Anima: The Woman Within

Had a Big Dream this morning. I take a Jungian psychology view of it.

At the end of my dream's unconscious vision my anima appeared in the form of a popular TV actress of whom I know next to nothing. Marcia Cross (at right) was the vessel for my understanding. Though a very beautiful vessel, I'll try to forget about her now. That's my first trial.

She was dressed in black with raven hair, appearing in the middle of a deserted city street at night. The headlights of my convertible illuminated the woman and I slowed before her. She approached and said two words. I won't say what they were. Pretty damn moving words - The Message. I began to sing and slowly drifted awake.

Jung says to take the entire dream very seriously. I do and I will. Fortunately, my anima appeared as the positive, helpful version for which I have my mother to thank.

Below is an excerpt [on positive anima function] from an essay, edited by Carl. G. Jung, written by his professional confidant and friend, M.-L. von Franz entitled, 'The Process of Individuation'....

The anima: the woman within

Difficult and subtle ethical problems are not invariably brought up by the appearance of the shadow itself. Often another 'inner figure' emerges. If the dreamer is a man, he will discover a female personification of his unconscious; and it will be a male figure in the case of a woman. Often this second symbolic figure turns up behind the shadow, bringing up new and different problems. Jung called its 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 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....

The anima is, for instance, responsible for the fact that a man is able to find the right marriage partner. Another function is at least equally important: 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. Even more vital is the role that the anima plays in putting a man's mind in tune with the right inner values and thereby opening the way into more profound inner depths. It is as if an inner 'radio' becomes tuned to a certain wave length that excludes irrelevancies but allows the voice of the Great Man to be heard. In establishing this inner 'radio' reception, the anima takes on the role of guide, or mediator, to the world within and to the Self. That is how she appears in the example of the initiations of shamans that I described earlier; this is the role of Beatrice in Dante's Paradisio, and also of the goddess Isis when she appeared in a dream to Apuleius, the famous author of The Golden Ass, in order to initiate him into a higher, more spiritual form of life....

But what does the role of the anima as guide to the inner world mean in practical terms? 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, or 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.

Many examples from literature show the anima as a guide and mediator to the inner world: Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia, Rider Haggard's She, or "The eternal feminine" in Goethe's Faust. In medieval mystical text, an anima figure explains her own nature as follows.

I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys. I am the mother of fair love and of fear and of knowledge and of holy hope...I am the mediator of the elements, making one to agree with another; that which is warm I make cold and the reverse, and that which is dry I make moist and the reverse, and that which is hard I soften...I am the law in the priest and the word in the prophet and the counsel in the wise. I will kill and I will make to live and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

In the Middle Ages there took place a perceptible spiritual differentiation in religious, poetical, and other cultural matters; and the fantasy world of the unconscious was recognized more clearly than before. During this period, the knightly cult of the lady signified an attempt to differentiate the feminine side of man's nature in regard to the outer woman as well as in relation to the inner world.

The lady to whose service the knight pledged himself, and for whom he performed his heroic deeds, was naturally a personification of the anima. The name of the carrier of the Grail, in Wolfum von Eschenbach's version of the legend, is especially significant: Conduir-amour ("guide in love matters"). She taught the hero to differentiate both his feelings and his behavior toward women. Later, however, this individual and personal effort of developing the relationship with the anima was abandoned when her sublime aspect fused with the figure of the Virgin, who then became the object of boundless devotion and praise. When the anima, as Virgin, was conceived as being all-positive, her negative aspects found expression in the belief in witches.

In China the figure parallel to that of Mary is the goddess Kwan-Yin. A more popular Chinese anima-figure is the "Lady of the Moon", who bestows the gift of poetry or music on her favorites and can even give them immortality. In India the same archetype is represented by Shakti, Parvati, Rati, and many others; among the Moslems she is chiefly Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.

Worship of the anima as an officially recognized 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.

Only the painful (but essentially simple) decision to take one's fantasies and feelings seriously can at this stage prevent a complete stagnation of the inner process of individuation, because only in this way can a man discover what this figure means as an inner reality. Thus the anima becomes again what she originally was - the "woman within" who conveys vital messages to the Self.

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