Anima and animus

In Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, anima and animus refer to:

1. The unconscious or true inner self of an individual, as opposed to the persona, or outer aspect of the personality.

2. The feminine inner personality, as present in the unconscious of the male. It is in contrast to the animus, which represents masculine characteristics in the female. It can be identified as all of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a male possesses. In a film interview, Jung was not clear if the anima/animus archetype was totally unconscious, calling it "a little bit conscious" and unconscious. In the interview, he gave an example of a man who falls head over heels in love, then later in life regrets his blind choice as he finds that he has married his own anima–the unconscious idea of the feminine in his mind, rather than the woman herself. The anima is usually an aggregate of a man's mother but may also incorporate aspects of sisters, aunts, and teachers.

The anima is one of the most significant autonomous complexes of all. It manifests itself by appearing as figures in dreams as well as by influencing a man's interactions with women and his attitudes toward them. Jung said that confronting one's shadow self is an "apprentice-piece", while confronting one's anima is the masterpiece. Jung viewed the anima process as being one of the sources of creative ability.

In Italian and Spanish, anima is most closely translated as "soul", while in Latin, animus and anima may both be translated as "soul" or "mind", depending on context.

Anima levels of development
Jung believed anima development has four distinct levels.

The first is Eve, named for the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. It deals with the emergence of a male's object of desire, yet simultaneously generalizes all females as evil and powerless.

The second is Helen, in allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. In this phase, women are viewed as capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, even if not altogether virtuous. This second phase is meant to show a strong schism in external talents (cultivated business and conventional skills) with lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination).

The third phase is Mary, named for the Christian theological understanding of the Virgin Mary (Jesus's mother). At this level, females can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving male (even if in an esoteric and dogmatic way), in so much as certain activities deemed consciously unvirtuous cannot be applied to her. As per Ken Wilber's terminology, this third phase seems to represent Up spirituality while the second phase represents Down spirituality.

The fourth and final phase of anima development is Sophia, as previously mentioned for the Greek word for wisdom. Proper union and harmony now has taken place which allows females to posses combinations of virtuous and earthly qualities. The most important aspect of this final level is that, as the personification "Wisdom" suggests, the anima is now developed enough that no single object can fully and permanently contain the images related to the anima. As this point as well, this now esoterically understood feminine principle has the potential to be possessed by any person, male or female, although it is not necessarily possessed by any.

In broader terms, the entire process of anima development in a male is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.

The female animus
Though less written about, Jung also believed that every woman has an analogous animus within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials. He viewed the animus as being more complex than the anima, as women have a host of animus images while the male anima consists only of one dominant image.

Jung states there are four parallel levels of Animus development in a female. The four roles are not identical with genders reversed; the process of Animus development deals with cultivating an independent and non-socially subjugated idea of self by embodying a deeper Word (as per a specific existential outlook) and manifesting this word. To clarify, this does not mean that a female subject becomes more set in her ways (as this Word is steeped in emotionality, subjectivity, and a dynamicism just as a well developed Anima is) but that she is more internally aware of what she believes and feels, and is more capable of expressing these beliefs and feelings.

Both final stages of Animus and Anima development have dynamic qualities (being ever related to the innate motion and flux of this continual developmental process), open ended qualities (there is no static perfected ideal or manifestation of the quality in question), and pluralistic qualities (which transcend the need for a singular image, any subject or object can contain multiple archetypes or even seemingly antithetical roles).

Cultural references

 * Anima is the main focus for Rush's song "Animate" on their album Counterparts
 * Anima Animus is the name of an album by The Creatures
 * The Joni Mitchell song "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" alters Jung's theory by making the anima part of a woman's psyche, representing her own buried strength rising up in the form of a "vengeful little goddess" to rebel against male dominance.
 * Anima, particularly as a source of creativity, is a primary theme of Federico Fellini's 1963 film, 8½. In one of the film's many flashback/dream sequences, the word "Anima" is used as a part of some children's language game and becomes "Asa-Nisi-Masa."
 * James Joyce in his Finnegans Wake, asks "Is the Co-education of Animus and Anima Wholly Desirable?" his answer perhaps being contained in his line "anama anamaba anamabapa." The book also ridicules Carl Jung's analytical psychology and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, by referring to "psoakoonaloose." Jung had been unable to help Joyce's daughter Lucia, who Joyce claimed was a girl "yung and easily freudened." Lucia was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was eventually permanently institutionalized.
 * The TV series Herman's Head included a Greek chorus consisting of the various parts of a man's divided psyche, including a woman named Angel to represent his feminine side.
 * The theory of the animus and anima formed the seed of Michael Tippett's opera The Midsummer Marriage.
 * The band Tool notes Jungian psychology on many different levels. Tool has released an album entitled, Ænima a reference to Jungs theory. Maynard James Keenan, the band's singer, has referred to Jungian philosophy during various live shows.
 * In the game Final Fantasy X, there is an Aeon (spiritual being) called Anima. In a reference to Jungian psychology, the woman who became the Fayth for Anima is the mother of the major antagonist.
 * In the Xenosaga series, the Power of Anima resides in a male (chaos), while the Power of Animus resides in a female (KOS-MOS/Mary Magdalene).