WELCOME TO Module 8

This Jungian Life @ www.thisjungianlife.com

Lisa Marchiano, Jungian Analyst, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Joseph Lee, Jungian Analyst, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Deborah Stewart, Jungian Analyst, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

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Module 8: Anima & Animus in Dreams

THIS JUNGIAN LIFE DREAM SCHOOL EDITED TRANSCRIPT

 

Joseph: In today’s module, we’ll unpack some of Jung’s fundamental ideas about anima and animus. By anima, Jung meant that every man has an internal experience of otherness that generally constellates as an image of a woman, and every woman has an internal image of otherness that is generally pictured as male. These opposites are part of the collective unconscious, the storehouse of universal human experience.

As Jung’s understanding deepened, he placed increasing importance on the principle of opposites. Jung was inspired by gnostic spirituality, a cosmology that generates pairs of divine ideas as opposites. For example, a divine presence gives birth to a human son, thus linking the opposites of divine and human. Another pair of significant opposites is masculine and feminine. Jung recognized the dynamism of opposites as a depiction of a deep and subtle level of the unconscious, and was curious about the way human beings are organized around dualities.

Lisa: The concept of opposites frames this well. We could also speak in terms of yin and yang or the alchemical sol and luna–sun and moon. It was one of Jung’s great observations that life proceeds according to pairs of opposites, and male and female are a primary human experience of opposites. This gets translated into psychological language as masculine and feminine principles.

Deb: Masculine and feminine are deeply instilled in us. Humans have a biological mother and father, and we see animal life organized as male and female. Masculine and feminine figure prominently in mythology, fairytales–everywhere. This pair of opposites is deeply embedded in the psyche; it’s primal and therefore archetypal.

Joseph: In Gnosticism, all opposites begin in perfect relationship to each other, residing in a heavenly world. Human beings are then tasked with bringing these pairs of opposites into consciousness, such as realizing I am a man and a woman, I am a woman and a man, because these pairs of opposites are fundamentally joined. When they appear in dreams, they evoke a feeling of restoration and wholeness, although an inner opposite can appear in ways that the dream ego experiences negatively. Together, they signal a readiness to experience the Self.

Deb: The energy has to go back and forth between the opposites. It’s not just a ‘nice idea’ for the opposites to get together. There’s a dynamic relationship between the opposites. Like two poles of electricity between which energy flows back and forth, the opposites generate aliveness.

Joseph: Perhaps the development of consciousness itself is through the ‘electricity’ generated between the opposites of the unconscious and awareness.

Lisa: Jung pointed out that we first meet this inner opposite-sex figure through projection—that is, we see the image of our inner opposite in another person. This typically looks like falling in love: the beloved shimmers and is special beyond anyone else. We’re physically and emotionally attracted, and it has a magical feeling.

Deb: It can also take a negative spin, such as with an opposite-sex person that we just can’t stand, or fear, or find repulsive. Today’s male vampires are a great cultural example, and they have made a huge comeback as TV series and in movies. The vampire represents a fascinating, infatuating kind of presence despite being destructive.

Lisa: That’s a good example, and fascinating is the essence. Classically, the anima and animus fascinate, whether in a positive aspect like ‘falling in love,’ or being irresistibly drawn to someone dangerous. In literature, a classic story that involves a negative animus figure is Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff has a dark but fascinating quality.

Deb: Anima and animus attract and fascinate, whereas shadow repels: I’m not like that. Never! Shadow is closer to the ego but anima and animus operate below, a level not readily accessible to consciousness. We can’t let go of it but neither do we understand it fully because we can’t bring it all the way into consciousness.

Joseph: Jungians generally feel the relationship of the individual to their anima/animus is reflected in the way they typically react to the opposite sex. Part of an analysis will prioritize opposite sex characters in dreams and how one relates to the opposite sex in life—because that informs the analysand’s relationship to his or her inner opposite.

Lisa: When someone brings in a dream and there’s an opposite-sex figure that has an emotional pull, I often wonder if that could be an animus figure. We don’t want to get too formulaic about this, as if dreaming of a man necessarily means he’s an animus figure. That closes down thinking and curiosity, and these categories won’t serve us if they’re too reified or rigid. When I see an opposite-sex figure appear in a dream, I’m most interested in the dynamic between the dream ego and this animus or anima figure. What is the dream saying about the quality of the relationship between these two parts of the psyche?

Deb: Yes, what action and feeling tone is being depicted? Because these things are so deeply instilled in the human psyche, there’s often more of an emotional ‘pull’ than there might be to other dream images.

