Dark Animus or bright?

Within her, the Animus possessed woman has two opposing forces, being the Animus and the negative Anima (her inferior shadow perception of herself). These two forces in her can balance each other out by pitching them against each other.

Let the dark animus fight with the shadow.

The reason the anima of the animus is the same as one's shadow is because it calls in the bright side of the animus. As long as one is consciously involved with the dark animus, the bright animus can't reach you. He stays in the unconscious, being tormented by your shadow as you are tormented by the dark animus.

http://appliedjung.com/animus-possession/

Not scholarliness, but a knowledge of the heart

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration? You think that the dream is foolish and ungainly. What is beautiful? What is ungainly? What is clever? What is foolish? The spirit of this time is your measure, but the spirit of the depths surpasses it at both ends.

Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.

But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never lived, but have left for others to live or think. You will say: "But I cannot live or think everything that others live or think." But you should say: "The life that I could still live I should live and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think."

- C. G. Jung, The Red Book (p. 133)

The Integrated Animus

The “soul” which accrues to ego-consciousness during the opus has a feminine character in the man and a masculine character in a woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her Animus tries to discern and discriminate.

- Jung (The Psychology of the Transference,” par. 522.)

Within her, the Animus possessed woman has two opposing forces, being the Animus and the negative Anima (her inferior shadow perception of herself). These two forces in her can balance each other out by pitching them against each other. Through this conflict between her shadow and her Animus, she can make the connections within herself and the world. This is the power of the integrated Animus – consciousness and a connection with herself, her passions and her values.


The individual breaks through the ready made boundaries of their personality and discovers the forces – archetypes and experiences – which helped form them. The ensuing wrestle with self leads to personal insight into ones own life, and into the collective life of humanity. One gains insight into the collective forces, ideas, dynamics, which direct human life. This is spiritual insight. It enables the individual in some degree to gradually find motivation from other than the urge toward sexual reproduction, social power, aggressive domination and self aggrandisement. It isn’t an easy process, but a new type of person emerges from the work.

…If one is to mature and grow as a person, the childlike dependencies and angers, the blaming and the idolisation must be met and transformed. In doing so one is led into, or uncovers, a wealth of experience within oneself that was previously unconscious. Out of this maturing and growing process the images of the anima as guide and initiator have arisen. All must meet themselves in one way or another in the process of maturing, just as we all dealt with emerging sexuality in one way or another in adolescence.


The positive animus shows as the man who solves problems, shows how things work, exhibits love despite trials, and is the deliverer from death. P. W. Martin says that more than anything else the animus figure has two characteristic marks: energy and ambivalence…

It shows the woman integrating her own ability to be independent and capable in outwardly active terms. This makes her more whole, balancing her ‘female’ qualities… It also brings a sense of connectedness between her conscious self and what she senses as the ‘commercial’ world.

If she realises who and what her animus is and what he does to her, and if she faces these realities instead of allowing herself to be possessed, her animus can turn into an invaluable inner companion who endows her with the masculine qualities of initiative, courage, objectivity, and spiritual wisdom.


The animus in his most developed form sometimes connects the woman’s mind with the spiritual evolution of her age, and can thereby make her even more receptive than a man to new creative ideas. It is for this reason that in earlier times women were used by many nations as diviners and seers. The creative boldness of their positive animus at times expresses thoughts and ideas that stimulate men to new enterprises


An integrated Animus allows the woman to be actively and creatively enterprising. This woman is able to take up new ideas and new movements and they often are at the forefront of the new zeitgeist.

