THE MASCULINE IN WOMEN
Anonymous
[ORIGINAL IN ENGLISH]
12 November 1957
Dear Dr. N.,
What you told me is a typical story of what I call the projection of the anima into a woman and of the animus into a man.
Anima is the soul-image of a man, represented in dreams or fantasies by a feminine figure.
It symbolizes the function of relationship.
The animus is the image of spiritual forces in a woman, symbolized by a masculine figure.
If a man or a woman is unconscious of these inner forces, they appear in a projection.
The psychiatrist calls you his equal, and that feeling of relationship shows that you carry the image of his soul.
Since he is unable to see you as a real woman behind his projection, you seem to be a sphinx.
In realit y his soul is his sphinx, and he should try to solve the riddle.
You are wrong in assuming that he alone needs help.
You need help as well.
You call yourself a woman of a very ordinary intellectual capacity who has never delved very deep into any metaphysical subject.
As your story shows, the projection of the animus into a psychiatrist of international repute happened because you should get more psychological knowledge.
Knowing more about the soul and its mysteries you could free yourself from the fascination which makes you suffer.
In the second half of life one should begin to get acquainted with the inner world.
That is a general problem.
Your world seemed to be a happy one.
But the strange happenings showed that something ought to be changed.
The projection of anima and animus causes mutual fascination.
Phenomena which you describe as telepathic happen when one gets emotional, i.e., when the unconscious has an opportunity to enter consciousness.
You really ought to know a bit more about the psychology of the unconscious.
It would help you to understand the situation, which—by the way—should be understood.
There is a little book by Frieda Fordham: Introduction to Jung’s Psychology (Pelican Books), which I recommend to you.
Faithfully yours, C. G. JUNG.
FROM THE HOUSTON FILMS
So you see, when you have lived in primitive conditions, in the primeval forest among primitive people, you know that phenomenon.
You are seized by a spell, and then you do something that is unexpected.
Several times when I was in Africa I got into such situations and afterwards I was amazed.
One day I was in the Sudan, and it was really a very dangerous situation which I didn’t recognize at the moment at all.
But I was seized by a spell, and I did something I wouldn’t have expected, I couldn’t have invented it.
The archetype is a force.
It has an autonomy and it can suddenly seize you.
It is like a seizure.
Falling in love at first sight is something like that.
You see, you have a certain image in yourself, without knowing it, of woman, of the woman.
Then you see that girl, or at least a good imitation of your type, and instantly you get a seizure and you are gone.
And afterwards you may discover that it was a hell of a mistake.
A man is quite able, he is intelligent enough, to see that the woman of his choice, as one says, was no choice, he has been caught!
He sees that she is no good at all, that she is a hell of a business, and he tells me so.
He says, For God’s sake, doctor, help me to get rid of that woman!
He can’t, though, he is like clay in her fingers.
That is the archetype, the archetype of the anima.
And he thinks it is all his soul, you know!
It’s the same with the girls.
When a man sings very high, a girl thinks he must have a very wonderful spiritual character because he can sing the high C, and she is badly disappointed when she marries that particular number.
Well, that’s the archetype of the animus.
FROM ESTHER HARDING’S NOTEBOOKS: 1922, 1925
4 July
I began by describing how I always had so much to say before I got into the room, so that I had to edit my thoughts because of the many undertones of meaning.
Jung agreed that my language was scanty, and yet he felt it to be full of allusion.
Extraverts’ language is thin and poor, but profuse, so that although what they want to say may be very slight, at least when they have finished they have said what they set out to say.
He went on to say that when speaking to an extravert he has to cut down his thoughts; also when he is speaking to an introvert he has to cut down, for the thought of an introvert, even if expanded into a book, would not be fully expressed.
I had been trying to find out the meaning of my slip of the tongue and thought it was in protest against the extra difficulty of the feminine position regarding searching for the anima.
This he denied.
He said a man must take up a feminine attitude, while a woman must fight her animus, a masculine attitude.
I asked, Is this why I always want to fight you?
And he replied, In so far as I am your animus. As far as you are identified to your animus, so far will you project him to me. And then, if you battle me with him who is demonic, I call my demon, my anima, to my aid, and it is two married couples fighting. Then you have a hell of a row.
He said this is what happens when you get a reciprocal transference.
But that as he is not [word illegible], I need not fear that would happen to him.
Then he began talking about how it happens that a professional woman lives her animus.
The professional situation is new for woman and needs a new adaptation, and this, as always, is readily supplied by the animus.
On the other hand, analysis requires a new adaptation from a man, for to sit still and patiently try to understand a woman’s mind is far from a masculine attitude.
The only time he does it is as lover to his mistress; he will not do so for his wife, for she is only his wife.
In love, his anima shows him how.
He then takes on a feminine tenderness and uses the baby talk he learned from his mother; he calls on the eternal image of the feminine in himself.
But in analysis that won’t do.
