Animus and anima emma jung pdf

Jung: Analytical Psychology

B Overview of Analytical Psychology B Biography of Carl Jung B Levels of the Psyche

Conscious

Personal Unconscious

Collective Unconscious

Archetypes

Persona

Shadow

Anima

Animus

Great Mother

Wise Old Man

Hero

Self

B Dynamics of Personality Causality and Teleology

Progression and Regression

B Psychological Types Attitudes

Introversion

Extraversion

Functions

Thinking

Feeling

Sensing

Intuiting

B Development of Personality Stages of Development

Childhood

Youth

Jung

Middle Life

Old Age

Self-Realization

B Jung’s Methods of Investigation Word Association Test

Dream Analysis

Active Imagination

Psychotherapy

B Related Research Personality Type and Investing Money

Personality Type and Interest in and Attrition From Engineering

B Critique of Jung B Concept of Humanity B Key Terms and Concepts

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C H A P T E R 4

The middle-aged doctor sat at his desk in deep contemplation and concern. A 6-year relationship with an older friend and mentor had recently ended on bitter terms, and the doctor felt frustrated and uncertain of his future. He no longer had confidence in his manner of treating patients and had begun to simply allow them to talk, not offering any specific advice or treatment.

For some months the doctor had been having bizarre, inexplicable dreams and seeing strange, mysterious visions. None of this seemed to make sense to him. He felt lost and disoriented—unsure whether or not the work he had been trained to do was indeed science.

A moderately gifted artist, he had begun to illustrate his dreams and visions with little or no comprehension of what the finished product might mean. He had also been writing down his fantasies without really trying to understand them.

On this particular day, he began to ponder: “What am I really doing?” He doubted if his work was science but was uncertain about what it was. Suddenly, to his astonishment, he heard a clear, distinct feminine voice from within him say, “It is art.” He recognized the voice as that of a gifted female patient who had strong, positive feelings for him. He protested to the voice that his work was not art, but no answer was immediately forthcoming. Then, returning to his writing, he again heard the voice say, “That is art.” When he tried to argue with the voice, no answer came. He reasoned that the “woman from within” had no speech center so he suggested that she use his. This she did, and a lengthy conversation followed.

The middle-aged doctor who talked to the “woman from within” was Carl Gus- tav Jung, and the time was the winter of 1913–1914. Jung had been an early admirer and friend of Sigmund Freud, but when theoretical differences arose, their personal relationship broke up, leaving Jung with bitter feelings and a deep sense of loss.

The above story is but one of many strange and bizarre occurrences experienced by Jung during his midlife “confrontation with the unconscious.” An interesting ac- count of his unusual journey into the recesses of his psyche is found in Jung’s auto- biography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung, 1961).

Overview of Analytical Psychology An early colleague of Freud, Carl Gustav Jung broke from orthodox psychoanalysis to establish a separate theory of personality called analytical psychology, which rests on the assumption that occult phenomena can and do influence the lives of everyone. Jung believed that each of us is motivated not only by repressed experi- ences but also by certain emotionally toned experiences inherited from our ances- tors. These inherited images make up what Jung called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious includes those elements that we have never experienced individually but which have come down to us from our ancestors.

Some elements of the collective unconscious become highly developed and are called archetypes. The most inclusive archetype is the notion of self-realization, which can be achieved only by attaining a balance between various opposing forces of personality. Thus, Jung’s theory is a compendium of opposites. People are both in- troverted and extraverted; rational and irrational; male and female; conscious and unconscious; and pushed by past events while being pulled by future expectations.

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This chapter looks with some detail into the long and colorful life of Carl Jung and uses fragments from his life history to illustrate his concepts and theories. Jung’s notion of a collective unconscious makes his theory one of the most intriguing of all conceptions of personality.

Biography of Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875, in Kesswil, a town on Lake Constance in Switzerland. His paternal grandfather, the elder Carl Gustav Jung, was a promi- nent physician in Basel and one of the best-known men of that city. A local rumor suggested that the elder Carl Jung was the illegitimate son of the great German poet Goethe. Although the elder Jung never acknowledged the rumor, the younger Jung, at least sometimes, believed himself to be the great-grandson of Goethe (Ellen- berger, 1970).

