Dealing with the negative animus

When the contrasexual inner figure in a woman is negative, like this rifleman, it personifies very sharp negative judgments about herself: “You are a nobody. You will never make it. Men don’t like you. They only want to have sex with you. Nobody loves you. You’ll never find a husband. You are not really a good woman. Your life will always go on as meaninglessly as it is now.” These self-destructive thoughts cut her off from her femininity and block her possibility of relating to an outer man in a positive way. It is, therefore, great progress in the dream that she suddenly stops running away by hiding in her gray mist and thinks, “It’s not me; it’s that man who is responsible for my fearful situation.” It’s as if at that moment she disentangles herself and realizes that those negative thoughts are something outside of her. They are not her thoughts. It’s as if she said, “It’s not me thinking that; it’s only something in me thinking those thoughts, and I don’t need to believe them.”

… And so with this air stewardess’s dream, she must realize that the negative man in her that always says “You are nobody. You’ll never relate properly to a man, blah, blah, blah,” is not her. Then the miracle happens! At that moment that rifleman gets up and walks away.

- Marie Louise von Franz (from Fraser Boa’s The Way of the Dream, p. 174)