1) Anja van Kralingen (Center of Applied Jungian Studies)
http://appliedjung.com/animus-possession/

2) Tony Crisp
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-anima-jungs-view-of-the-female-in-the-male/

The Dark Animus

Whenever [the] 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. [“The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, par. 471.]

https://carljungdepthpsychology.wordpress.com/category/incest/


My father had forever deserted me, leaving me only memories which set an eternal barrier between me and my fellow creatures … [His] unlawful and detestable passion has poured its poison into my ears, and changed all my blood, so that it was no longer the kindly stream that supports life but a cold fountain of bitterness corrupted in its very source. It must be the excess of madness that could make me imagine that I could ever be aught but one alone; struck off from humanity; bearing no affinity to man or woman; a wretch on whom Nature had set her ban.

http://www.laurakkerr.com/2013/01/27/loveless-sexual-abuse/


The vampire is a religious figure like the Christian devil, but older than Lucifer, and more truly depicting the dark image of Christ. The vampire myth reverses the symbolism of the Eucharist. Therefore, the Vampire archetype and the Redemptive archetype (Christness) are polar opposites of the same archetypal energy. They emerge from the collective unconscious as a dividable pair. One enters the ego space while the other takes up residence in our personal shadow. Both are great forces which we all must bring to consciousness and confront.

http://jungian.info/library.cfm?idsLibrary=9


The Animus in this woman has one goal, and that is to pull her away from life and cut her off from it. He prevents this woman from entering a spiritual life and keeps her focused on the material physical world… When the feeling life (Eros) is missing, the result is someone who pursues and values only the intellect, resulting in a stiff attitude, lacking warmth and feeling.

Since the Animus involves the Will to Power vs Eros (feeling), facing the Animus head on is futile. The woman must cleverly outwit and avoid him. Women cannot fight the Animus by killing him, they can only catch him and escape. The internal conflict that the Animus creates is overcome by walking out of it.

Being Animus possessed implies inflation, since the Animus is an archetype and belongs to the collective unconscious. The standards used by the Animus are collective standards and no individual is able to attain them. The benchmark the Animus uses to criticise is too high for a normal human being to live up to. The Animus always knows better, but in assuming this position the woman is only inflating her own abilities. When she finds herself saying or thinking “You should be doing this” with herself or others, it would be wise to counteract this Animus position by taking on a humility and admitting that you don’t know everything, that you may very well be a failure.

The Animus is often very impatient, making the woman feel that she has to make up her mind immediately, to act straight away, instead of waiting for her psyche to bring forth the proper new development. The truth is that for women it often takes years for the new development to emerge. However difficult it is to stay within this space of tension, resist the temptation to move immediately and give your psyche time to process and create the solution.

The Animus is a demon who wants to pull the woman away from life, cut her off from it. That is why she must run away and not get trapped by it.

http://appliedjung.com/animus-possession/


The negative aspect of the animus may show [up in dreams] as the seducer, the man who imprisons or leads her into danger or tortures or beats her.

A strange passivity and paralysis of all feeling, or a deep insecurity that can lead almost to a sense of nullity, may sometimes be the result of an unconscious animus opinion. In the depths of the woman’s being, the animus whispers: “You are hopeless. what’s the use of trying? There is no point in doing anything. Life will never change for the better.”

To be in conflict with the man, or unable to make real physical and pleasurable contact with him, suggests difficulty in meeting what may have been a painful or threatening experience of father or some other man. This can lead to lack of ability to make clear judgements, and lack of decisiveness… Actual relations with men will be difficult, or entered into simply as a duty. Emotional or intimate merging is threatening because it brings the woman close to the conflicts and pain connected with father/man. Sex may be possible but not a close feeling union.

Like the anima, the animus does not merely consist of negative qualities such as brutality, recklessness, empty talk, and silent, obstinate, evil ideas. He too has a very positive and valuable side; he too can build a bridge to the Self through his creative activity.

… The fact that the animus figure in the dream is double suggests that the burglars personify a psychic factor that is dual in its effect, and that could be something quite different from these tormenting thoughts... Next the dream reveals that the veiled burglars are actually disguised artists, and that if the dreamer recognises their gifts (which are her own), they will give up their evil intentions.

http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-animus-jungs-view-of-the-male-in-the-female/

Possession in politics

There were bomb explosions in New Jersey and Chelsea over the weekend but they caught the bomber (or so they're saying). Besides the fact that this whole situation is suspiciously convenient for the republicans, my mind immediately went to the increase in hate crimes against Muslims that will probably result from this. Putting aside all the political issues there's a very real danger of possession, and a very contagious one at that.