Both of Jung’s parents were the youngest of 13 children, a situation that may have contributed to some of the difficulties they had in their marriage. Jung’s father, Johann Paul Jung, was a minister in the Swiss Reformed Church, and his mother, Emilie Preiswerk Jung, was the daughter of a theologian. In fact, eight of Jung’s ma- ternal uncles and two of his paternal uncles were pastors, so both religion and med- icine were prevalent in his family. Jung’s mother’s family had a tradition of spiritu- alism and mysticism, and his maternal grandfather, Samuel Preiswerk, was a believer in the occult and often talked to the dead. He kept an empty chair for the ghost of his first wife and had regular and intimate conversations with her. Quite understandably, these practices greatly annoyed his second wife.

Jung’s parents had three children, a son born before Carl but who lived only 3 days and a daughter 9 years younger than Carl. Thus, Jung’s early life was that of an only child.

Jung (1961) described his father as a sentimental idealist with strong doubts about his religious faith. He saw his mother as having two separate dispositions. On one hand, she was realistic, practical, and warmhearted, but on the other, she was un- stable, mystical, clairvoyant, archaic, and ruthless. An emotional and sensitive child, Jung identified more with this second side of his mother, which he called her No. 2 or night personality (Alexander, 1990). At age 3 years, Jung was separated from his mother, who had to be hospitalized for several months, and this separation deeply troubled young Carl. For a long time after, he felt distrustful whenever the word “love” was mentioned. Years later he still associated “woman” with unreliability, whereas the word “father” meant reliable—but powerless (Jung, 1961).

Before Jung’s fourth birthday, his family moved to a suburb of Basel. It is from this period that his earliest dream stems. This dream, which was to have a profound effect on his later life and on his concept of a collective unconscious, will be de- scribed later.

During his school years, Jung gradually became aware of two separate aspects of his self, and he called these his No. 1 and No. 2 personalities. At first he saw both personalities as parts of his own personal world, but during adolescence he became aware of the No. 2 personality as a reflection of something other than himself—an old man long since dead. At that time Jung did not fully comprehend these separate powers, but in later years he recognized that No. 2 personality had been in touch with

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feelings and intuitions that No. 1 personality did not perceive. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung (1961) wrote of his No. 2 personality:

I experienced him and his influence in a curiously unreflective manner; when he was present, No. 1 personality paled to the point of nonexistence, and when the ego that became increasingly identical with No. 1 personality dominated the scene, the old man, if remembered at all, seemed a remote and unreal dream. (p. 68)

Between his 16th and 19th years, Jung’s No. 1 personality emerged as more domi- nant and gradually “repressed the world of intuitive premonitions” (Jung, 1961, p. 68). As his conscious, everyday personality prevailed, he could concentrate on school and career. In Jung’s own theory of attitudes, his No. 1 personality was ex- traverted and in tune to the objective world, whereas his No. 2 personality was in- troverted and directed inward toward his subjective world. Thus, during his early school years, Jung was mostly introverted, but when the time came to prepare for a profession and meet other objective responsibilities, he became more extraverted, an attitude that prevailed until he experienced a midlife crisis and entered a period of extreme introversion.

Jung’s first choice of a profession was archeology, but he was also interested in philology, history, philosophy, and the natural sciences. Despite a somewhat aris- tocratic background, Jung had limited financial resources (Noll, 1994). Forced by lack of money to attend a school near home, he enrolled in Basel University, a school without an archeology teacher. Having to select another field of study, Jung chose natural science because he twice dreamed of making important discoveries in the natural world (Jung, 1961). His choice of a career eventually narrowed to medicine. That choice was narrowed further when he learned that psychiatry deals with sub- jective phenomena (Singer, 1994).

While Jung was in his first year of medical school, his father died, leaving him in care of his mother and sister. Also while still in medical school, Jung began to at- tend a series of seances with relatives from the Preiswerk family, including his first cousin Helene Preiswerk, who claimed she could communicate with dead people. Jung attended these seances mostly as a family member, but later, when he wrote his medical dissertation on the occult phenomenon, he reported that these seances had been controlled experiments (McLynn, 1996).