Joseph: When the idea of anima/animus is translated into psychological language, we might say the anima in a man’s psyche influences his moods, his reactions, and his impulses. It’s interesting to look at a man’s dreams to see if those psychological aspects are being commented on. In a woman’s psyche, the animus often holds energy around beliefs, ideas, and committing to goals.

Lisa: Jung also said that the anima in particular serves as a psychopomp, a guide to the deep unconscious, and that is worth considering. I find that for women, the animus can relate to the ability to actualize creativity in the world. I once worked with a woman who was a writer, and a man showed up in her dreams that always seemed to relate to her creative process. Sometimes it was difficult to find him, and at other times, there he was. It seemed to image her efforts to realize her creative writing potential.

Deb: Famously, there are the feminine muses for male artists. I’m thinking of anima and animus as analogous to Hermes–energy that takes us from ego to the collective unconscious. Unique among the Greek gods, Hermes (Mercury) traversed the psychic realms from Olympus to Hades. These contra-sexual figures in our dreams–or our projections in waking life—traverse internal realms.

Joseph: We project our inner images and fantasies onto each other. Jung said the goal is to lift them off outer people, integrate them, and restore the anima/animus to internal psychological functions. As you said, Deb, this part of our psyche links us to deep waters of the collective unconscious that are beyond the ego’s grasp.

Lisa: Here’s a personal story: I went to high school with a person who became a famous pop singer. This person was very charismatic and talented, and of course I had a crush on him, like half the girls in our high school. I haven’t been in touch with him since, but he showed up in a dream I had ten or fifteen years ago when I was awakening more to my own creative process.

Deb: He was a beacon to that energy in your own psyche, so your animus appropriated his image.

Joseph: Let me lift up the idea that there are stages of development with anima/animus. These are visible in our outer relationships and in the development of internal images. For instance, the anima might show up initially as an Eve figure in a man’s psyche. When that is projected onto women, they will be seen as providers of nourishment, security, and love. As a man’s psyche develops, he may see women as Helen of Troy images: beautiful, worldly, and sexually desirable. This can stimulate the development of talents and desires, particularly in the outer world. Another stage can give rise to images of Mary, Holy Mother. In this stage, men project virtue onto women, which can stimulate the development of more conscious spirituality and ethical values. Beyond that, as the process continues to be internalized, a man moves into a Sophia relationship with his anima: the feminine principle within is the life force itself. A man then begins to relate to women as individuals, with their full spectrum of qualities and gifts. The man’s inner feminine is a more sophisticated function that connects him with inner and outer life.

Jung seems to have written about anima and animus from his own experience, and his comments about the development of the inner masculine in a woman are less developed. Fortunately, there were female analysts who wrote about this–Emma Jung wrote Anima-Animus. For her, the animus starts out as a primal image of physical prowess, perhaps a Tarzan or Hercules image. In this stage of development, women might be particularly interested in men with primal power. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley Kowalski’s wife, Stella, was swept away by a muscular, sexual man, an example of animus projection. The second stage would be a man of strength, which stimulates a drive to initiate projects and act. A Theodore Roosevelt type might be emblematic of this stage. In the third stage, the animus might be imagined as the inner professor, which can prompt a woman to become deeply interested in a philosophy of life. In the movie Educating Rita a vivacious hairdresser discovers at midlife that she wants to go to college. She is mentored by a male professor, her intellectual life blossoms with enthusiasm over the discovery of her new capacity, and lights them both up. In the last stage, the inner man presents as a spiritual guide. This might show up in dreams as the wise old man who has a deeply loving, wise relationship to the female dreamer, providing inspiration to pursue greater meaning and depth. In a woman’s psyche, men are then seen simply as human beings with positive and negative qualities, because the potentials projected onto the opposite sex have been internalized.

In both men and women, the quality of the relationship to the anima and animus is critical, and it depends on confronting and integrating personal shadow. Jung felt this process could transform culture if men and women were not coercing each other to behave in ways that compensated for their own unconscious desires. Integrating the other within, anima and animus, would allow both men and women to be liberated to live more freely and uniquely, thereby individuating.

