One stares at a chaotic pattern and then gets a fantasy, and the complete disorder in the pattern confuses one’s conscious mind. The unconscious knows things; it knows the past and future, it knows things about other people. We all from time to time have dreams which inform us about something which happens to another…
The Anima as the Woman within the Man The “ultimate” questions referred to above do not always come up in the encounter with the shadow. Much more often behind him or her another inner figure emerges as a personification of the unconscious. This takes the form of a woman in a man, and in a…
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…
The nature of woman is more closely related to the irrational, and this makes a woman better able to open to new inspirations from the unconscious. Many myths and fairy tales tell of a prince, who has been turned into an animal or a monster by sorcery, being saved by a woman. This is a…