After completing his medical degree from Basel University in 1900, Jung be- came a psychiatric assistant to Eugene Bleuler at Burghöltzli Mental Hospital in Zürich, possibly the most prestigious psychiatric teaching hospital in the world at that time. During 1902–1903, Jung studied for 6 months in Paris with Pierre Janet, successor to Charcot. When he returned to Switzerland in 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach, a young sophisticated woman from a wealthy Swiss family. Two years later, while continuing his duties at the hospital, he began teaching at the Uni- versity of Zürich and seeing patients in his private practice.

Jung had read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900/1953) soon after it appeared, but he was not much impressed with it (Singer, 1994). When he reread the book a few years later, he had a better understanding of Freud’s ideas and was moved to begin interpreting his own dreams. In 1906, Jung and Freud began a steady correspondence (see McGuire & McGlashan, 1994, for the Freud/Jung letters). The

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following year, Freud invited Carl and Emma Jung to Vienna. Immediately, both Freud and Jung developed a strong mutual respect and affection for one another, talking during their first meeting for 13 straight hours and well into the early morn- ing hours. During this marathon conversation, Martha Freud and Emma Jung busied themselves with polite conversation (Ferris, 1997).

Freud believed that Jung was the ideal person to be his successor. Unlike other men in Freud’s circle of friends and followers, Jung was neither Jewish nor Viennese. In addition, Freud had warm personal feelings for Jung and regarded him as a man of great intellect. These qualifications prompted Freud to select Jung as the first pres- ident of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

In 1909, G. Stanley Hall, the president of Clark University and one of the first psychologists in the United States, invited Jung and Freud to deliver a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Together with Sándor Ferenczi, another psychoanalyst, the two men journeyed to America, the first of Jung’s nine visits to the United States (Bair, 2003). During their 7-week trip and while they were in daily contact, an underlying tension between Jung and Freud slowly began to simmer. This personal tension was not diminished when the two now-famous psychoanalysts began to interpret each other’s dreams, a pastime likely to strain any relationship.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung (1961) claimed that Freud was un- willing to reveal details of his personal life—details Jung needed in order to inter- pret one of Freud’s dreams. According to Jung’s account, when asked for intimate de- tails, Freud protested, “But I cannot risk my authority!” (Jung, 1961, p. 158). At that moment, Jung concluded, Freud indeed had lost his authority. “That sentence burned itself into my memory, and in it the end of our relationship was already foreshad- owed” (p. 158).

Jung also asserted that, during the trip to America, Freud was unable to inter- pret Jung’s dreams, especially one that seemed to contain rich material from Jung’s collective unconscious. Later, we discuss this dream in more detail, but here we merely present those aspects of the dream that may relate to some of the lifelong problems Jung had with women. In this dream, Jung and his family were living on the second floor of his house when he decided to explore hitherto unknown levels of his house. At the bottom level of his dwelling, he came upon a cave where he found “two human skulls, very old and half disintegrated” (p. 159).

After Jung described the dream, Freud became interested in the two skulls, but not as collective unconscious material. Instead, he insisted that Jung associate the skulls to some wish. Whom did Jung wish dead? Not yet completely trusting his own judgment and knowing what Freud expected, Jung answered, “My wife and my sister-in-law—after all, I had to name someone whose death was worth the wishing!”

“I was newly married at the time and knew perfectly well that there was noth- ing within myself which pointed to such wishes” (Jung, 1961, pp. 159–160).

Although Jung’s interpretation of this dream may be more accurate than Freud’s, it is quite possible that Jung did indeed wish for the death of his wife. At that time, Jung was not “newly married” but had been married for nearly 7 years, and for the previous 5 of those years he was deeply involved in an intimate relationship with a former patient named Sabina Spielrein. Frank McLynn (1996) claimed that Jung’s “mother complex” caused him to harbor animosity toward his wife, but a

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more likely explanation is that Jung needed more than one woman to satisfy the two aspects of his personality.