Lisa: When we have a dream in which we think there might be an anima or animus figure, we want to ask how it’s functioning. What is it doing? What psychic energy is it carrying? Where is it pressing the ego to move forward or standing in opposition? I think we can understand this better in the context of some dreams. A 32-year-old male truck driver dreamed: I was floating down a river as if on an inner tube, facing upstream. I feel that I’m supposed to find a particular woman and I make the decision to have her appear. A woman appears, and we are both elated and happy to see each other but she’s not the woman I’m looking for. This happens twice more with two other woman figures until finally the fourth woman to appear is the one I’ve been looking for. She’s blonde with blue eyes and we are both so happy we’ve finally found each other. But my excitement leads to my wondering what this meant and the purpose of this dream. For context, he said, “This is the first dream in which I feel like I’ve made multiple decisions in regard to making a new woman appear until I find the one I was looking for.” He noted that he has been setting intentions before he goes to sleep, like dream incubation, wanting things to be more lucid. In the dream, he felt very positive, eager, open, joyous, and comforted. I notice first that he’s floating down a river but facing upstream. He seems to be comfortable just resting into the process offered by the unconscious. That might be one way to understand floating down the river. Facing upstream you can’t see where you’re going, which would not be a problem if it were a very calm, placid stream. But if there were any obstacles or other problems, you probably would want to see where you’re going. The idea of tubing down a river is an image of relaxing and letting the stream carry you.

Deb: I’m thinking of the song lyrics, “floating down a river on a lazy afternoon.” The ego lets itself be immersed in the experience. Also, it’s natural to face upstream when you’re tubing. It takes much more effort to look where you’re going. This is an image of relaxing into the unconscious.

Lisa: And that could have two sides to it. If someone is living that way, it could be a real problem, but it’s good to be able to do this at appropriate times.

Joseph: It’s a picture of what’s happening. The dreamer is floating down a river and his feet are in the watery world. The resistance from his feet causes the inner tube to spin around so he’s looking upstream. As he’s floating downstream, he doesn’t know what’s ahead. It’s retrospective. He’s looking at what has already happened, not what’s ahead. So perhaps there’s something about nostalgia, relaxation, and passivity. It’s also an image of the human condition at the start of the journey through self-development. First, we need to realize we’re floating down the path of least resistance. We really need to think about that. It’s a subtle confrontation about how we navigate our lives or cede that control.

Lisa: This is an ambivalent image. It could be a kind of passivity, or that the dream ego realizes it shouldn’t strive against forces it can’t control. These aspects are not mutually exclusive, and we don’t know which one predominates. Let’s look at the four women the dreamer encounters.

Deb: The dream ego doesn’t have to make any effort in the dream–the women simply appear. We’ve mentioned before how important it is to notice the quality of relationship between the dream ego and anima or animus figures. He is elated, happy and excited over finding the right one, and there are very positive connections with all four women. Something is happening in the psyche that is generally a positive and progressive connection with a series of inner figures.

Lisa: I might imagine that this dreamer has an ability to be in relationship with his feminine side because the meeting with the women happens easily and is a happy experience. This leaves me to understand his floating down the river a bit differently. His ego is not overly rigid. He is open to life’s flow. In a man this often correlates to being open to his feminine side.

Joseph: As he is relaxing, he’s able to drop down deeper. He’s not concerned with working or productivity, which sets aside cultural norms of masculinity. Then he feels he’s supposed to find something, which invites the feminine to appear. Through his willingness, he does see something. Just as Jung posited, when the inner feminine is present in a man’s psyche, it blesses him with access to feelings, happiness, elation, excitement. That’s why Jung chose the word anima for this. It’s from the same root as animate. So he meets the anima and it animates him emotionally.

Deb: All this because his yielding to the river is combined with a sense of destiny and choice. He’s supposed to find a particular woman and he is committed to finding the right one. He knows as each woman appears that although he’s happy to see her, she’s not the one he’s looking for. There’s a real ability to differentiate while being in a positive relationship with the first three women.

Lisa: It’s lovely. Jung makes much of the number four, which he says signifies wholeness. He points out, as does Marie-Louise von Franz, that events in fairytales often happen in fours. There are frequently three brothers and then a fourth event, or something needs to be tried three times and the final resolution makes the fourth. This dream has that quality to it.

Deb: That’s how we know we’re in the realm of archetypal wholeness.

Lisa: This indicates a process that to be experienced fully to reach completion.

Joseph: Four can also be understood in terms of character development. Jung talked about four functions in everyone’s personality: thinking, feeling, sensing and intuition. When all four categories of ego functioning are up and running and relating to each other, it indicates a growing wholeness of personality is underway. I’m imagining this dreamer meets a thinking woman, a feeling woman, a sensate woman, and an intuitive woman. As in the story of Goldilocks, finally there’s a woman who carries just the right function. As a personal example, I’m an intuitive feeling type, which suggests sensing and thinking are compensatory to my preferred mode of functioning and thus very exciting. I’m often seduced by philosophies and ideas. I’ve studied kabbalah for forty years, an intricate and somewhat laborious philosophy and practice, but my typology makes it manna for me. To my friends, it’s a snooze worthy.

