A woman in communication with her soul "Animus"
Preface
I was struggling with the preparation of this article for a while. Not so much in terms of content, but rather with the drawing of boundaries, which I did not want to cross to maintain simplicity and brevity, because I had excessively enough material. I would say too much to express the most important relationship a woman should take care of, but unfortunately, she often doesn't even know about it. About a relationship that determines her fate and thus mirrors all events in this material world. How to determine whether or not to include this or that in such an important work? So I defined a framework that I would stick to depict the most general images of the female psyche while making it practically understandable for the reader.
Content
About animus
An image of harmony
State "levels" of animus awareness
The inner child, little boy
Instinct and collective prejudice
Father, mother, negative image of animus
Projections of animus in partnership
Transformation of animus and magical escape
Animus as spirit
Acknowledgements
About animus
The soul of man is born into this dual world and chooses one of the polarities. If it chooses a female body, then the male polarity, the unconscious-invisible part, is called animus. A woman has a female consciousness, and her inner world is masculine - animus. Female consciousness is the energy of yin, therefore it perceives reality mainly through feeling. Her relatability informs her about the happenings around her. Relationships are one of the most important values for a woman. Unlike masculinity, which represents the animus in a woman, represents the yang energy, i.e. mind, principle, logic, and reason. Each woman has her image of animus, based on what her constellation is, which forms her human form - for example, from the culture and family she is born into. This energy is a feminine part and could also be called her dormant potential. Animus has its consciousness and through relating to that consciousness she learns and is initiated into how the universe works.
Although a woman often thinks that life is mainly about a relationship with this or that, it is through logos/reason that real life comes to her. If a woman is interested in establishing a relationship with her animus, she will not avoid her shadow, which the animus itself represents.
Animus guards the threshold between what a woman is aware of and what she is not. He also guards the true treasures of womanhood. Behind the animus is also the woman's femininity, which is usually covered by it! Practically, this means - where a woman is not whole, she will project. What she lacks contact with internally, she will seek outside. After all, this is the main reason why a woman doesn't just fall in love with any man, but with the one who most closely describes the image of her inner masculinity. Among other things, this man will present what the woman lacks contact within herself.
The human soul is non-linear. So it's not a question of whether we name the unconscious parts the unconscious or the animus or the soul, but it's about expressing what works psychologically. The fact is that if a woman's consciousness - that is, what she is aware of and who she thinks she is, if she connects this with the "parts of herself" that she projects outside, parts that are not yet integrated as a part of her, then the woman comes into harmony with herself. That is, peace with the universe as such! This article is about nothing else than how the soul of a woman longs for wholeness and through images of animus leads her to herself. This is the most fundamental reason why one suffers. Because we do not live by this inner truth.
An image of harmony
To express the relationship between animus and anima, I chose an old alchemical image that Jung describes in The Red Book. There, the archetype of feeling - yin - anima is represented by a blind woman, and the archetype of sight, respectively thinking - animus - by an old man. Jung says they don't work without each other. She needs his eyes - his thinking and he needs her feeling - contact. I have analyzed dreams of women who cannot see in their dreams, are blind or cannot open their eyes properly. The two archetypes of the blind woman and the old man do not work together in the consciousness of these women. These women are very sensitive, they "see only through the feeling" that informs them of what is happening, but they are not able to name it, analyze it well. If the woman has already noticed this, she can realize that she may not be well oriented and that will not add to her good feeling. Native Americans have a beautiful image of an anaconda, which represents a woman - she perceives what is happening around with her entire body surface, but does not understand it, while the image of eagel is the man - logos, who can name things beautifully, but cannot participate in them.
These spiritual images depict the psychological laws between the two main energies of the univers. We can call them according to the Chinese division of yin and yang, according to depth psychology anima and animus, Native Americans use the mentioned images of anaconda and eagle - feeling and logos - female and male energy. But it is always about the same thing, only it is always viewed from a different culture, from a different angle, from a different level of consciousness. I devoted an article to these different names in more detail here - Difference between yin yang and anima animus.
However, how these polarities manifest themselves in a person is rather based on a general observation. In a positive case, the woman would mature into such a spiritual power that her animus would take the form of a spirit - wholeness. There, a woman can communicate with this force consciously, because her feeling and reason complement each other. An example is described in the chapter - Animus as spirit. Although this is a positive development between consciousness and unconsciousness, in practice we are rather encountering the opposite problem, namely the arbitrariness of consciousness. There, the ego lives according to its ideas, its descriptions of itself and the world, In beliefs the ego creates the world itself. There, the animus manifests itself in tendencies to imprison a woman in her imperfections, prejudices and remain "locked" in herself, so to speak. An example could be more than one client who told me at the beginning of the collaboration that she regretted not writing earlier, but that she thought she would solve her problem on her own. Such a mind needs simplification because it gets lost in the complexity of its psychic reality. I devoted an article to this issue here - Dream analysis - Animus and Persona.