The same demon that possesses a terrorist - whips up his rage and in his mind robs his targets of humanity - this same demon also infects Americans who are open to such possession. It robs them in turn of their humanity. It steals their ability to think clearly and rationally but, more importantly, it destroys one's ability to connect; to empathize, to feel with, to understand another being with the heart.

The main broken latch that lets the demon in so he can create havoc is having an unconscious shadow. Marie Louise von Franz spoke to this vulnerability in an interview:

In practical life the personal and the collective shadows merge but the personal shadow is the personal shortcomings of things which every human being could be conscious of, which is not archetypal, and therefore not a mystery. For instance such things as greed for money, or jealousy, jealousy is one of the aspects of the shadow, or laziness, sloppiness, unrelatedness, sentimentality, and whatnot. Inferiorities which everybody has but prefers not to know about. We generally strive through education and environment to be a bit better than we actually are, or we have our own ideals (“I oughten to be jealous” “I oughten to have a power complex”). The inferior shadow is not really bad, it’s just human all too human, and something one could know about. If one is jealous, or one is suddenly possessed by wanting money, one could know about it if one was honest with oneself.

The collective shadow has to do with the dark side of the archetype of the Self. That means it’s the shadow of the God image. In the Christian tradition it would be the devil, and that has always been personified and felt as something which has not to do directly with the human being. If somebody is possessed by the devil he’s much worse than just… He’s not human. It’s demonic. On the other hand, generally that merges; first you have this area, a dim, dark side, and behind it lurks the other.

I’ve seen that when Germany went to the devil in Nazism, people fell into it through their personal shadow. For instance, they didn’t want to lose their job because they were clinging to money. That was a personal shadow. Then they joined in with the Nazi movement for that reason, and did much worse things than they would have done normally, under normal social conditions. So you can say the personal shadow is the bridge to the collective shadow, or the open door to the collective shadow.

The collective shadow comes up in those terrible mass psychoses. That’s why it’s so amazingly important, because then you don’t fall into the collective shadow. There’s not that open door. It’s like you have a room and there’s one door in it that the devil can come in. If you know your personal shadow you can shut all the doors. Then you don’t join into massacres and holocausts and such. You catch yourself and you realize… and you can keep out of it and keep reasonable, keep your head. While the average person who doesn’t know about her personal shadow will get swept away by the collective in you.

- “Remembering Jung series talk with Marie-Louise von Franz” (29:40)

The person whose shadow is a Dorian Grey-like horror is a person who has no knowledge of their shadow let alone a relationship with it. This creates a wide open back door into the personality; unconscious shadow contents are reflexively projected onto a convenient target and all the hate, rage, and disgust they feel at their own orphan parts is conveniently given over to a scapegoat to carry. Instead of doing the hard work of reclaiming your own lost parts you try to cheat, you lie to yourself and pretend like you're clean when you're really not.

The sewer runs in all of us. The question is; what do you do about it? Do you protect your ego at the expense of everything else, sacrifice every other part of yourself and even others to keep your narcissism intact and unwounded? Or do you face your own ugliness, stew in your own juices, and undergo the painful and humiliating process of transforming your own personal lead into gold.

Postmodern sexuality?

When you spend your life as a woman in a sneakily sexist society you get sensitized to the kind of subtle (or not so subtle) attacks on womens' power, even our very existence as independent human beings with our own agency. Then you come across this title:

Animus Possession: Are you a ball busting bitch?

And you're like "Whu... What?? Is this a Men's Rights Activist Jungian????" And then you read the article and see that this is one of the most amazing, insightful, and, most importantly, authentic articles about Jungian psychology that you've read (outside of von Franz and Jung himself). Absolutely amazing. Go read it right now.