Deb: We can wonder about this man’s typology and how he lives it. I think we’re all tracking what a gift this dream is for this man—a lovely anima dream.

Joseph: I feel a little seduced by the innocence in the dreamer’s psyche. If he were my analysand, I’d have to watch that because I could idealize his attitude and perhaps overvalue it.

Lisa: This might be a good place to bring up the question of whether an anima or animus figure is always of the opposite sex. What if you’re not heterosexual, for example? This is a question that comes up regularly.

Joseph: My lesbian clients often have powerful sensual dreams about a masculine other, but they’re not ambivalent about their sexual orientation. They don’t feel a relationship with a man is what they want to live out romantically, but I haven’t noticed resistance to images of masculine others in dreams. The question is how that gets lived in the outer world, and for them, it doesn’t equate to sexual attraction to men in waking life.

Lisa: I would add that I’ve had straight women report very juicy, shimmering dreams of sexuality with women. They might initially wonder what that means, but it seems like a psychological fact, not one that necessarily applies to the external world. So maybe this isn’t so rigid. Do you think it’s possible that if you are gay or lesbian that your anima or animus might be same sex?

Deb: This may be where we get into the weeds of what is an inner image, what is culturally influenced, and that person’s erotic energy. This gets all tangled up and probably has to be dealt with on an individual basis. The nexus of anima and animus is that there is something numinous in the psyche, charged with a special kind of energy. It can be imaged in a number of ways, and is not limited to opposite-sex figures, but images os otherness, from animals to aliens. And what shows up in psyche as a numinous or erotic image may not match up to that person’s conscious life. That’s the point: this energy points to what’s alive in the inner world as an opposite.

Joseph: Early in analysis, we often talk about the dream ego versus waking experience. The dream ego is often a very specific and limited version of ourselves. That’s why we believe things in a dream that we would never believe in waking life. For example, if I had a dream that I was having coffee in my kitchen and a hippopotamus came out of the shower, it might not seem particularly strange. Similarly, people who have a very defined waking sense of themselves might dream of sex with a same-sex figure or opposite-sex figure that has nothing to do with how they want to live their waking lives. To ease anxiety, we often help people define the levels: you have an outer life and live a certain way from choice or constraint, but in the inner world all things are permitted. In the plasticity of the inner world, the Self constellates all kinds of symbolic encounters. I had a client many years ago who was gay, but in a series of dreams, a lovely woman came to him, expressed tremendous love and adoration, and offered to take him as a lover. At first, he was so identified with being gay that even in dreams he refused her. She would cry and he would comfort her. After some years of analysis, he was finally able to say ‘let’s give it a try’ in the dream. That corresponded with a burst of creativity that led to a career change. He was still gay. He wasn’t confused about that, but he was saying yes to his creative potential.

Deb: Let’s look at a dream from a female dreamer who is an artist, teacher, and writer: I was in my car in an underground parking garage. I heard someone coming. I knew they were bad. A few of my power windows were down and I felt exposed. I crawled under a wool-blanketed bag and stayed still, hoping they wouldn’t notice me. A man got into the front seat and drove off. I remained silent, trying to breathe evenly. It was very difficult but I did it well. I was never sure if he knew I was there, but either way, I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be–with a group of women in scanty clothes being prostituted by men. I had some ambition for escape but I didn’t yet see how that would be possible. The dreamer says that in the months around this dream, she finished a significant body of work and was hoping to make life changes around income, lifestyle, and who she was living with. She says her work was successful by aesthetic and professional standards, but it hadn’t provided a clear path forward. In the dream, she felt terrified, disappointed, abused, and limited. We have a very different feeling tone in this dream from the man floating down the river.

Lisa: Let’s look at the beginning: the setting. Unlike the previous setting, floating down a river, this one starts with I’m in a car in an underground parking garage. The contrast between the settings immediately tips us off to entering a different emotional realm.

Deb: Dream settings carry a lot of emotional resonance and introduce us to the feeling tone in the dream, an underground parking garage—we’re in the realm of the unconscious and nothing is moving.

Lisa: This helps us begin to elucidate the dynamic between the animus figure and the dream ego. The last dream had a very positive image of partnering, but here the animus figure is menacing and driving the dream ego’s car. The dream ego is weak and powerless, able only to hide.

Deb: And she is afraid. At the end, women are being prostituted, taken advantage of, and abused by men. So this animus figure is very negative and the dream ego finds the events threatening.

Joseph: We have to work not to literalize this dream. There are so many distressing associations to this scenario: sex trafficking, the kidnapping of women, and other horrible stuff. Perhaps we could make social commentary about this, but what we want to do is lift this into the realm of symbol and metaphor. What does this say about what’s happening in her?