However, the two women who shared Jung’s life for nearly 40 years were his wife Emma and another former patient named Antonia (Toni) Wolff (Bair, 2003). Emma Jung seemed to have related better to Jung’s No. 1 personality while Toni Wolff was more in touch with his No. 2 personality. The three-way relationship was not always amiable, but Emma Jung realized that Toni Wolff could do more for Carl than she (or anyone else) could, and she remained grateful to Wolff (Dunne, 2000).

Although Jung and Wolff made no attempt to hide their relationship, the name Toni Wolff does not appear in Jung’s posthumously published autobiography, Mem- ories, Dreams, Reflections. Alan Elms (1994) discovered that Jung had written a whole chapter on Toni Wolff, a chapter that was never published. The absence of Wolff’s name in Jung’s autobiography is probably due to the lifelong resentments Jung’s children had toward her. They remembered when she had carried on openly with their father, and as adults with some veto power over what appeared in their fa- ther’s autobiography, they were not in a generous mood to perpetuate knowledge of the affair.

In any event, little doubt exists that Jung needed women other than his wife. In a letter to Freud dated January 30, 1910, Jung wrote: “The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful” (McGuire, 1974, p. 289).

Almost immediately after Jung and Freud returned from their trip to the United States, personal as well as theoretical differences became more intense as their friendship cooled. In 1913, they terminated their personal correspondence and the following year, Jung resigned the presidency and shortly afterward withdrew his membership in the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Jung’s break with Freud may have been related to events not discussed in Mem- ories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung, 1961). In 1907, Jung wrote to Freud of his “bound- less admiration” for him and confessed that his veneration “has something of the character of a ‘religious’ crush” and that it had an “undeniable erotic undertone” (McGuire, 1974, p. 95). Jung continued his confession, saying: “This abominable feeling comes from the fact that as a boy I was the victim of a sexual assault by a man I once worshipped” (p. 95). Jung was actually 18 years old at the time of the sexual assault and saw the older man as a fatherly friend in whom he could confide nearly everything. Alan Elms (1994) contended that Jung’s erotic feelings toward Freud—coupled with his early experience of the sexual assault by an older man he once worshipped—may have been one of the major reasons why Jung eventually broke from Freud. Elms further suggested that Jung’s rejection of Freud’s sexual the- ories may have stemmed from his ambivalent sexual feelings toward Freud.

The years immediately following the break with Freud were filled with loneli- ness and self-analysis for Jung. From December of 1913 until 1917, he underwent the most profound and dangerous experience of his life—a trip through the under- ground of his own unconscious psyche. Marvin Goldwert (1992) referred to this time in Jung’s life as a period of “creative illness,” a term Henri Ellenberger (1970) had used to describe Freud in the years immediately following his father’s death. Jung’s period of “creative illness” was similar to Freud’s self-analysis. Both men began their search for self while in their late 30s or early 40s: Freud, as a reaction to the death of his father; Jung, as a result of his split with his spiritual father, Freud.

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Both underwent a period of loneliness and isolation and both were deeply changed by the experience.

Although Jung’s journey into the unconscious was dangerous and painful, it was also necessary and fruitful. By using dream interpretation and active imagina- tion to force himself through his underground journey, Jung eventually was able to create his unique theory of personality.

During this period he wrote down his dreams, drew pictures of them, told him- self stories, and then followed these stories wherever they moved. Through these pro- cedures he became acquainted with his personal unconscious. (See Jung, 1979, and Dunne, 2000, for a collection of many of his paintings during this period.) Prolong- ing the method and going more deeply, he came upon the contents of the collective unconscious—the archetypes. He heard his anima speak to him in a clear feminine voice; he discovered his shadow, the evil side of his personality; he spoke with the wise old man and the great mother archetypes; and finally, near the end of his jour- ney, he achieved a kind of psychological rebirth called individuation (Jung, 1961).

Although Jung traveled widely in his study of personality, he remained a citi- zen of Switzerland, residing in Küsnacht, near Zürich. He and his wife, who was also an analyst, had five children, four girls and a boy. Jung was a Christian, but did not attend church. His hobbies included wood carving, stone cutting, and sailing his boat on Lake Constance. He also maintained an active interest in alchemy, archeology, gnosticism, Eastern philosophies, history, religion, mythology, and ethnology.