Communication with animus is not only about establishing a relationship with the intellect, but includes all the richness of a woman, including the mentioned feeling, which, as we will see below, is often covered by animus. Behind this animus is her soul, which is intelligent and lends a hand to the woman who stands for connecting with who she is. Animus is her burden as well as her deliverance. And only then, when she becomes aware of her destiny, can inner harmony, health, fulfillment and meaning occur, because her relationship with herself becomes harmonious. And only then, when she becomes aware of this destiny, can inner harmony, health, fulfillment and meaning occur, because her relationship with herself becomes harmonious.
The inner child, the little boy
Collectively instinctive tendencies are the strongest images of the psyche, which a person has in the first half of life. The tribe and maintaining one's place in the tribe is such a strong motivation for a person that a woman becomes a mother and a man becomes a father often in the first third of their life, if not sooner. By doing so, both are robbed of the freedom to know themselves and their motivations. This collective image of life determines for them to become an instrument of life that moves on if they have an offspring. Since this goal has a collective nature, the mutual psychological relationship of the spouses also has essentially the same nature, and it is therefore not possible to consider it in the psychological sense as an individual relationship. An offspring born in such psychological conditions of the family takes over the constellation of anima and animus from its parents, which will be collided with as a child and then later in life. There, the child, still as a whole, will naturally experience splitting. If there are good relationships in the family, chaos will not be as strong an internal theme as it is for a person who does not have good experiences through the most basic relationships with parents. These two most basic relationships are symbolic of the relationship to the two main pillars on which the universe stands - yin/feminine and yang/masculine - Mother and Father. And the relationship between them is assumed by any human being and indeed any other creature.
However, chaos is the spirit of the age, and a being living in this age will always encounter it somehow. Whether in the family or another collective or relationship with someone. I devoted an article to this issue - The story of how the ego is born. That is where individual human suffering begins, and if one does not get to it, these wounds will always hurt and the ego will create a delusional reality of projections.
Any integrated or not integrated inner aspects of mother or father is taken over by the child as an output position. In frequent cases, a woman's animus stops developing already in early childhood. In that case, the constellation of her animus is in the images of a little boy. A few years ago I worked with a woman and at the beginning of the analysis she had a dream about a little boy who made her feel like she was watching Hitler's childhood. This boy represented the story of her anima stuck at this age. Hitler was pointing to a distorted character, the beginning of her suffering. Her soul gave her a huge gift in that we were able to get to the root of her problem at the very beginning of our collaboration. I myself then had dreams where I saw this client crying heavily. Our cooperation has been on very thin ice all along. If such a strong wound is opened to a person, unexpectedly, it takes a lot of resistance, willpower and strength to continue. But the spiritual power of this woman could not be overlooked. Her soul led her to dreams that inspired me so much that I had to include one of them in this article and they are in the last chapter - Animus as Spirit.
The tendencies of the undeveloped anima are many, and I will only try to outline a few of them so that one has a crutch to see it. The most typical is the effort not to be alone. Being single is a very disturbing thought for a woman. Even more so, if the danger that the infantile animus represents is speaking to her from all directions and she does not understand it (the image of the anaconda). This can get her into a relationship that can be disastrous for her. The life of such a woman is made up of dramas, by which she is literally surrounded, even directly captured. The animus will drag the woman out of life and threaten her.
The typical mentality of a woman at this level is presented precisely by childishness or primitive tendencies. E.g. women are inquisitive instead of desirous of knowledge. Instead of judgment, they are biased and full of prejudice. Their reasoning is replaced by mere dreaming and imagination, and instead of will, mere wish. A woman gets lost in her superstitions, so strongly that her belief in anything is so strong that she has trouble distinguishing between what is real and what is only imaginary. This would be the image of the little boy as an immature animus in a woman who has infantile tendencies.