But that's not what I really want to talk about, what I want to talk about is how political correctness has made it even more difficult to understand anima/us issues. Not without good reason - sexism is alive and well in modern day America and continues to sensitize us to gender issues - but reality is reality, and what is, is, regardless of whether or not it's politically inconvenient.

In no way do I think that any of this shows that women are incapable of drive or direction, or men are incapable of softness or connection. A mature person has wholeness, and that includes with inner contra sexual qualities. How much these contra sexual qualities have been integrated into our ego is a separate issue; personally, I have several animus qualities that are so deeply integrated into my ego that they are, in fact, part of my ego. But further, inner qualities are also our qualities, they belong to us as much as our outer qualities. That is, in fact, the whole point of Jungian therapy, the integration of our various unconscious parts.

The fact of the matter is, there are differences between the masculine and feminine sides of us; stereotypical, archetypal differences. There are certain characteristics and qualities associated with either feminine or masculine. These specific qualities do have some cultural differences but their roots are universal, at least for all humans. This is probably the result of the shared, universal biology in which the main evolutionary adaptation in women was relationship, and in men was competition for resources. Each culture translates these deep archetypes through their superstructural lens but the fundamental skeleton of the archetype as will be the same across cultures.

The masculine side is stereotypically concerned with competition and success. As children, boys are more physically active, less verbal, less concerned with maintaining relationship. Their first half of life concerns typically focus on status, personal success, and comparing themselves with others. Their dominant sexual hormone, testosterone, not only increases sexual drive, it also increases aggression and plays an important role in maintaining their physical abilities.

The feminine side is stereotypically focused on maintaining relationships. Female children typically have much stronger verbal skills, and it's much easier for them to express their feelings (something boys struggle with... and, based on personal experience, often don't grow out of). From the very beginning they literally look to their caregivers much more often than boys, physically looking towards them more often than boys do. Women also process more of the relationship bonding hormone oxytocin than men do.

It's fairly obvious why these different biological adaptations would confer evolutionary advantages to those humans who held them so I'm not going to go into that here. It's also fairly obvious that culture and experience also has a significant impact on individual personality. Biology doesn't determine destiny; we can make choices about how we act, and our ability to do so is only strengthened by our understanding of the various components that we're dealing with.

Archetypes also don't determine an individual human's destiny. First off, we are not only one archetype, we're a collection of complexes that move in and out of conscious awareness... and of something beyond archetypes. There's an essence to each of us that never has and never will exist ever again. The other thing is that  archetypes are static and universal, while each human life is individual, unique, and ever changing.

The anima/us is an archaic symbol that lives deep within all of us and, depending on our relationship with it, will either manifest as a helpful or a destructive life partner. Part of any good relationship is seeing the other for who they truly are, not who you wish they were. It would benefit us all to cultivate a relationship with our inner other.

Links: Animus Possession: Are you a ball busting bitch?
          Anima Possession: Are you a spineless wimp?

Crippled beautiful world

Giving laws, bettering, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way...

Power stands against power, contempt against contempt, love against love. Give humanity dignity, and trust that life will find the better way.

The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by chaos. So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty.

- Jung, The Red Book, p. 126

May each go his own way

Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.

The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us. Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you?

Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that?

There is only one way and that is your way.

You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.

May each go his own way.

- Jung, The Red Book, p. 125

Logos is conscious and eros is unconscious?

“Logos” in Jung’s Theories: Jung also used the term logos in his philosophical theories. Logos, according to Jung, represented fact or reason. Jung often referred to the contrast between conscious versus unconscious as logos versus mythos. Additionally, Jung believed that logos was the male version for rationality, where the female counterpart, eros, represented psychic availability or emotion.