Lisa: This is animus that has an almost demonic quality. It has power over the dream ego, driving the car and making the dream ego feel persecuted and exploited.

Joseph: In the beginning of the dream there’s a collusion between the dream ego and the animus. When the dream ego is in the car and hears someone approaching, she doesn’t roll up her windows and drive away. Instead, she crawls into the backseat and puts a blanket over her head. That invites some other part of her psyche, represented as the driver, to take over.

Lisa: She’s hiding something from herself, keeping a secret from herself that allows the animus to exercise too much power.

Deb: To take this even further, she is possessed by this animus figure. ‘He’ has all the power, rendering the dream ego helpless, terrified, and paralyzed. This level of psychic energy–from either anima or animus–can overwhelm the ego. We see that sometimes in films, portrayed as vampires and sociopathic criminals. There’s an animus possession going on in this scenario as well.

Lisa: The context this dreamer provides is extremely important to making psychological sense of this dream. I think it will clarify what we’ve been talking about. The dreamer does social justice work through performing and community workshops that focus on invisible illness. Funding this through grants requires her to disclose her trauma experience, which is painful. The grants don’t match the scale of endeavor, so although she pays the artists she hires, she doesn’t pay herself. She’s proud of the outcome, but also feels exploited. We might say she is prostituting her creative process for grant money. I wonder if this is the same body of work she referred to earlier when she said, “well, it was successful from an aesthetic standpoint but it didn’t provide any path forward.” There is a psychic impoverishment going on. She’s opening herself up and sharing her deepest traumas with people, and although she feels good about the meaning of her work for others, she’s not getting anything for herself from it.

Joseph: The dream suggests she’s feeling retraumatized; perhaps the kind passivity or powerlessness she experienced through trauma is being replicated by work where she forfeits control and self-interest.

Lisa: Trauma influences the way animus is portrayed by psyche.

Deb: Intense and repeated experiences will be imaged in the psyche. Here, it’s the driver of the car, abduction, and being with prostituted women. There’s an infusion of negative animus that may echo her trauma experience and a current situation that’s retraumatizing: she is repeatedly giving much of herself away without reward.

Lisa: What’s critical is that the dream ego allows this to happen, or even invites it. This is not about blaming the victim, but an inner dynamic, so this is where the dream is medicinal. The dream out-pictures the dream ego’s role in her abduction. That information gives the dreamer an opportunity to see what she’s doing and make different choices.

Joseph: The dream is a confrontation. The Self is constantly regarding the ego, and in the dream, the Self is holding up a powerful lens: here’s what’s happening inside of you. It’s not saying what is right or wrong. The Self assumes that by seeing what is happening, a path forward can emerge—it’s trying to show what is prospective. I think it is also asking something that might be very challenging: where can the ego be more assertive? We step back from the feeling of alarm in the dream and embrace it as symbolic.

Lisa: I appreciated the context this dreamer provided because it indicates that she understood intuitively that this dream is related to her life experience. She sensed that the dream related to her feeling of exploitation in waking life.

Joseph: Earlier, it seemed that she might be possessed by the animus and was therefore helpless. But in the dream, at first, she’s helpless and then she becomes possessed by the animus. When the ego loses energy, unconscious forces come to the surface. That’s why, if you have too much to drink at the office party, pictures of you wearing a lampshade will show up on the company website. When the ego is stunned by trauma, anxiety, alcohol, sleep deprivation or loneliness, it loses energy. Then the unconscious drives the car while the ego cowers in the backseat. In those states, any number of things can suddenly show up and seem overpowering to the ego.

Lisa: We might even say that when the ego is not adequately consolidated, it’s like the car windows are down.

Joseph: And when the windows are down, it’s a tacit invitation for outer elements to come in. We want movement of atmosphere—we want to breathe and have fresh air. Although being in a garage with the windows down is not ominous in itself, there is a disavowal of instinct, because there is no fresh air in a garage and her gut feeling was that something bad was imminent. Part of the healing process for people who have been traumatized is claiming their instincts, because trauma forces us to disavow them in order to accommodate, or ‘normalize,’ something awful and inescapable.

Deb: That takes me back to the very first part of the dream: I was in my car in an underground parking garage with the windows down. That initial situation is an image of putting herself in a dangerous place where she is vulnerable. There are many TV and movie scenes of bad things happening in underground parking garages.

Lisa: It’s an image of the underworld. I’m always cautious and a bit wary when I’m in a parking garage. I get in my car, lock the doors and start the car. Depending on how the trauma occurred, we may never have learned how to protect and value ourselves.