Images of the inner child as a little girl would point in different direction, such as the dream I included in the next chapter - Transformacion of animus. But there is the same image here, and that is in a child. It is a psychological state where we are most vulnerable and therefore this image of a child depicts these wounds. It is a therapeutic key point that I call a turning point, because it is where a person turns from psychologically childish to psychologically mature being. It is about realizing profound emotions represented by the child's image. Emotions of various types, for example, shame, inferiority, fear and so forth. These emotions make up our experience and existence. If a person comes to this in therapy, it is a sign of good therapeutic work. Because structurally, emotions are the deepest stored in the psyche, and beneath them are only archetypes of the collective unconscious. So it is a call to strengthen the relationship with life. Animus is clamoring for attention which rarely receives.
Emotions play tricks with a woman, just like the animus can.
One has to go through these emotions again, one has to go through these individual blocks deliberately. To open up to these emotions and experience them again and continue to experience them consciously and not run away from them. These emotional blocks actually represent what the animus or anima arouses in us. This is very deep, individual work, and it is difficult to get there alone, because these emotions are under a thick layer of shadows. The ego does not want to admit them, so it will try to ignore this most basic relationship between consciousness and the soul of a person.
If the shadow is explored, life is transformed as the woman comes closer to who she really is. The world becomes more colorful, more fun, more meaningful, it is a little more understood, because a woman understands more about herself - the universe. As the shadow is processed, she gets closer to its karma - the unprocessed and not integrated aspects of the soul, which is represented by animus, as a sequence of events and fate.
We can reach the situation that one of the clients expressed to me, when he saw his parents back as gods, to whom he came to solve his and his family's karma. Then we can forgive our parents for what we had to overcome. This is based on the realization that these souls are deeply connected to us. It would be ineffective to deal with these karmic matters with the souls of people with whom we are not so connected. This interconnectedness as well as one's own individual motive is shown in individuation. We find that we want to become ourselves, so we have to untangle a lot of that entanglement. A practical example of a woman's identification with her family, the "child" mental state, follows in the next chapter. I write about complexes here - Subconscious - the complex world of the ego.
Instinct and collective prejudice
Many women have no idea about their animus at all, they live in an unconscious idea of a hero, whether in their partner, therapist, doctor, some hero from a movie, or some other idea of a savior. The hero is to save her from the greatness of this universe. The hero is projected to save her from herself. After all, we have the superman symbol as an archetypal image. Native Americans had a healthy symbol of a warrior. If someone is unconsciously projecting the hero archetype, it is certainly better than if the hero archetype is not present at all. Then there are no signs of courage or stepping out for something new. I will follow up on the specific experiences of women who do not cross the threshold of family ties or a collective. They thus spiritually identify with the collective beliefs. For example - cancer is deadly and fatal only, or - I will not express myself, I would be perceived as an egoist so I rather suppress myself, etc. Such programs are common, not only among women.
The images of animus point to the collective. It means that the level of animus is at the collective level. In the following practical example, the collective image of animus is represented by a bus. I have chosen three dreams of my female client that accurately describe what has been written so far.
"I often feel like I'm riding a bus and it's taking me somewhere. I'm afraid the bus will take me somewhere I don't know it."
"I'm on a bus and I get off somewhere I don't know. It's night and I don't know how to get back. Suddenly my parents came by car and took me away."
"I'm in a neglected apartment where no one has been for a long time, there was a mess and a puppy in it. It was poor, neglected and, dying. I had the feeling that it was because of me and I was terribly sorry."
The animus, which comes from the collective, is represented in our case as a bus. So the client is being driven (controlled) by a collective belief (bus) and doesn't even know about it. There are arbitrarily, unintentionally formed prejudices in her that have a controlling influence on her emotional life. It carries her away and she lets herself be carried away. She seeks refuge with her parents.
In the third dream, the client's animus represents a puppy that is neglected like the apartment in the dream - it means neglected personality (apartment) and together with the puppy, the connection of the level of the neglected animus in the form of an instinct - dog/puppy. This means that the seed of her animus is in danger. When I see this picture, I myself feel sad, because the potential loss of the soul in the sense of its degradation is for me, as a spiritual person, the biggest disaster that can happen.
In such carried-away cases, it is best to develop observation. It is about to learn to observe and remain still. To observe what is happening inside myself, because if a person is not able to observe, they will be carried away by the inner content just like our client. Learning to see exactly what the dreams were pointing out. It is a woman's first initiation - observing. Observing so she knows what to "run away from". In our case, the woman has to integrate (run away from) instinctive collectivity. Escape is a sign of transformation in the case of a woman (more in magical escape below). A woman recognizes a collective voice within herself, the instinctive motivations of fear are revealed in specific thoughts, based on certain experiences with men.