"Jungian Psychotherapy" from goodtherapy.org

Ugh, I haven't been able to get anything done for this blog for so long (but I am working on stuff, really!). I had an insanely busy assignment for the most of the last year then, right after that ended, some family issues for the last few months. And now I'm going back to school (yay on that, though!) and will probably still be busy but I saw the above quote and something fell into place that had been sitting on the back burner of my brain for a while: "Logos" vs. "Eros".

One of the things that annoys feminists about Jung's writings (and quite honestly makes me uncomfortable as well) is Jung's ideas about what is masculine and what is feminine. I've personally veered back and forth between agreeing and disagreeing with him on this issue, not just to be PC but because it seemed at odds with my own personal experience as a very logical and unemotional woman.

When I'd read Jung's stories about dealing with women I saw in my mind an introverted, thinking-type Jung struggling to deal with extroverted, feeling-type women. Many women are feeling types, it's true, but many men are as well (think about those Poseidon-types with their still waters running deep, who can erupt into hurricanes of emotions when aroused.) I tend to be attracted to these warm, emotional type of men and my theory was that whatever your ego was, your unconscious, and hence your shadow as well as what you were attracted to, would be it's opposite; if your ego was more intellectual then your shadow and your anima/animus would be emotional and vice versa, regardless of your sex.

This is very different from being more concerned with personal or interpersonal success, which I do feel is very sex-dependent: men, regardless of whether they're emotional or intellectual, are more concerned with and oriented to their success in competition with others, whereas women, again regardless of their primary function, are more interested in their relationships with significant others. At any rate, this has been my observation.

The above quote rung a bell in my mind because it revealed what has always bothered me about Jung's theories in relation to the sexes. For a thinking type like Jung, then yes, Eros would be in the unconscious, because whatever is the opposite of the primary function is pushed down into the unconscious by the very act of developing one's strongest function. But what if a man's primary function is feeling? Then the opposite would be the case here, and thinking would be his "royal road to the unconscious."

Both Logos and Eros can be developed by the Ego, in which case the higher differentiated function would be the Ego's way of functioning in the "outer world" in the most efficient way possible. In either case, the opposite function would be the one most connected with the unconscious, the most childish and undeveloped, the weak spot in the personality that allows the unconscious to come through. And both men and women can be either emotional or intellectual.

At the same time, one thing I've noticed, again purely through personal observation, is that the anima of men is more primitively emotional and the animus of women more primitively intellectual, regardless of the person's primary function. When I get possessed, it's definitely with animus thoughts, and I can tell when my feeling-type boyfriend is possessed when he starts getting sulky and annoying (and I'm sure I annoy him as well when I get animus possessed.) But, at the same time, it seems to me that my animus possessed thoughts have an emotional rage that a feeling type woman might not get, and G's anima feelings are mixed up with really silly ways of thinking that keep dragging him down and keeping him from working toward his dreams (ideas like "Don't try that because you might fail!")

I guess I still have some thinking to do about this. Not that it'll ever be completely figured out, of course. There are too many mysteries surrounding the sexes.



The transformative fire

An interesting confluence of dreams, readings and experiences has just happened. I woke up this morning and was pondering these recent events when I had an epiphany and came up with the following words:

The trick to using the fire of anger is not to turn it outwards but to turn it inward. Fire always burns itself out. That is its nature. When you turn it outwards at others or the world sooner or later you end up exhausted and defeated, the burden of the world on your shoulders. But when you contain the fire of desire and ego inside, it burns out all that is impure in you; what is sick, dying, weak, fearful and ungenerous. Everything that must die. With every encounter you have that enrages the ego... keep hold of that fire. Don't let it dissipate into fantasies of revenge or, even worse, into actual outward directed action. Keep that fire for yourself. Use it to burn another tiny bit of ego out; to fuel the long, slow transformation of your Self from mud into Diamond.