Joseph: The lens I’d like to add is symbolic: the myth of Persephone and Hades. This woman is behaving like fawn: when fawns are threatened, they hit the ground and freeze. Their only defense is the markings on their pelt as camouflage, making them invisible. The dream ego is fawnlike, rather like Persephone sitting in the field, innocently picking flowers. Suddenly she’s taken into the underworld by Hades and initiated into sexuality. Although there are no images in this dream of actual prostitution, she has nevertheless been abducted into an underworld of exploitive sexuality, which might feel traumatic.

Lisa: In the myth, although it is imaged as abduction and a rape, Persephone’s abduction into the underworld by a dark masculine force is also initiatory. What feels like being torn away can also be part of the natural course of life.

Joseph: From Persephone’s perspective, she’s gone from being her mother’s little girl to being a woman. In the beginning, Demeter makes all the decisions: she lights up spring with fruit and sprouting wheat. At the end, after mating with Hades, Persephone is queen of the underworld and is incredibly powerful. A naive child isn’t powerful. When I think about the dream ego being in the backseat with a blanket over her head, I remember my parents taking us kids to a drive-in movie to see Dawn of the Dead of all things. I was eight or nine and remember us pulling wool blankets over our heads and screaming. We hid, like fawns, when things were overwhelming. In the dream the dream ego is finally surrounded by women in scanty clothes whose world is defined by sex. She has not been asked to participate, but she’s in that environment. All she says is I ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be–with a group of women in scanty clothes being prostituted by men. There are a lot of different lenses to put on this if we set aside the cultural bias.

Deb: Joseph, you touched on the medicinal quality of dreams earlier, and just referenced the myth of Persephone. I wonder if the medicinal element in this dream is finding personal power, like Persephone. It’s worth considering the gift of transformational potential this dream could be offering. Perhaps the dream is urging her to get herself out of bad situations, and claim her authority and assertiveness, because when she is passive bad things happen.

Lisa: She could be the mistress of her own fate. The dream is complex and has various layers. We’re interested in the relationship between these layers and something is ‘off’ in the relationship with the animus. It appears persecutory, but amplified by a mythological reference, there is an inherent potential for it to be transformative. We know that the dreamer is doing creative work, and I see this animus figure directly related to her relationship with her creativity. What it is now is not working, but there is big potential.

Joseph: To be even more specific, she says the body of work she’s done has been successful by professional standards, although she does not see a clear path forward. One of the things the animus can bring to a woman, even if she first feels it’s being inflicted on her, is the need to commit to a goal. That’s what establishes a clear path forward. Perhaps the animus is sick and tired and frustrated so it erupts and grabs the ego and says, “You’ve been ignoring me for too long and now it’s time to formulate a life commitment that includes confronting your relationship to sexuality and aggression. I insist that you relate to me.”

Deb: Although the dream depicts being abducted, frightened, and possibly prostituted, we see the energy from the depths of the unconscious. We see the mythological analog and the potential for healing. This is an excellent example of how a scary dream and a negative animus figure can also indicate the direction toward healing, growth and transformation.

Lisa: I’m struck by the variety of roles that animus or anima figures can play. Let’s look at one more dream. A 35-year-old female care worker dreamed: I’m in a small, quite dark storeroom. I find a mirror on the wall and I slide it across, revealing a narrow entryway in the wall. I step through it. I find myself in a huge room. It’s like a cathedral, but more modern. There’s a high glass domed ceiling directly above me. There are pillars and an area of floor covered in black and white tiles. An old man stands to my right. He has a long white beard and is wearing deep purple robes and a purple hat. He gestures with his head toward something on my left, where there are many rows of pews and a door in the far corner of the room. The door opens and a masked figure enters. The figure is dressed in black from head to toe. I particularly notice his black boots. They look strong and sturdy. The figure begins to stride confidently toward us. I turn to the old man and ask him what it means. Again, he gestures toward the masked figure. The masked figure gets very close to me and then starts walking on the same spot, and therefore never actually reaching me. The dreamer said, “I felt it was indicating or directing me to something regarding my interpersonal development which I’d been working on.” She said she felt curious, calm, and safe, and that the masked figure was male. This is a very different animus image from the ones we discussed before.

Joseph: We could almost imagine this dream as a comment on the previous dream. This masculine figure could be ominous but because the ego is in a different relationship to it there’s a different feeling.

Lisa: Yes. The setting is a small dark storeroom. It’s finite and limited but there’s a mirror and she chooses to walk on through.