Such situations are complex and it is good to simplify it as much as possible. A woman in these cases will do best if she focuses her attention on only two things. When she feels that she acts consciously and freely. And then when inner content takes her somewhere. To learn to recognize when she is acting and when she is being carried away by some emotion or perhaps an opinion. In cases like when she wants to tell her partner about her day and unlike that, they end up yelling at each other. Then the woman has the opportunity to see her emotional reactions to certain situations as actually programmed. These conventional feelings are different from the real ones that she really has and are elsewhere.
A woman who perceives the world exclusively through relationality is afraid to step into the unknown, her animus, pointing to the collective, she will rather be held by collective certainties and fears rather than feel the loneliness or darkness of her soul. This terrifies her, so she is trapped in the typical never-ending cycle of these emotions. The tension between consciousness and the unconscious (animus, soul) it's just a sign that you need to step up. A woman will not be satisfied if she does not have this issue at least somehow worked out. Tthis compulsive initiation is such a serious mental fact that it forms one of the central symbolic teachings of Christianity. It is the sacrifice of a purely natural man (to see and tame instincts), the sacrifice of an unconscious, natural living being whose tragedy has already begun with the ingestion of an apple in paradise.
Father, mother, negative image of animus
Animus of any young girl, young lady, or later woman, naturally develops directly towards the relationship with the closest male figures in the family. Although it would be said that the father, brother, grandfather is the basic element in the development of the image of the animus in this world, it is preceded by the constellation of the soul.
What's the soul frequency, precisely what it is to learn, what it is to do in the world, it chooses according to this desire its parents - the father, who determines its relationship to manhood (logos, animus) and mother, which determines her relationship to womanhood. If the relation to the father is the relation to the universal laws, so the relationship to the mother is the relationship to the mother earth, to human body and as I already wrote - to life as such. A woman's consciousness is built on relationship, and this relationality is built on the principle of femininity, to the mentioned image of anaconda, which if it limps at the expense of the image of an eagle, therefore this eagle will compensate it in some unconscious (shadow) way.
If a woman is meant to learn, for example, to show her feelings or to show feelings for a man, then her relationality keeps her from her own feminine nature. In such cases, a woman may have support in her father, but not in relation to her mother. Such women have a different path of individuation, than women with a negative animus image. I have included here one of many examples I came across in a young woman who grew up with a schizophrenic mother. She was exposed to the archetypal world from her mother since childhood and therefore the tendency towards nature prevailed in her, and the human world was less in her consciousness. Such a female consciousness cannot move in what a woman means. The feeling is impersonal towards everything that is not beautiful and perfect, it would be said that such a feeling is cold and so the main female weapons, which are the maternal and sexual instincts, work at the expense of each other. Such a woman may not have so much a problem with orientation in space as with who she actually is. But this is a different image than the image of animus, I mention it only because I would like to distinguish between these two main roots from which women's problems arise. And by extension men too.
A child who has at least a somewhat healthy/loving relationship with her father, brother or other male element does not have to internally experience such tension as a woman who did not have male support in her childhood. The spirit of the family is itself shaped to a large extent by the spirit of the age, which most people are not aware of as such. The family therefore represents the safety or security of the world. If a person does not experience this in the atmosphere of her family, then of course she will miss it. Paradoxically, a person is more likely to get stuck in the identification of a collective creature if she has support in the family. Families with a high status and thus meet the collective standard or even exceed it or partially determine it. Then the ego takes over the leadership of consciousness, and a person can get stuck in this mental state for several years, or even a lifetime. This corresponds exactly to our civilization, which is built on the majority, which rules with the power of democracy, and that actually creates chaos. At the same time, this collective image in us is actually supposed to be just a starting station, as in the previous cases of the image of the bus. Such people in general, even if they do not have to live with their family, are internally surrounded by them and therefore move largely within the limits of the spirit of the time/collective, as I indicated in the tendency to keep one's place in one's tribe, which means safety. But that is not enough for the soul, because it wants its own autonomy.
The father or mother is perceived by the child as a god. It is a relation to the highest and strongest value. Whether this value is positive or negative, voluntary or involuntary, parents represent those images of femininity and masculinity. if one of them is missing, or if they have otherwise distorted the development, the bridge to one or the other pillar on which the universe stands is missing - meantioned yin and yang, which actually represents anima and animus (more in Difference between yin yang and anima animus).