In 1944, he became professor of medical psychology at the University of Basel, but poor health forced him to resign his position the following year. After his wife died in 1955, he was mostly alone, the “wise old man of Küsnacht.” He died June 6, 1961, in Zürich, a few weeks short of his 86th birthday. At the time of his death, Jung’s reputation was worldwide, extending beyond psychology to include philosophy, religion, and popular culture (Brome, 1978).

Levels of the Psyche Jung, like Freud, based his personality theory on the assumption that the mind, or psyche, has both a conscious and an unconscious level. Unlike Freud, however, Jung strongly asserted that the most important portion of the unconscious springs not from personal experiences of the individual but from the distant past of human exis- tence, a concept Jung called the collective unconscious. Of lesser importance to Jun- gian theory are the conscious and the personal unconscious.

Conscious According to Jung, conscious images are those that are sensed by the ego, whereas unconscious elements have no relationship with the ego. Jung’s notion of the ego is more restrictive than Freud’s. Jung saw the ego as the center of consciousness, but not the core of personality. Ego is not the whole personality, but must be completed by the more comprehensive self, the center of personality that is largely unconscious. In a psychologically healthy person, the ego takes a secondary position to the un- conscious self (Jung, 1951/1959a). Thus, consciousness plays a relatively minor role in analytical psychology, and an overemphasis on expanding one’s conscious psyche

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can lead to psychological imbalance. Healthy individuals are in contact with their conscious world, but they also allow themselves to experience their unconscious self and thus to achieve individuation, a concept we discuss in the section titled Self- Realization.

Personal Unconscious The personal unconscious embraces all repressed, forgotten, or subliminally per- ceived experiences of one particular individual. It contains repressed infantile mem- ories and impulses, forgotten events, and experiences originally perceived below the threshold of our consciousness. Our personal unconscious is formed by our individ- ual experiences and is therefore unique to each of us. Some images in the personal unconscious can be recalled easily, some remembered with difficulty, and still others are beyond the reach of consciousness. Jung’s concept of the personal unconscious differs little from Freud’s view of the unconscious and preconscious combined (Jung, 1931/1960b).

Contents of the personal unconscious are called complexes. A complex is an emotionally toned conglomeration of associated ideas. For example, a person’s ex- periences with Mother may become grouped around an emotional core so that the person’s mother, or even the word “mother,” sparks an emotional response that blocks the smooth flow of thought. Complexes are largely personal, but they may also be partly derived from humanity’s collective experience. In our example, the mother complex comes not only from one’s personal relationship with mother but also from the entire species’ experiences with mother. In addition, the mother com- plex is partly formed by a person’s conscious image of mother. Thus, complexes may be partly conscious and may stem from both the personal and the collective uncon- scious (Jung, 1928/1960).

Collective Unconscious In contrast to the personal unconscious, which results from individual experiences, the collective unconscious has roots in the ancestral past of the entire species. It rep- resents Jung’s most controversial, and perhaps his most distinctive, concept. The physical contents of the collective unconscious are inherited and pass from one gen- eration to the next as psychic potential. Distant ancestors’ experiences with univer- sal concepts such as God, mother, water, earth, and so forth have been transmitted through the generations so that people in every clime and time have been influenced by their primitive ancestors’ primordial experiences (Jung, 1937/1959). Therefore, the contents of the collective unconscious are more or less the same for people in all cultures (Jung, 1934/1959).

The contents of the collective unconscious do not lie dormant but are active and influence a person’s thoughts, emotions, and actions. The collective unconscious is responsible for people’s many myths, legends, and religious beliefs. It also pro- duces “big dreams,” that is, dreams with meaning beyond the individual dreamer and that are filled with significance for people of every time and place (Jung, 1948/1960b).

