 The animus, the man within. The male personification of the unconscious in woman, the animus, exhibits both good and bad aspects, as does the anima in man. But 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. However, even in a woman who is outwardly very feminine, the animus can be an equally hard, inexorable power. One may suddenly find oneself up against something in a woman that is obstinate, cold, and completely inaccessible. One of the favorite themes that the animus repeats endlessly in the ruminations of this kind of woman goes like this. The only thing in the world that I want is love, and he doesn't love me, or in this situation there are only two possibilities, and both are equally bad. The animus never believes in exceptions. One can rarely contradict an animus opinion because it is usually right in a general way, yet its seldom seems to fit the individual situation. It is apt to be an opinion that seems reasonable, but beside the point. 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, convictions that never include the personal reality of the woman herself as she actually is. This is why the animus is sometimes, like the anima, a demon of death. For example, in a gypsy fairy tale, a handsome stranger is received by a lonely woman, in spite of the fact that she has had a dream warning her that he is the king of the dead. After he has been with her for a time, she presses him to tell her who he really is. At first, he refuses, saying that she will die if he tells her. She insists, however, and suddenly he reveals to her that he is death himself. The woman immediately dies of fright. Viewed mythologically, the beautiful stranger is probably a pagan father image or god image who appears here as king of the dead, like Hades, abduction of Persephone. But psychologically, he represents a particular form of the animus that lures women away from all human relationships and especially from all contacts with real men. He personifies a cocoon of dreamy thoughts filled with desire and judgments about how things ought to be which cut a woman off from the reality of life. The negative animus does not appear only as a death demon. In myths and fairy tales, he plays the role of robber and murderer. One example is Bluebeard, who secretly kills all his wives in a hidden chamber. In this form, the animus personifies all those semi-conscious, cold, destructive reflections that invade a woman in the small hours, especially when she has failed to realize some obligation of feeling. It is then that she begins to think about the family heritage and matters of that kind, a sort of web of calculating thoughts filled with malice and intrigue, which get her into a state where she even wishes death to others. When one of us dies, I'll move to the Riviera, said a woman to her husband when she saw the beautiful Mediterranean coast, a thought that was rendered relatively harmless by reason of the fact that she said it. By nursing secret destructive attitudes, a wife can drive her husband and a mother, her children, into illness, accident, or even death. Or she may decide to keep the children from marrying, a deeply hidden form of evil that rarely comes to the surface of the mother's conscious mind. A naive old woman once said to me while showing me a picture of her son, who was drowned when he was twenty-seven. I prefer it this way. It's better than giving him away to another woman. 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. Unfortunately, whenever one of these personifications of the unconscious takes possession of our mind, it seems as if we ourselves are having such thoughts and feelings. The ego identifies with them to the point where it is unable to detach them and see them for what they are. One is really possessed by the figure from the unconscious. Only after the possession has fallen away does one realize with horror that one has said and done things diametrically opposed to one's real thoughts and feelings, that one has been the prey of an alien psychic factor. 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 following dream of a woman of 45 may help to illustrate this point. Two veiled figures climb onto the balcony and into the house. They are swarved in black hooded coats, and they seem to want to torment me and my sister. She hides under the bed, but they pull her out with a broom and torture her. Then it is my turn. The leader of the two pushes me against the wall, making magical gestures before my face. In the meantime, his helper makes a sketch on the wall, and when I see it, I say in order to seem friendly, oh, but this is well drawn. Now suddenly my tormentor has the noble head of an artist, and he says proudly, yes indeed, and begins to clean his spectacles. The sadistic aspect of these two figures was well known to the dreamer, for in reality she frequently suffered bad attacks of anxiety, during which she was haunted by the thought that people she loved were in great danger, or even that they were dead. But 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. The sister of the dreamer, who runs away from the men, is caught and tortured. In reality, this sister died when fairly young. She had been artistically gifted, but had made very little use of her talent. Next, the dream reveals that the veiled burglars are actually disguised artists, and that if the dreamer recognizes their gifts, which are her own, they will give up their evil intentions. What is the deeper meaning of the dream? It is that behind the spasms of anxiety, there is indeed a genuine and mortal danger, but there is also a creative possibility for the dreamer. She, like the sister, had some talent as a painter, but she doubted whether painting could be a meaningful activity for her. Now her dream tells her in the most earnest way that she must live out this talent. If she obeys, the destructive tormenting animus will be transformed into a creative and meaningful activity. As in this dream, 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 everybody. And in such circumstances, their speech frequently contains the words always and should and ought. A vast number of myths and fairy tales tell of a prince, turned by witchcraft into a wild animal or monster, who is redeemed by the love of a girl, a process symbolizing the manner in which the animus becomes conscious. Dr. Henderson has commented on the significance of this beauty and the beast motif in the preceding chapter. Very often, the heroine is not allowed to ask questions about her mysterious unknown lover and husband, or she meets him only in the dark and may never look at him. The implication is that by blindly trusting and loving him, she will be able to redeem her bridegroom. But this never succeeds. She always breaks her promise and finally finds her lover again only after a long difficult quest and much suffering. The parallel in life is that 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, 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. He gives the woman spiritual firmness, an invisible inner support that compensates for her outer softness. 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. The inner man within a woman's psyche can lead to marital troubles similar to those mentioned in the section on the anima. What makes things especially complicated is the fact that the possession of one partner by the animus or anima may automatically exert such an irritating effect upon the other that he or she becomes possessed too. Animus and anima always tend to drag conversation down to a very low level and to produce a disagreeable, erasable, emotional atmosphere. As I mentioned before, 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 broad mindedness 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.