Therefore, if a woman is to experience loneliness, unexpressed love, abandonment, and so on, she will be born into a family where there will be a negative image of the anima or animus. I outlined the negative image of anima a little. With a negative image of the animus, older women are somehow aggressive, inferior, not independent, because their main experience of the animus is negative - father was an alcoholic, or was otherwise absent. Or these women have a really negative experience with another man. Such an experience gives rise to self-criticism, from which comes criticism of the world and fear of it. In short, such an animus cuts a woman off from participating in life unless this particular experience is processed.
I will mention two more examples that will show this clearly. With one young client, we dealt with the negative image of her animus, which was caused by the absence of her father. This had many negative consequences on her dating life, which was our reason for cooperation. To my astonishment, this negative animus was also manifested through her mother, who told her when she was young that she didn't really want her, and immediately calmed her down from the shock of this information. Such mothers unconsciously take the negative animus on themselves because they are the only authority in the family. They become "male authority" and of course in the negative sense of the word.
The second example - I analyzed another lady's dream. In it, she was running from a creature that was a dragon and crawled like a spider. All the people were running away from this creature as it was tearing them apart. We got so far in the analysis that I discovered that she had no support from either parent in her youth. I suggested, that monster, which actually has the destructive elements of both animus-dragon and anima-spider, does what her parents left in her. Here are both elements negative anima and animus. The image of her femininity and masculinity is represented in her by this creature image. In short, it means that her relationship to life is in the images of this creature, which is a manifestation of her life. In other words, her inner and outer world behave the same as this creature in the dream.
By this I wanted to point out that the core of any person's problem usually lies in their childhood. In relations with her parents, who as a family live in some community and if this society lives in the idea that the shadow does not exist, then any person living in this community will have a huge problem. In the article about shadow, I write that, that the basis of existence is darkness and whoever is not aligned with it will always have a big problem and will be much more inclined to their projections of reality.
One believes in such a society that masks are a way. This causes the woman does not know who she is, she is not a woman psychologically and unconsciously masking it. Often such women are socially successful because they compensate for this problem in relating to others. They want to be perceived as perfect and at the same time they are under the strong influence of the persona. This means that they act all too happy and hide behind this mask. Such a woman finds her true worth and self-love by uncovering experiences that are intimate and very painful because they shatter the way she thinks about the world.
In fairy tales, the animus often appears as an old man who later turns into a young man - (below) transformation of animus. This old man presents the image of a father -they are old concepts and represent the transitory aspect of the animus, however, only behind the image of the father is the aspect of the young man, which means one's own autonomous view of the world. In another process of individuation, I consulted a woman's dream of her father falling to the bottom of a pond. She tries to pull him out, but she can't. As if the water didn't want to let him go. The dream was telling her that the image of her father- old programs, she does not want to let go of her old views of the world, though it should fade into the unconscious - in the water and she keeps trying to hold it. As if she was afraid of new potential. This woman is learning about her own concept of yang. A few months later after working together, she had a dream where she was marrying her first love and felt humiliated. Here is exactly what this woman was afraid of. About the possible disgrace and shame that was alive in her. Shame that stems from childhood. That last dream told her what she had to process and that opened the way for her to discover how she didn't actually have a developed sense of reality. She chose her old world of imagination rather than face a harsh system she couldn't handle.
The negative image of the animus, if not processed, attempts to cut off the woman's relations with the outside world. Such a woman can remain in these unpleasant emotions all her life! Even if, for example, she has an environment around her in which she feels accepted, it is actually only a satisfying feeling so that she does not have to deal with these emotions. Each step in realizing the animus has a different characteristic. If a father appears in dreams, or if a woman tends to find a partner similar to her father or, on the contrary, opposite to her father, her animus will most likely be at the level of her father. That means her opinions, views are taken from her relationship with her father and they form a momentary picture of her world.
Some of my female clients have trouble listening to authority. They have problems at work. They feel that that authority is not a natural authority, but an authority that preaches through fear. It's a common problem where a woman's animus runs into its reflection in an authority figure who has a similar raw problem. Such women often have cultivated self-importance instead of self-reflection. They react to this authority or anyone who acts negatively or otherwise immorally, in the same manner because how can they behave like this! And they do not even realize that it irritates them, because it is an image of themselves. If it wasn't their problem, then they wouldn't be dealing with this problem every day, and even if it did occur, they wouldn't take such a person seriously. Rather, they would say to themselves, what kind of fool is he, or think; how can he treat himself like this! Criticism itself is actually unacceptable to a woman's feelings if it is of personal importance. When I lived in Canada, I had more trouble with female colleagues than with men when I told them straight up what I thought. In Canada and the Western world in general, social issues have been pushed to the point where they are in the news every day. I would call the social status of these great powers collective fear.