So... I've been dealing with issues of anger, of self-defense and protecting oneself from all the slings and arrows of living in a cold, hard city like New York. Every day brings endless (ENDLESS!) encounters with the millions of other New Yorkers all doing their best to annoy the shit out of you: the idiots who block the doorway of subway cars, not letting people get off or get on. The people who cut you off to save a couple nanoseconds... that you catch up to at the next red light. People constantly trying to get one over on someone else, or being angry when they can't. Biking in the city in particular has become an exercise in maintaining my zen despite almost unbelievable idiocy and rudeness.

I've always been one of those people who'd rather avoid confrontation and just let things go but recently I've felt the urge to "defend my space". And I have. And MY GOD IS IT EXHAUSTING!!! When people get onto a train with plenty of extra space but feel the need to crowd into you and lean on the pole you're trying to hold onto, and you try to bump them out of the way, but they decide they're not going to let you be the boss of them and bump you back, and then shake their umbrella on your leg like a dog peeing on his territory. Countless incidents like this.

At one point I realized that, although this was something I was glad to have done to prove to myself that I could, it was absolutely exhausting! And totally not worth it. But it got me to thinking about certain types, like Heras and Zeuses (like my grandfather), people for whom this kind of jockeying is a way of life, and I thought no wonder they're angry all the time!! I'm not sure about Zeuses but I've noticed that Heras' sense of hurmor tends to be on the bitter, angry side. And they're always, always so angry! Like, all the time. Well, I know why now; being constantly obsessed with not letting others "get one up on you" makes you angry!

This realization didn't happen until I gave up trying to defend myself, and getting all angry about it. But I still had to figure out what to do with all the anger being generated by living in a city filled with rude assholes, so I went back to being zen but this time with just observing the emotion and not trying to make it go away; just letting it be and burn itself out. And I found myself feeling stronger and calmer each time I did it. Then I had the dreams, and did the reading. And this morning, as I was thinking yet again about the issues of anger, and Heras, it occurred to me that that's what anger is for; anger is the purifying fire that burns out whatever needs to be destroyed. In one of my dreams was this part:

A huge enemy army is outside our walls, attacking us. Many of the walls are broken. I get a weapon and start shooting them. Then I realize heat is coming from my hands. I aim my palms at them and concentrate. They become hot. I go out of the defense and among them. I set them on fire, but its with compassion. I hold them and tell them they can rest now. As I’m doing this all, these sad people are being burned to charcoal. My people are safe, though. I had given them a message to take the group far away, to a certain location, and I’d meet them there. I take the burning hot fire and blow it back over the rest of the army, completely destroying them.

I realized that the "sad people" in the dream were these parts of myself that needed to be burned out, that were tired and exhausted and needed to rest.

I'm not sure where all of this is going but the following part of my dream reminds me of the final outcome card in my reading:

We try to leave, but a woman (commander?) catches us. She sees the girl’s “knife” and takes it. I say it belongs to the girl. I’m very strong, powerful and relaxed. I’m also angry and I want to hurt the woman commander. I take her by the wrist (her arm is very thin – she herself is pretty thin as well) and life her whole body up, levering it at her wrist. I won’t let go. Finally, I feel it start to crack. Then I put her down. She says I’m really strong, that I must work out a lot. I tell her I don’t (implying that I’m just naturally strong.) 

When I interpreted the reading, this part reminded me of the above:

His decisions are almost always the right ones, because he sees the big picture and never lets his heart sway his judgement. Though they might not benefit the King directly, his decisions are always in everyone's best interests. When this part of you starts to manifest you'll know it right away. The King of Swords' arrival in your life is an event that almost never goes unnoticed simply because he commands attention from everyone around him. He does not linger waiting for something to do; he appears only when he is needed to drive raging emotions from you, or when his impartiality and cold judgement will help you solve a problem.

The dream seems to imply that I'm dealing with the masculine female and the feminine male. The masculine female I think is what I used to be - to try to use the sword of my will to defend myself. But something was wrong with that. The tarot reading also indicates it has something to do with masculinity and will. It appears that all that time I spent in the last year or so trying to develop a relationship with my animus is finally strarting to come to fruition.