The collective unconscious does not refer to inherited ideas but rather to hu- mans’ innate tendency to react in a particular way whenever their experiences stim-

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ulate a biologically inherited response tendency. For example, a young mother may unexpectedly react with love and tenderness to her newborn infant, even though she previously had negative or neutral feelings toward the fetus. The tendency to respond was part of the woman’s innate potential or inherited blueprint, but such innate po- tential requires an individual experience before it will become activated. Humans, like other animals, come into the world with inherited predispositions to act or react in certain ways if their present experiences touch on these biologically based predis- positions. For example, a man who falls in love at first sight may be greatly surprised and perplexed by his own reactions. His beloved may not resemble his conscious ideal of a woman, yet something within him moves him to be attracted to her. Jung would suggest that the man’s collective unconscious contained biologically based impressions of woman and that these impressions were activated when the man first saw his beloved.

How many biologically based predispositions do humans have? Jung said that people have as many of these inherited tendencies as they have typical situations in life. Countless repetitions of these typical situations have made them part of the human biological constitution. At first, they are “forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action” (Jung, 1937/1959, p. 48). With more repetition these forms begin to develop some content and to emerge as relatively autonomous archetypes.

Archetypes Archetypes are ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective uncon- scious. They are similar to complexes in that they are emotionally toned collections of associated images. But whereas complexes are individualized components of the personal unconscious, archetypes are generalized and derive from the contents of the collective unconscious.

Archetypes should also be distinguished from instincts. Jung (1948/1960a) de- fined an instinct as an unconscious physical impulse toward action and saw the ar- chetype as the psychic counterpart to an instinct. In comparing archetypes to in- stincts, Jung (1975) wrote:

As animals of the same kind show the same instinctual phenomena all over the world, man also shows the same archetypal forms no matter where he lives. As animals have no need to be taught their instinctive activities, so man also possesses his primordial psychic patterns and repeats them spontaneously, independently of any kind of teaching. Inasmuch as man is conscious and capable of introspection, it is quite possible that he can perceive his instinctual patterns in the form of archetypal representations. (p. 152)

In summary, both archetypes and instincts are unconsciously determined, and both can help shape personality.

Archetypes have a biological basis but originate through the repeated experi- ences of humans’ early ancestors. The potential for countless numbers of archetypes exists within each person, and when a personal experience corresponds to the latent primordial image, the archetype becomes activated.

The archetype itself cannot be directly represented, but when activated, it ex- presses itself through several modes, primarily dreams, fantasies, and delusions.

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During his midlife encounter with his unconscious, Jung had many archetypal dreams and fantasies. He frequently initiated fantasies by imagining that he was de- scending into a deep cosmic abyss. He could make little sense of his visions and dreams at that time, but later, when he began to understand that dream images and fantasy figures were actually archetypes, these experiences took on a completely new meaning (Jung, 1961).

Dreams are the main source of archetypal material, and certain dreams offer what Jung considered proof for the existence of the archetype. These dreams produce motifs that could not have been known to the dreamer through personal experience. The motifs often coincide with those known to ancient people or to natives of con- temporary aboriginal tribes.

Jung believed that hallucinations of psychotic patients also offered evidence for universal archetypes (Bair, 2003). While working as a psychiatric assistant at Burghöltzli, Jung observed a paranoid schizophrenic patient looking through a win- dow at the sun. The patient begged the young psychiatrist to also observe.

He said I must look at the sun with eyes half shut, and then I could see the sun’s phallus. If I moved my head from side to side the sun-phallus would move too, and that was the origin of the wind. (Jung, 1931/1960b, p. 150)

Four years later Jung came across a book by the German philologist Albrecht Di- eterich that had been published in 1903, several years after the patient was commit- ted. The book, written in Greek, dealt with a liturgy derived from the so-called Paris magic papyrus, which described an ancient rite of the worshippers of Mithras, the Persian god of light. In this liturgy, the initiate was asked to look at the sun until he could see a tube hanging from it. The tube, swinging toward the east and west, was the origin of the wind. Dieterich’s account of the sun-phallus of the Mithraic cult was nearly identical to the hallucination of the mental patient who, almost certainly, had no personal knowledge of the ancient initiation rite. Jung (1931/1960b) offered many similar examples as proof of the existence of archetypes and the collective uncon- scious.