In conclusion, I will use one of the examples of how the negative image of animus can manifest itself. Separation from dad, when the child feels abandoned and creates a gap of lack of attention, contact and other deficits. It is the same with wounds associated with the mother. Only spiritual energy can fill this crack, however, before this spiritual energy is realized, this hole must be filled with something. It is often filled with addiction to food, alcohol, attention or even sex. There are many possibilities. Another symptom is life situations that create dramas, which lie in injustice and non-acceptance. A woman compensates for this crack in her psyche with sex, or a fanatical attachment to a man, which causes her not to be anchored in who she is. The soul is not linear, so the variants are countless, however, in general, such a woman often perceives herself below the level of a man and calmly allows herself to be dragged by him, and subsequently she manipulates him as well, because her inner animus takes control over the situation. (more in the next chapter)
In fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, the negative image of animus is embodied by King Thrushbeard or Bluebeard. They are destructive aspects of animus and can only be run away from. A common, one would say a typical dream of a woman is to run away from some man or creature. This escape represents a female individuation and the fact that the woman has to leave everything, for example the mentioned personal importance and other ideas about herself, in order to escape this animus. More below in the magical escape.
Beyond the father is a level of the animus that could be called autonomous. Only behind the autonomous father does the spirit, the yang energy, manifest itself, a connection that a woman unconsciously longs for and is part of her strongest drive, a kind of spiritual ideal. More in the chapter Animus as spirit.
Projections of animus in partnership
We project all that is unconscious outward - and therefore the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious determines everything that is around us, how we perceive, what we perceive, how much money we have, what we experience at work, outside of it or even with whom we live. All the described chapters are actually nothing more than the levels of projection of women onto an external object.Although it is sometimes a father, a partner, or perhaps an institution, it is always a projection of herself that points out to her where she is not whole. There she looks for what she lacks, including love. Practically, she wants love, because she lacks the most important relationship, namely the relationship with herself, with her soul. Instead she becomes dependent on external subjects that are created from their childish prejudices - image of a little boy, from the system in which she lives - the image of a bus, social ties - the image of a partner, unresolved traumas - image of a child, karma - image of the family, instinct - image of a bear (below in magical escape) and all this shapes her life, which cannot be harmonious if it is not integrated, because it is unconsciously projected.
Projected content calls for our attention. That is why we come across it "outside us", that is why I say that the soul shapes our life. Animus creates situations to finally draw attention to its existence. The less a woman cultivates her relationship with her animus, the more she will unconsciously hurt, either a partner or herself, in situations that are least appropriate. As attention is rarely paid to animus, he in return, just as a hunter or a warrior behaves, he stabs around as his instincts or tendency to kill. Animus unconsciously shares this trait, and thus either paralyzes the woman or causes strong aggression. Women become either masculine direct or passive aggressive. Or they tend to be absent minded, almost like they would be present. In the second case, although they have a feminine charm, they seem to be sleeping - such women undertake wonderful journeys with their lover - animus; they sink with him into a dream of which they are not fully aware. I have worked with women where the father was not part of the family in their childhood. These women had a very intense animus constellation. They projected very strongly, and on the other hand, no specific man fulfilled their projection. Even in one case told by Pjér, the projection was so great that the woman was talking to the stars. These women prefer dreaming to reality, and that dream is stronger for them. Such women live in assumptions and fantasies. They create unlimited and non-logical judgments, which lead to incorrect and completely unrealistic causalities. Their projection is so strong that of course they project it unconsciously onto their partner or the world as such, behind which the animus is. Such women often do not respect their boyfriend's anima and even resent the fact that their man has any feelings. They want their partner's feelings to be governed by theirs. These women manipulate their man in the emotional world. Incidentally, this is one of the main sources of partner misunderstanding. In relationships on an unconscious level, a woman's animus perceives her partner's anima as a rival. That animus, let's say in this case their opinion, says, "Why doesn't my man feel this way!" If the animus were not so aggressive, their emotional component would not perceive their partner's feelings as threatening.
Transformation of animus and magical escape
First, I will describe a typical dream of a magical escape using one shortened, concrete example from a young female client. I have analyzed this escape motif with women countless times. It belongs inseparably to the female psyche, and we'll soon see why. I myself perceive it as a gift that the unconscious itself sends and thus supports the woman's consciousness.