The male analyst has got to learn the feminineness of a man, which is not the anima.
He must not let his masculinity be overwhelmed, or his weakness calls out the animus in the woman patient.
Similarly, the professional woman takes on the animus, the prototype of the father, and develops a god-almightiness, an imitation of the hero, instead of developing the masculinity of the female.
This animus is primitive man, and men want to react to it with their fists.
But, as this is a woman, that way is barred to them; so they shun her—just as a man who lives his anima is shunned by all really womanly women.
Dr. Jung went on to speak of the strength of womanhood, how it is stronger than any imitation of the male adaptation, and how a woman who is woman from the crown of her head to the tip of her toe can afford to be masculine, just as a man who is sure of his masculinity can afford to be tender and patient like a woman.
Next he spoke of the Self and how it can be separated off from the demons.
He reiterated that words in the realm of the spirit are creative and full of power.
I said You mean as Logos?
He replied, Yes. God spake and created from the chaos—and here we are all gods for ourselves. But use few words here, words that you are sure of. Do not make a long theory or you will entangle yourself in a net, in a trap.
Next he spoke of fear.
He said, Be afraid of the world, for it is big and strong; and fear the demons within, for they are many and brutal; but do not fear yourself, for that is your Self.
I said I feared to open the door for fear the demons would come out and destroy.
He said, If you lock them up they will as surely destroy. The only way of delimiting the Self is by experiment. Go as far as your desire goes, and you will presently find that you have gone as far as your own laws allow. If you feel afraid, be brave enough to run away. Find a hole to hide in, for this is the action of a brave man, and by so doing you are exercising courage. Presently the swing of cowardice will be over, and courage will take its place.
I said, But how hopelessly unstable and changeable you will appear!
He replied, Then be unstable. A new stability will reassert itself. Does one live for other people or for oneself? Here is the place where one must learn true unselfishness.
The law was made by man.
We made it.
It is therefore below us, and we can be above it.
As St. Paul said, I am redeemed and am freed from the law.
He realized that, as man, he had made it.
So also a contract cannot bind us, for we who made it can break it.
Thus, vice too, if entered into sincerely as a means of finding and expressing the Self, is not vice, for the fearless honesty cuts that out.
But when we are bound by an artificial barrier, or by laws and moralities that have entered into us, then we are prevented from finding, or even from seeing, that there is a real barrier of the Self outside this artificial barrier.
We fear that if we break through this artificial barrier we shall find ourselves in limitless space.
But within each of us is the self-regulating Self.
5 July.
I began the hour by telling Jung how something wonderful had happened to me yesterday, that his talk on the animus relationship had cleared things up, so that much had clicked into place, and that now I felt quite different.
I said that yesterday we were dealing with the negative relationship to the animus, but there must also be a positive relationship.
He replied that there certainly must—but that the important part of analysis was to get that negative point cleared, for that is the growing point of differentiation from the unconscious.
Until that is clear, the voice of the animus is as the voice of God within us; in any case, we respond to it as if it were.
When we are not aware of the negative aspect of the animus, we are still animal, still connected to nature, therefore unconscious and less than human.
We need to reach a higher degree of consciousness, which must be sought at that point.
Then we discover a new country.
And it is our responsibility to cultivate it.
To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
Also the legend of Christ and the man working on the Sabbath, to whom he said, If thou knowest what thou doest, blessed art thou! But if thou knowest not what thou doest, cursed art thou!
If we are conscious, morality no longer exists.
If we are not conscious, we are still slaves, and we are accursed if we obey not the law.
He said that if we belong to the secret church, then we belong, and we need not worry about it, but can go our own way.
If we do not belong, no amount of teaching or organization can bring us there.
Then I asked him about a single animus figure, and he said, Many souls are young; they are promiscuous; they are prostitutes in the unconscious and sell themselves cheaply. They are like flowers that bloom and die and come again. Other souls are older, like trees or palms. They find, or must seek, one complete animus, who shall perhaps be many in one. And when they find him, it is like the closing of an electric circuit. Then they know the meaning of life.
But to have an animus like an archimandrite is as if to say, You are a priest of the Mysteries. And this needs a great humility to counterbalance it. You need to go down to the level of the mice. And as a tree, so great as the height of its branches, so deep must be the depths of its roots. And the meaning of the tree is neither in the roots, nor in the uplifted crown, but in the life in between them.
Then I asked him how to get the mean between the two worlds, between the world of the unconscious and that of reality.
He replied, *You are the mediator. It is in your immediate life that they meet. In the pleroma they are merged—in nature they are one—and the primitive is always striving up against its oneness. The glacier is always there. Our civilization finds an adaptation that will satisfy these things for a while, and they are quiet.
Then they begin to come up again, and again we find a new adaptation, and they are quiet once more. Today we are in a period of great transition, and they come up again. Eventually they will swallow man, but it will not be the same again, for he has attained the union of the opposites through their separation. Possibly, after man will come . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 402
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