As noted in Chapter 2, Freud also believed that people collectively inherit pre- dispositions to action. His concept of phylogenetic endowment, however, differs somewhat from Jung’s formulation. One difference was that Freud looked first to the personal unconscious and resorted to the phylogenetic endowment only when indi- vidual explanations failed—as he sometimes did when explaining the Oedipus com- plex (Freud, 1933/1964). In contrast, Jung placed primary emphasis on the collective unconscious and used personal experiences to round out the total personality.

The major distinction between the two, however, was Jung’s differentiation of the collective unconscious into autonomous forces called archetypes, each with a life and a personality of its own. Although a great number of archetypes exist as vague images, only a few have evolved to the point where they can be conceptualized. The most notable of these include the persona, shadow, anima, animus, great mother, wise old man, hero, and self.

Persona The side of personality that people show to the world is designated as the persona. The term is well chosen because it refers to the mask worn by actors in the early the- ater. Jung’s concept of the persona may have originated from experiences with his

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No. 1 personality, which had to make accommodations to the outside world. Each of us, Jung believed, should project a particular role, one that society dictates to each of us. A physician is expected to adopt a characteristic “bedside manner,” a politi- cian must show a face to society that can win the confidence and votes of the peo- ple; an actor exhibits the style of life demanded by the public (Jung, 1950/1959).

Although the persona is a necessary side of our personality, we should not con- fuse our public face with our complete self. If we identify too closely with our per- sona, we remain unconscious of our individuality and are blocked from attaining self-realization. True, we must acknowledge society, but if we over identify with our persona, we lose touch with our inner self and remain dependent on society’s expec- tations of us. To become psychologically healthy, Jung believed, we must strike a bal- ance between the demands of society and what we truly are. To be oblivious of one’s persona is to underestimate the importance of society, but to be unaware of one’s deep individuality is to become society’s puppet (Jung, 1950/1959).

During Jung’s near break with reality from 1913 to 1917, he struggled hard to remain in touch with his persona. He knew that he must maintain a normal life, and his work and family provided that contact. He was frequently forced to tell himself, “I have a medical diploma from a Swiss university, I must help my patients, I have a wife and five children, I live at 228 Seestrasse in Küsnacht” (Jung, 1961, p. 189). Such self-talk kept Jung’s feet rooted to the ground and reassured him that he really existed.

Shadow The shadow, the archetype of darkness and repression, represents those qualities we do not wish to acknowledge but attempt to hide from ourselves and others. The shadow consists of morally objectionable tendencies as well as a number of con- structive and creative qualities that we, nevertheless, are reluctant to face (Jung, 1951/1959a).

Jung contended that, to be whole, we must continually strive to know our shadow and that this quest is our first test of courage. It is easier to project the dark side of our personality onto others, to see in them the ugliness and evil that we re- fuse to see in ourselves. To come to grips with the darkness within ourselves is to achieve the “realization of the shadow.” Unfortunately, most of us never realize our shadow but identify only with the bright side of our personality. People who never realize their shadow may, nevertheless, come under its power and lead tragic lives, constantly running into “bad luck” and reaping harvests of defeat and discourage- ment for themselves (Jung, 1954/1959a).

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung (1961) reported a dream that took place at the time of his break from Freud. In this dream his shadow, a brown-skinned savage, killed the hero, a man named Siegfried, who represented the German people. Jung interpreted the dream to mean that he no longer needed Sig Freud (Siegfried); thus, his shadow performed the constructive task of eradicating his former hero.

Anima Like Freud, Jung believed that all humans are psychologically bisexual and possess both a masculine and a feminine side. The feminine side of men originates in the collective unconscious as an archetype and remains extremely resistant to

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consciousness. Few men become well acquainted with their anima because this task requires great courage and is even more difficult than becoming acquainted with their shadow. To master the projections of the anima, men must overcome intellec- tual barriers, delve into the far recesses of their unconscious, and realize the femi- nine side of their personality.

As we reported in the opening vignette in this chapter, Jung first encountered his own anima during his journey through his unconscious psyche soon after his break with Freud. The process of gaining acquaintance with his anima was Jung’s second test of courage. Like all men, Jung could recognize his anima only after learning to feel comfortable with his shadow (Jung, 1954/1959a, 1954/1959b).