Deb: Mirrors are a device in movies and science fiction stories. This dream and the previous one both take place in dark areas, but a storeroom is where you keep things that might be needed. A mirror reflects us to ourselves, but the protagonist steps past it into a space that’s enormous and cathedral-like, with a high, domed ceiling. There’s a classic wisdom figure that reminds me of Dumbledore, complete with beard and purple robes. All this was constellated by going into the storeroom and moving past the mirror that reflects persona. The unconscious seems downright celebratory.

Joseph: I think it’s important that she doesn’t go through the mirror. She opens it like a sliding door. I think that’s the beginning of self-inquiry. We look in the mirror and reflect on what’s visible–outer appearance and persona. The dream ego is done with that; she is willing to push it aside to discover inner capacity that is so much more than what she has stored or her appearance.

Lisa: Something behind the mirror opens into a new world. The masked figure could be frightening but she isn’t scared. The dream ego’s feeling reaction to this dream is very important. She feels curious and safe, but he is an unknown, another quality of the animus. The animus feels other, and a little mysterious. His black boots, his standpoint, look strong and sturdy. This energy has powerful potential.

Joseph: We could say this is happening because the old man with the long white beard was first encountered. Jung marked the fourth and highest stage of animus development in a woman’s psyche by the appearance of the wise old man, an image of the masculine that links to a deeper level. He is a psychopomp, the mediator who fosters a connection and provides meaning. Because that aspect of the animus is present, the black-booted part of the psyche can emerge and not feel intimidating to the dream ego.

Deb: She’s also heartened by the setting: a high-domed room like a cathedral, a spiritual environment. This black-booted figure carries a very different feeling tone from the old man with his long white beard—the booted guy is hot, don’t you think? I think of Zorro, Batman, the Lone Ranger–examples of strong, mysterious masculine figures. She doesn’t know who he is yet, but she is curious.

Lisa: It’s interesting that the dream that he is not able to reach her.

Deb: I have the feeling, like in a TV series, of ‘to-be-continued’ in the next episode.

Joseph: There are fairytales and myths where the hero or the heroine gets a glimpse of the mystery only to have it disappear. One has to encounter the mystery progressively, step by step, so as to be able to truly understand and integrate it.

Lisa: I hope we have provided a sense of some of the aspects of anima and animus in dreams. You’ll have the chance to try your hand in the written materials for this module to deepen your understanding.

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MODULE 8: ANIMA & ANIMUS

By Lisa Marchiano

Jung’s theory that within each of us is a contra-sexual “other” is perhaps the most difficult to translate into 21st century thinking. When we speak of the archetypal feminine, for example, we mean that which is receptive, related, nurturing, and generative; the archetypal masculine is that which is active, penetrating, and analytical. On the one hand, these terms and their associations make sense and portray familiar polarities. On the other hand, they are troubling: are we still trading in gender stereotypes?

 This is tricky territory, yet these terms refer to something we recognize. There are overarching differences in attitude and function, and they tend to coalesce around two poles historically characterized as active / masculine and receptive / feminine. Of course, all of us–male and female–have both. As a woman, I can approach the world in an active way, seeking to engage and shape the world around me–these may even be dominant attitudes in my life. Similarly, a man may be primarily motivated by desire to experience the world receptively and relate warmly to others.

 If the masculine and feminine represent a pair of complementary opposites, why not assign them more neutral names? Why not simply active and receptive? Or Yin and Yang? According to Jung psychic life proceeds in pairs of opposites, so such language might be helpful in liberating us from the confusing and provocative territory of sex and gender. Over the millennia of human history, however, psyche has used male and female as images of the archetypal opposites. The phenomenological fact is that the inner other and opposite often appears as someone of opposite sex.

 There is no prescriptive embedded in Jung’s theory, nor is one attitude preferred. Jung’s stance was phenomenological: dedicated to observing what is, not how he felt things should or shouldn’t be. Jung’s theory of anima and animus arose from his own psychic experiences, and was confirmed over years of working with patients and their dreams. One need not live life according to cultural definitions of the feminine merely because one is female, nor should men be judged according to stereotypical masculine values. Jung is explicit: developing and integrating qualities of both polarities is important to psychological growth and wholeness.

 Although this is not license to fall into formulaic schemas when working with dreams, naming contra-sexual figures in dreams as anima or animus gives us a way to begin. Often, when we engage a dream—whether our own or someone else’s—we may feel an initial sense of confusion. This can lessen when we find ourselves with a lead to follow. If you have a dream in which an opposite-sex character plays a significant role, considering animus/anima can provide a well-established foothold.