The client is running away from aggressive bears. She is hiding in a broken down house. There is a co-worker of hers who has a little girl to take care of. She holds the baby in her arms and likes her touch. She hears destructive noises and is afraid that the bears will get inside the house. Someone is trying to open a door – and to her amazement there is a young man at the door. She's really glad it's not a bear. The man talks to her and her co-worker and tells them what is going on outside.
This woman is haunted by animus - bears - male instinct. We have come to the point that when she is possessed by coldness and aggression, she sobs. After all, this is the general reason for a woman's feeling of despair. Humiliating activity is also a kind of compensation - it is supposed to make a woman regain her femininity. In one Siberian fairy tale, when a princess messes up all her tasks, her husband sends her to sell clay pots in the market. Pots are feminine symbols; she is therefore forced to sell her femininity too cheaply and too collectively, which the market represents. M.L.V.F says, that's when a woman is obsessed by animus. The greater her feeling of alienation from men, the more she struggles in her attempts to have a nice emotional relationship. Here the woman's task is to awaken her femininity. Strengthen her consciousness, because the unconscious - the animus has the upper hand! Which our client also does over time. Animus pressure (two bears) is so great that when a woman accepts the fact that she is obsessed by animus, she runs away, which is the right reaction. It even has regressive elements in general, because even here the client enters a demolished building in her dream. (house, apartment, as already shown above, is an image of the inner world). There she seeks refuge. She looks for it in herself, in regression - in the image of her broken, concrete house, which forces her to go back to her childhood, let go of her projection of perfection, accept the fact of the problem and work with it.
In images of magical escape, the pursuer is actually demonic - an image of a bear. She runs away from him and overcome some obstacles. There is a relinquishment of some of the gains that the ego has accumulated through its efforts. It is the motivations of the ego, it is what makes up the world of women and what I have mentioned in the previous chapters. The client appears in a dream in her half-disintegrated interior (image of a broken house). It is an image of regression - the way back, to the moment her woes began. It is her injuries and shadows that she begins to communicate with. She does no longer perceives her consciousness as perfect and faultless and thus stands on her own two feet. She goes back to its roots, which are in the unconscious.
In the dream, she also comes across an image of regression (a broken house), in it she comes across her co-worker, whom she describes as an example of femininity, which she personally lacks - simplicity, ordinariness, kindness. It is even a link to her inner child as she holds a small child. She meets with these aspects inside - with her own childish energy that is full of pain, resulting from the absence of a father. These are the consequences of her aggression, instinctive tendencies - a bear. These are her attitudes towards the world. Thanks to the experience of missing a father, she learned to perceive life as dangerous and lonely. This is what the bear presents in the dream. It is the form of animus. If a woman does not submit to it, on the contrary, she runs away from it, in other words, she lets it be humanly, lets this force go, does not cling to it, then she supports her femininity. Femininity is the energy of yin. It's dark energy, it's inactivity! Although this chapter is called a magical escape, the image of the dream speaks of her necessary work, which paradoxically consists of inaction.
A woman obsessed with animus is a synonym for an obsession with emotions, which is represented, for example, by that bear. By admitting this obsession comes the possibility of finding out why I behave the way I do and practically breaking free from this situation - the non-identification that is represented by transformation. But a woman has to find out why she behaves like that. Animus then transforms, just like in our dream. There is no longer a bear at the door, but there is a man. There is a human being. He brings an autonomous idea of the world. It is her own opinion that a woman receives as her reward for her journey. In the dream, a young man behind the door tells her how things are. This means that her animus really initiates her into the reality of the universe, into the laws that she no longer runs away from, but actually derives something from them. Her judgment becomes an inspiration and she can be guided by them! She is not subject to fascination and thus strengthens her will, that is, the ability of conscious focus. Such a woman can recognize these instinctive impulses and therefore not identify with them! She distinguishes them from her, which means that they will not disappear, but she can already assign their place to them. Then any instinct can work naturally.
Animus has transformed and is in dialogue. In general, when a person conducts a dialogue with an archetype (animus), it is as if the monstrous energy is socialized, humanized. As the old alchemists say - just as man longs to become god, so god longs to reach man. If this process is going on, then both sides are getting closer. Jung writes that people who are in dialogue with their soul do not desire something exclusive, but on the contrary, it is enough for them to live an ordinary life, because their exclusivity is in their inner dialogue and not how their importance is presented. However this experience is only for those who have gone through pain and have already integrated it somehow. It is the regression, the journey from the ego, which hurts the loss of the idea of oneself and of the world.