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung vividly described this experience. In- trigued by this “woman from within,” Jung (1961) concluded that

she must be the “soul,” in the primitive sense, and I began to speculate on the reasons why the name “anima” was given to the soul. Why was it thought of as feminine? Later I came to see that this inner feminine figure plays a typical, or archetypal, role in the unconscious of a man, and I called her the “anima.” The corresponding figure in the unconscious of woman I called the “animus.” (p. 186)

Jung believed that the anima originated from early men’s experiences with women—mothers, sisters, and lovers—that combined to form a generalized picture of woman. In time, this global concept became embedded in the collective uncon- scious of all men as the anima archetype. Since prehistoric days, every man has come into the world with a predetermined concept of woman that shapes and molds all his relationships with individual women. A man is especially inclined to project his anima onto his wife or lover and to see her not as she really is but as his personal and collective unconscious have determined her. This anima can be the source of much misunderstanding in male-female relationships, but it may also be responsible for the alluring mystique woman has in the psyche of men (Hayman, 2001; Hillman, 1985).

A man may dream about a woman with no definite image and no particular identity. The woman represents no one from his personal experience, but enters his dream from the depths of his collective unconscious. The anima need not appear in dreams as a woman, but can be represented by a feeling or mood (Jung, 1945/1953). Thus, the anima influences the feeling side in man and is the explanation for certain irrational moods and feelings. During these moods a man almost never admits that his feminine side is casting her spell; instead, he either ignores the irrationality of the feelings or tries to explain them in a very rational masculine manner. In either event he denies that an autonomous archetype, the anima, is responsible for his mood.

The anima’s deceptive qualities were elucidated by Jung (1961) in his descrip- tion of the “woman from within” who spoke to him during his journey into the un- conscious and while he was contemplating whether his work was science.

What the anima said seemed to me full of a deep cunning. If I had taken these fantasies of the unconscious as art, they would have carried no more conviction than visual perceptions, as if I were watching a movie. I would have felt no moral obligation toward them. The anima might then have easily seduced me into believing that I was a misunderstood artist, and that my so-called artistic nature gave me the right to neglect reality. If I had followed her voice, she would in all probability have said to me one day, “Do you imagine the nonsense you’re engaged in is really art? Not a bit.” Thus the insinuations of the anima, the mouthpiece of the unconscious, can utterly destroy a man. (p. 187)

Part II Psychodynamic Theories108

Animus The masculine archetype in women is called the animus. Whereas the anima repre- sents irrational moods and feelings, the animus is symbolic of thinking and reason- ing. It is capable of influencing the thinking of a woman, yet it does not actually be- long to her. It belongs to the collective unconscious and originates from the encounters of prehistoric women with men. In every female-male relationship, the woman runs a risk of projecting her distant ancestors’ experiences with fathers, brothers, lovers, and sons onto the unsuspecting man. In addition, of course, her per- sonal experiences with men, buried in her personal unconscious, enter into her rela- tionships with men. Couple these experiences with projections from the man’s anima and with images from his personal unconscious, and you have the basic ingredients of any female-male relationship.

Jung believed that the animus is responsible for thinking and opinion in women just as the anima produces feelings and moods in men. The animus is also the explanation for the irrational thinking and illogical opinions often attributed to women. Many opinions held by women are objectively valid, but according to Jung, close analysis reveals that these opinions were not thought out, but existed ready- made. If a woman is dominated by her animus, no logical or emotional appeal can shake her from her prefabricated beliefs (Jung, 1951/1959a). Like the anima, the an- imus appears in dreams, visions, and fantasies in a personified form.

Great Mother Two other archetypes, the great mother and the wise old man, are derivatives of the anima and animus. Everyone, man or woman, possesses a great mother archetype. This preexisting concept of mother is always associated with both positive and neg- ative feelings. Jung (1954/1959c), for example, spoke of the “loving and terrible mother” (p. 82). The great mother, therefore, represents two opposing forces—fer- tility and nourishment on the one hand and power and destruction on the other. She is capable of producing and sustaining life (fertility and nourishment), but she may also devour or neglect her offspring (destruction). Recall that Jung saw his own mother as having two personalities—one loving and nurturing; the other uncanny, ar- chaic, and ruthless.