth must be able to free himself from the anima fascination of his mother. There are exceptions, notably artists, where the problem often takes a different turn; also homosexuality, which is usually characterized by identity with the anima … Such a disposition should not be adjudged negative in all circumstances, in so far as it preserves the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 146

Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in man, that which lives of itself and causes life … With her cunning play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived. She is full of snares and traps, in order that man should fall, should reach the earth, entangle himself there, and stay caught … ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 56

(a) In the case of an anima-possession, for instance, the patient will want to change himself into a woman through self-castration, or he is afraid that something of the sort will be done to him by force. The best-known example of this is Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Patients often discover a whole anima mythology with numerous archaic motifs. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 82

[… there is no consistent equivalent of Seele in English … in the essay “Spirit and Life,” … “soul” would give entirely the wrong meaning. It has therefore been translated … either as “psyche” or as “mind” … [There is] an increasing tendency to replace the concept Seele by Psyche, until, in “The Real and the Surreal” (1933), Psyche alone occupies the field.] ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 300

[The translation of … Seele presents almost insuperable difficulties … because it combines the two words “psyche” and “soul” … either Psyche or Seele – has been used with reference to the totality of all psychic processes … “Soul,” on the other hand, … is more restricted in meaning and refers to a “function complex” or partial personality … It is often applied specifically to “anima” and “animus” …] ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 9, fn 2

Mercurius is often designated as anima …… Very much more material is the definition of Mercurius as a “life-giving power like a glue, holding the world together and standing in the middle between body and spirit.” This concept corresponds to … Mercurius as the anima media natura. From here it is but a step to the identification of Mercurius with the anima mundi … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 262-263

… our picture represents the union of the spirit with material reality … [T]he spirit of the gold, [is] only the right half of the king …The queen is a sulphur, … a chthonic spirit … [T]he self or imago Dei … is here united with its chthonic counterpart … [T]his is personified in the psychological anima figure … [T]he alchemical queen … corresponds to the psychological anima. (~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 736

[For Richard White] … The human soul is “androgynous,” “because a girl has a masculine and a man a feminine soul.” … [He] adds … the soul is also called an “old woman” …… [H]e writes that the soul is an idea “of such great power that she creates the forms and things themselves,” also “she has within herself the ‘selfness’ of all mankind.” She transcends all individual differences … It should be noted that he describes this soul quite differently from the way it would be described by a biological or personalistic psychology today … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 92-93

(…the reflective instinct … Reflexio means ‘bending back’ … the fact that the reflex which carries the stimulus over into its instinctive discharge is interfered with by psychization … Reflexio is a turning inwards, with the result that … there ensues a succession of derivative contents or states which may be termed reflection or deliberation. Through the reflective instinct, the stimulus is more or less wholly transformed into a psychic content, that is, it becomes an experience … ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 241

Through his imagination the timid man has made his eyes basilisk-like, and he infects the mirror, the moon, and the stars … Thus man in turn will be poisoned by this mirror of the moon … And as the mirror is defiled by the woman, thus conversely the eyes … are being defiled by the moon, for the reason that at such times the eyes of the timid imagining man are weak and dull … ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 215

… when anima forfeits the daemonic power of an autonomous complex … she is depotentiated … no longer is the soul to be called “Mistress,” but a psychological function of an intuitive nature, akin to what the primitives mean when they say, “He has gone into the forest to talk with the spirits” or “My snake spoke with me …” ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 374

Melusina comes into the same category as the nymphs and sirens who dwell in the “Nymphidida,” the watery realm … [T]he birthplace of Melusina is the womb of the mysteries, obviously what we today would call the unconscious … Melusina is dearly an anima figure. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 180

His mistress appears before him … seeming to him like a goddess in heaven. The repressed erotic impression has activated the latent primordial image of the goddess, i.e., the archetypal sol-image. Through insight into the actual existence of his erotic desire, [the shepherd of] Hermas was able to acknowledge this metaphysical reality. The sensual libido … now passed to his soul-image and invested it with the reality which the object had claimed exclusively for itself. Consequently his soul could speak to good effect and successfully enforce her demands. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 383

Prometheus surrenders himself … to his soul, that is, to the function of relation to the inner world … Prometheus concedes her an absolute significance, as mistress and guide … He sacrifices his individual ego to the soul, to the relation with the unconscious as the matrix of eternal images and meanings … Prometheus loses all connection with the surrounding world, and hence also the very necessary corrective offered by external reality. ~Carl CW 6, Para 278

… the autonomous complex of anima and animus is essentially a psychological function that has usurped, or rather retained, a “personality” only because this function is itself autonomous and undeveloped. But already we can see how it is possible to break up the personifications, since by making them conscious we convert them into bridges to the unconscious. It is because we are not using them purposefully as functions that they remain personified complexes. So long as they are in this state they must be accepted as relatively independent personalities. They cannot be integrated into consciousness while their contents remain unknown. The purpose of the dialectical process is to bring these contents into the light; and only when this task has been completed, and the conscious mind has become sufficiently familiar with the unconscious processes reflected in the anima, will the anima be felt simply as a function. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 339