Images of magical escape and transformation are regressive images, if one processes them one becomes freer. It is no longer a being in which I is unconsciously ruled by masculinity or femininity, ego or instincts, but a state of unifying of these paradoxes, that is, true harmony and freedom. It is no longer subject to be fascinated by ego - consciousness, nor by images and fantasies from the unconscious - from the soul. The transformation of the animus is actually the reviving water for the human soul. It leads to increase of the state of consciousness, because the lifeless part of the woman is brought to life. She is fulfilling her journey of wholeness for which she was born. She experiences feelings of fulfillment and happiness. Mentioning again - pain is a part of a woman's life, however, this can be accepted by a real woman who is psychologically mature when she goes through her shadow, which she practically recognizes and assigns them their place in the psyche. At that time, she practically unites her dark and light aspects!
The transformation of the animus is represented in dreams by flight. In contrast to the male psyche, when the escape would really represent an escape from the awareness of one's inferior aspects and imperfection, the escape in a woman's dream is often a sign of transformation. It's a positive picture showing what to do practically when a woman is faced with the unconscious that overwhelms her.
Animus as spirit
In the chapter The inner child, little boy I shared one woman's dream about the story of a little boy. After several months of individuation, this woman had the following dream, in which we will see how the unconscious works and what the images of the Self looks like.
Short version of the dream: "I was in a bookstore/flower shop and had to go down the stairs. When I got down, I felt that I was present everywhere. I also remember riding my bike around the falls. In the next image I was a bird, flying over the beautiful blue ocean, the sun was shining, I am so close to the sea that I can almost touch it. I totally felt like I was flying." (My note - other images followed, but the important thing for us is how the dream ends). "I ran back up those stairs to the mountain where I met people who told me about their daily problems and I felt more and more weight. But I wanted to go up so I could tell people how beautiful things I saw."
The client appears in a space where it is nicely illustrated that we are dealing with the Tao (image of yin and yang). It is a bookstore, which is a sign of wisdom, yang energy (animus). It is simultaneously a flower shop. So it is the connection of the spirit with the world of Yin. The first image that we are dealing with the Tao. In such cases, I get chills, and the client expressed it herself when she said that she perceived the stairs as if she was going into herself, into her essence, as well as emerging from this essence. In the article A phenomenon called dream I write, how death is the gateway to our true home and dreams are the equivalent of a little death. And in the dreams It's easy to experience wholeness which our client experiences. She found herself in wholeness - in the Tao. She was her soul - then other dimensions of being open up to us, and our client perceived it very vividly. She described it as an extraordinary dream. She felt herself in a deep meditative state as her soul left her body. Those are her words.
The waterfall is symbolic of the connection between what is above and what is below. So the connection of consciousness with the unconscious. This symbol opens the space of the Self in our dream - the experience of its soul. Where she can be a bird or anything else and still feel like it's no distinguish between her and objects. In this state of being she experiences that she is everything manifested. As the client writes - "I feel that I am present everywhere." At the end, she goes back up the stairs, into human form, into her consciousness, where there is more weight, which is actually a limitation, which is not down there, in the unconscious, there she can be a bird. After all, this is the reason why many women devote themselves more to their dreams, because it is easier to be a bird even in consciousness than to face the laws and the weight of the material world. Here it is important how a person will work with this, what one will do after such an experience. It is evident that the client has recently had dreams pointing to her distress and after several realizations, she has the opportunity to experience her true essence. I am pointing out that there is a difference between a person experiencing this and having a similar experience explained to them by someone else. Man is shown here to be both and should not overestimate, but also not underestimate, both consciousness and unconsciousness. When a person processes his complex world honestly, which actually presents the ego, then archetypal images open up to him - energy, for example, anima, animus, mother, father, world, images of the psyche with which one communicates. Someone is more in their consciousness and someone is more carried away by their unconscious - their dark nature of the soul, the energies that manipulate us because they are unacceptable to the ego and therefore are denied and projected. The key is to carry a dialogue with both and not be influenced by the content that springs from these forces. To look for a way out that connects both, both worlds, and multiple worlds, because that is the paradox for the ego, that ego is not here alone. That there is another consciousness besides ours. Just admitting it is enough to bring the soul closer. I write about it in more detail in the work entitled Deep dreams and their messages for the present time.
Acknowledgement
I want to thank all the women with whom I had the honor of working together and thanks to which I developed this work. Of course to Pjér for his help in analyzing my practice, without whom this work would not be possible! Thanks also for his recommendations that enrich me and connect me with other souls so that together we can produce another work that can help others!