Saturday, May 30, 2009

Animus, and Anima

"..............Jung called its (the unconscious) male and female forms "animus" and "anima".

The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and last but not the least-his relation to the unconscious. It is no mere chance that in olden times priestesses (like the Greek Sibyl) were used to fathom the divine will and to make connection with the gods.

A particularly good example of how the anima is experienced as in inner figure in a man's psyche is found in the medicine men and prophets (shamans) among the Eskimo and other arctic tribes. Some of these even wear women's clothes or have breasts depicted on their garments, in order to manifest their inner feminine side-the side that enables them to connect with the "ghost land" ( i.e., what we call the unconscious)."

'The anima: the woman within'

Part 3: The Process of Individuation
M.-L.von Franz
from the book 'Man and his Symbols'Edited, with an introduction, by Carl Gustav Jung

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