 The anima and animus in dreams can present in many ways. The inner other may be a figure toward which we feel longing; he or she may be experienced as cruel, distant, or helpful; we may have an erotic encounter. This innate aspect of psyche is the guardian at the gate to the deeper unconscious. Whether alluring or upsetting, anima and animus tend to exert a kind of gravitational pull on the ego that is compelling. If the anima or animus appears elusive or rejecting, it may indicate that something in our attitude toward the unconscious is amiss. If this figure is harshly critical, the dream may be imaging how qualities assigned to the opposite sex in waking life are experienced. What are these kinds of encounters trying to tell us?

 Regardless of how it appears, a dream with an anima or animus figure is an invitation to engage more deeply with ourselves. Jung noted that this psychic function serves as psychopomp, a guide to our inner depths. Such dreams generally tell us what attitude is needed to deepen our journey inward, as in this 28-year-old woman’s dream: I am in a bike shop. There is a man working there. He is attractive, serious. I am trying to flirt with him but he seems a bit disdainful. He tells me he is going camping in Colorado and I try to impress him by telling him about the times I have been skiing there, but he seems unmoved. I ask if I can come camping with him and he responds that I am not invited. I know that he is going camping with another woman who is a very natural, outdoorsy type of woman. I feel crushed. 

 The dream echoed the dreamer’s waking life difficulty in establishing and maintaining a romantic relationship: the animus figure is appealing, but inaccessible and rejecting. The dream ego’s efforts to impress him fail. This implies that the unconscious may perceive the conscious attitude’s relationship to inner life as superficial. The dreamer needs to embrace the “natural, outdoorsy” part of her represented by the other woman. This shadow figure might correspond to aspects of the dreamer that are at home with natural, relational and sexual aspects of life. Altogether, the dream is less about establishing a romantic relationship in the outer world than it is about attitudes the dreamer needs to develop to become more intimate with herself.

 The anima or animus in dreams may also comment on our relationship with creativity. It can show us something about how it is blocked, or affirm our relationship with our creative center. A 46-year-old woman who had just given an important presentation dreamed: I am with Kevin. He is happy to see me. We embrace and it feels wonderful and warm, romantic and even sexual. The dreamer described “Kevin” as a friend working in a creative field. Although she felt close to him in the dream, she was not attracted to him in waking life. The animus figure in this dream joyfully affirms the ego’s attitude.

 If applying the construct of anima or animus to an opposite-sex figure in a dream yields no insight, it may be that it simply doesn’t fit a particular dream. As previously stated, dream work can never be formulaic. Contra-sexual figures do not always equate to anima or animus, which may be indicated by lack of a strong feeling tone. Other lenses can help us see into a dream.

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1. The following dream is that of a 42-year-old woman. How does animus energy show up in this dream? What might this dream tell us about her relationship with her inner world?

I was with my family and my husband’s trying to get organized for skiing. I am supposed to make lunches. Everything seems chaotic and the weather looks poor. Why are we pushing this? We should just stay the night and relax. We do stay. it’s a large old house, the house of a friend. He is an artist I admire. His wife walks up to me and says something that subtly makes it clear that we are somehow “less than” in their eyes. She just wanted me to know, so I “don’t get the wrong idea”. I am with the artist/friend. He shows me his work. The material is like a brown clay and he smears it on the canvas. He is talking about the “power of the material” and its beauty and potency and invites me to touch it. It is thick and sticky. I wash my hands but it will not come off. The feeling is disturbing. Later I am with him again, this time he is behind his desk, looking just like power, wealth, authority. Reclining, he looks at one of my old prints. “well, it’ll take you ten years at least but one day you may become a real artist.” What would he say to hear I made it ten years ago? I dont bother arguing. We are getting ready for bed. It turns out 50 or so people are rolling sleeping bags out on the floor. We will stay here too. I realize looking at the sea of people “I have no special status”.

2. Pick a recent dream of yours that features an opposite sexed figure. What do you admire about this person? In what way do you wish to be like him or her? What aspect of this person seems out of reach?

I am in an old dark cathedral. There are spiders hanging down near me. I squish a bright yellow one in fear, but feel remorseful. My view opens so I can see the pews and pulpit. I cannot see the ceiling, it seems to go on forever into darkness. I know there are many spiders up there and I sense a mystical presence. I am both frightened and in awe. A piece of my favorite scarf that my friend knit for me falls from the ceiling to my feet and I know it’s a message. I go into another room where there are people gathered and suddenly become lucid in my dream. One of the dream figures tells me that I am in the realm of the spider goddess and I must go back and spend the night in the cathedral room. I feel scared, but I’m determined to do it.

Main feelings in the dream: Awe, fear, curiosity

Context and Associations: I was divorced, feeling lost and working on my connection to the feminine through therapy and a women’s group. I am a deeply spiritual person; cathedrals always fill me with awe.