Emma Jung: The premise from which l start is that in the animus we are dealing with a masculine principle.
Conscious and Outward Manifestations of the Animus
The premise from which l start is that in the animus we are dealing with a masculine principle.
But how is this masculine line principle to be characterized?
Goethe makes Faust, who is occupied with the translation of the Gospel of John, ask himself if the passage, “In the beginning was the Word,” would not read better if it where, “In the beginning was power,” or ”meaning,” and finally he has him write, “In the beginning was the Deed.”
With these four expressions, which are meant to produce the Greek logos, the quintessence of the masculine principle does indeed seem to be expressed.
At the same time we find in them a progressive sequence, each stage having it representative in life as well as in the development of the Animus.
Power corresponds very well to the first stage, the deed follows, then the work, and finally, as the last stage, meaning.
One might better say instead of power, directed power; that is will, because mere power is not yet human, nor is it spiritual.
This four-sidedness characterizing the logos principle presupposes, as we sec, an element of consciousness, because without consciousness neither will, word, deed, nor meaning is conceivable.
Just as there are men of outstanding physical power, men of deeds, men of words, and men of wisdom, so, too, does the animus image differ in accordance with the woman’s particular stage of development of development or her natura] gifts,
This image may be transferred to a real man who comes by the animus role because of his resemblance to it; alternatively, it may appear As a dream or phantasy figure; but since it represents a living psychic reality, it lends a definite coloration from within the woman herself to all that she does.
For the primitive woman, or the young woman or the primitive in every woman, a man distinguished by physical prowess becomes an animus figure.
Typical examples arc the heroes of legend, or present day sports celebrities, cowboys, bull fighters, aviators, and so on.
For more exacting women, the animus figure is a man who accomplishes deeds in the sense that he directs his power towards something of great significance.
The transitions here are usually not sharp because power and deed mutually condition the mother.
A man who rules over the “word” or over meaning represents and essentially intellectual tendency because word and meaning correspond par excellence to mental capacities.
Such a man exemplifies the animus in the narrower sense, understood as being a spiritual guide and as representing the intellectual gifts of the woman.
It is at this stage, too, for the most part that the animus become, problematical , hence we shall have to dwell on it longest. ~Emma Jung, Animus and Anima, Page 2-4
We are astonished to discover, on closer inspection, how often the thought comes to us that things must happen in a certain way, or that a person who interests us is doing this or that, or has done it, or will do it.
We do not pause to compare these intuitions with reality.
We are already convinced of their truth, or at least are inclined to assume that the mere idea is true and that it corresponds to reality.
Other phantasy structures also are readily taken as real and can at times even appear in concrete form.
One of the animus activities most difficult to see through lies in this field, namely, the building up of a wish-image of oneself.
The animus is expert at sketching in and making plausible a picture that represents us as we would like to be seen, for example, as the “ideal lover,” the “appealing, helpless child,” the “selfless handmaiden,” the “extraordinarily original person,” the “one who is really born to something better,” and so on.
This activity naturally lends the animus power over us until we voluntarily, or perforce, make up our minds to sacrifice the highly colored picture and see ourselves as we really are.
Very frequently, feminine activity also expresses itself in what is largely a retrospectively oriented pondering over what we ought to have done differently in life, and how we ought to have done it; or, as if under compulsion, we make up strings of causal connections.
We like to call this thinking; though, on the contrary, it is a form of mental activity that is strangely pointless and unproductive, a form that really leads only to self torture.
Here, too, there is again a characteristic failure to discriminate between what is real and what has been thought or imagined. ~Emma Jung, Animus and Anima, Page 18