… there are good grounds for the prejudice that the ego is the centre of the personality, and that the field of consciousness is the psyche per se … [I]t is only since the end of the nineteenth century that modern psychology … has discovered the foundations of consciousness and proved empirically the existence of a psyche outside onsciousness. With this discovery the position of the ego, till then absolute, became relativized … It is part of the personality but not the whole of it. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 11

(d) After the middle of life, however, permanent loss of the anima means a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human kindness. The result, as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness, stereotypy, fanatical one-sidedness, obstinacy, pedantry, or else resignation, weariness, sloppiness, irresponsibility, and finally a childish ramollissement with a tendency to alcohol. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 147

The anima is … a natural archetype that satisfactorily sums up all the statements of the unconscious, of the primitive mind of the history of language and religion … [I]t is always the a priori element in his moods, reactions, impulses, and whatever else is spontaneous in psychic life. It is something that lives of itself, that makes us live; It is a life behind consciousness that cannot be completely integrated with it, but from which, on the contrary, consciousness arises. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 57

The anima no longer crosses our path as a goddess, but, it may be as an intimately personal misadventure, or perhaps as our best venture. When, for instance, a highly esteemed professor in his seventies abandons his family and runs off with a young red-headed actress … This is how daemonic power reveals itself to us. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 62

… the first encounter with her usually leads one to infer anything rather than wisdom. This aspect appears only to the person who gets to grips with her seriously. Only then … does he come to realize more and more that behind all her cruel sporting with human fate there lies something like a hidden purpose which seems to reflect a superior knowledge of life’s laws. It is just the most unexpected, the most terrifyingly chaotic things which reveal a deeper meaning. And the more this meaning is recognized, the more the anima loses her impetuous and compulsive character. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 64

Everything the anima touches becomes numinous – unconditional, dangerous, taboo, magical … She affords the most convincing reasons for not prying into the unconscious, an occupation that would break down our moral inhibitions and unleash forces that had better been left unconscious and undisturbed. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 59

Originally this archetype played its part entirely in the field of fertility magic and thus remained … a purely biological phenomenon … But even in early antiquity the symbolical meaning of the act seems to have increased …and natural philosophy turned it into an abstract theoria. These developments meant the gradual transformation of the archetype into a psychological process which, in theory, we can call a combination of conscious and unconscious processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 296

It is as though, at the climax of the illness, the destructive powers were converted into healing forces. This is brought about by the archetypes awaking to independent life and taking over the guidance of the psychic personality, thus supplanting the ego with its futile willing and striving … the psyche has awakened to spontaneous activity …something that is not his ego and is therefore beyond the reach of his personal will. He has regained access to the sources of psychic life, and this marks the beginning of the cure. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 534

… only an insignificant minority regards the psychic phenomenon as a category of existence per se and draws the necessary conclusions. It is indeed paradoxical that the category of existence, the indispensable sine qua non of all existence, namely the psyche, should be treated as if it were only semi-existent. Psychic existence is the only category of existence of which we have immediate knowledge, since nothing can be known unless it first appears as a psychic image. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 769

Instead of allowing himself [Western man] to be convinced once more that the daemon is an illusion, he ought to experience once more the reality of this illusion … His dissociative tendencies are actual psychic personalities possessing a differential reality … The personification enables us to see the relative reality of the autonomous system, and not only makes its assimilation possible but also depotentiates the daemonic forces of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 55

… for the archetypes are universal and belong to the collective psyche over which the ego has no control. Thus animus and anima are images representing archetypal figures which mediate between consciousness and the unconscious. Though they can be made conscious they cannot be integrated into the ego-personality, since as archetypes they are also autonomous. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 342

I have defined the anima as a personification of the unconscious in general, and have taken it as a bridge to the unconscious … If the unconscious figures are not acknowledged as spontaneous agents, we become victims of a onesided belief in the power of consciousness … ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 62

The light that gradually dawns on him [modern man] consists in his understanding that his fantasy is a real psychic process which is happening to him personally … But if you recognize your own involvement you yourself must enter into the process with your personal reactions, just as if you were one of the fantasy figures, or rather, as if the drama being enacted before your eyes were real. It is a psychic fact that this fantasy is happening, and it is as real as you – as a psychic entity – are real. If this crucial operation is not carried out, all the changes are left to the flow of images, and you yourself remain unchanged. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 753

When such a fate [Nekyia] befalls a man … he usually encounters the unconscious in the form of the “Dark One,” a Kundry of horribly grotesque, primeval ugliness or else of infernal beauty. In Faust’s metamorphosis, Gretchen, Helen, Mary, and the abstract “Eternal Feminine” correspond to the four female figures of the Gnostic underworld, Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 211

For decades I always turned to the anima when I felt that my emotional behavior was disturbed, and that something had been constellated in the unconscious. I would then ask the anima: “Now what are you up to? What do you see? I should like to know.” After some resistance she regularly produced an image. As soon as the image was there, the unrest or sense of oppression vanished. The whole energy of these emotions was transformed into interest in and curiosity about the image. I would speak with the anima about the images she communicated to me … ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 187

… it is readily understandable that the primordial image of the hermaphrodite should reappear in modern psychology in the guise of the male-female antithesis, in other words as male consciousness and personified female unconsciousness …You rightly emphasize that man in my view is enclosed in the psyche (not in his psyche). ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 296