Possession by the anima/us

Possession caused by the anima or animus presents a different picture. . . . In the state of possession both figures lose their charm and their values; they retain them only when they are turned away from the world, in the introverted state, when they serve as bridges to the unconscious. Turned towards the world, the anima is fickle, capricious, moody, uncontrolled and emotional, sometimes gifted with daemonic intuitions, ruthless, malicious, untruthful, bitchy, double-faced, and mystical. The animus is obstinate, harping on principles, laying down the law, dogmatic, world-reforming, theoretic, word-mongering, argumentative, and domineering. Both alike have bad taste: the anima surrounds herself with inferior people, and the animus lets himself be taken in by second-rate thinking.

Jung, The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious

The cutting Animus

It always boils down to love or power – it’s always one or the other. The masculine way is to count, measure, judge, and compare. This is the abstraction of power. It’s always about length, it’s always a number. It’s always about who’s better. There’s always a winner. There’s always a loser. This is the dark side of the masculine, whether within or without.

When this is applied to love, it’s a disaster; you end up with the Trump-like measuring love. “You’re too skinny. You’re not skinny enough. Your butts too small. Your butts too big. Your boobs are too saggy. Your skin is too dark. You’re just not good enough.” Whether it’s said by the man within or the one without, it destroys love.

The masculine that’s trapped in power can never find real love, only the caricature of love. It never fills you up, but only creates an empty bottomless hole that eats and eats and eats up the world, devours the world. It’s Fenris, the rage filled monster wolf who eats the whole world. When the masculine is trapped in this, he’s possessed by the Wolf. The negative masculine is The Destroyer of Worlds.

Love doesn’t count, it doesn’t measure, it doesn’t judge, and it doesn’t compare. Love connects, heart to heart and soul to soul. It can’t compare because it sees your utter uniqueness. It doesn’t measure because it sees your absolute worth. Love loves you, flaws and all. Love loves your flaws; your flaws make you you. Love is a garden, a paradise. The masculine can only love when it hurts him to judge. Love can only be when power is forsaken, overwhelmed by love. Love is a gift; you can open yourself up to it, create a comfortable home for it, invite it in. Like a bird it may come and grace your heart with its beauty.

The challenge of the masculine is to learn how to love; to truly love is the man’s bridge to God/dess.

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