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These words are not my own and I take no credit for them. I share them here as a resource for anyone seeking personal growth or as source material for their own creative expansion of the collective.
Writing is as much a place to explore what did not happen, but is - say - most feared or desired as what did.
What women have to overcome in relation to the animus is the lack of self-confidence and resistance of inertia. It is as if we have to lift ourselves up ... up to spiritual independence. Without this sort of revolt, no matter what she had to suffer as a consequence, she will never be free of the power of the tyrant, never come to find herself.
She should take care that her animus does not escape because if it gets away from her unnoticed and falls into the unconscious, it can be destructive. The animus can be either positive or negative. He can be like a dragon guarding the bridge trying to prevent us from reaching the other bank. If we do not try to evade him, but go on courageously he becomes manageable and we can pass through without harm. If we run away because the dragon seems too powerful we lose vital energy and become soulless.
The only path that leads to synthesis, to the new knowledge that we may call illumination or enlightenment in contrast to a one-sided consciousness, is man's reconnection to the anima-world of soul and woman's reconnection to the animus-world of spirit.
…for it is the role of the anima to lead a man into his unconscious, and thus to force him. to deeper recollection and increased consciousness.
Whenever a man's logical mind is incapable of discerning facts that are hidden in his unconscious, the anima helps him to dig them out.
The anima of a man has a strongly historical character. As a personification of the unconscious she goes back into prehistory, and embodies the contents of the past. She provides the individual with those elements that he ought to know about his prehistory. To the individual the anima is all life that has been in the past and is still alive in him.
The animus, just like the anima, exhibits four stages of development. He first appears as a personification of mere physical power- for instance, as an athletic champion or "muscle man." In the next stage he possesses initiative and the capacity for planned action. In the third phase, the animus becomes the "word," often appearing as a professor or clergyman. Finally, in his fourth manifestation, the animus is the incarnation of meaning. On this highest level he becomes (like the anima) a mediator of the religious experience whereby life acquires new meaning.
… the positive side of the animus can personify an enterprising spirit, courage, truthfulness, and in the highest form, spiritual profundity. Through him a woman can experience the underlying processes of her cultural and personal objective situation, and can find her way to an intensified spiritual attitude to life. This naturally presupposes that her animus ceases to represent opinions that are above criticism. The woman must find the courage and inner broadmindedness to question the sacredness of her own convictions. Only then will she be able to take in the suggestions of the unconscious, especially when they contradict her animus opinions. Only then will the manifestations of the Self get through to her, and will she be able consciously to understand their meaning.
…the soul, the anima, establishes the relationship to the unconscious. In a certain sense this is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors.
…the conscious attention a woman has to give to her animus problem takes much time and involves a lot of suffering. But if she realizes 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 often appears as a group of men. In this way the unconscious symbolizes the fact that the animus represents a collective rather than a personal element. Because of this collective-mindedness women habitually refer (when their animus is speaking through them) to "one" or "they" or "every. body," and in such circumstances their speech frequently contains the words "always" and "should" and "ought."
Just as the character of a man's anima is shaped by his mother, so the animus is basically influenced by a woman's father. The father endows his daughter's animus with the special coloring of unarguable, incontestably , "true" convictions that never include the personal reality of the woman herself as she actually is.
…the animus does not so often appear in the form of an erotic fantasy or mood; it is more apt to take the form of a hidden "sacred" conviction. When such a conviction is preached with a loud, insistent, masculine voice or imposed on others by means of brutal emotional scenes, the underlying masculinity in a woman is easily recognized.
Worship of the anima as an officially recognized religious figure brings the serious disadvantage that she loses her individual aspects. On the other hand, if she is regarded as an exclusively personal being, there is the danger that, if she is projected into the outer world, it is only there that she can be found. This latter state of affairs can create endless trouble, because man becomes either the victim of his erotic fantasies or compulsively dependent on one actual woman.
When the anima, as Virgin, was conceived as being all-positive, her negative aspects found expression in the belief in witches.
This positive function occurs when a man takes seriously the feelings, moods, expectations, and fantasies sent by his anima and when he fixes them in some form - for example, in writing, painting, sculpture, musical composition, dancing. When he works at this patiently and slowly, other more deeply unconscious material wells up from the depths and connects with the earlier material. After a fantasy has been fixed in some specific form, it must be examined both intellectually and ethically, with an evaluating feeling reaction. And it is essential to regard it as being absolutely real; there must be no lurking doubt that this is "only a fantasy." If this is practiced with devotion over a long period, the process of individuation gradually becomes the single reality and can unfold in its true form.
…men can attribute almost anything to a creature who is so fascinatingly vague, and can thus proceed to weave fantasies around her.
It is the presence of the anima that causes a man to fall suddenly in love when he sees a woman for the first time and knows at once that this is "she." In this situation, the man feels as if he has known this woman intimately for all time; he falls for her so helplessly that it looks to outsiders like complete madness.
All these aspects of the anima have the same tendency that we have observed in the shadow : That is, they can be projected so that they appear to the man to be the qualities of some particular woman.
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 least – his relation to the unconscious.
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