Purple Lord
Senior Lister
Difficult and subtle ethical problems are not invariably brought up by the appearance of the shadow itself. Often another `inner figure' emerges. If the dreamer is a man, he will discover a female personification of his unconscious; and it will be a male figure in the case of a woman. Often this second symbolic figure turns up behind the shadow, bringing up new and different problems. Jung called its male and female forms `animus' and `anima'.
The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and-last but not least-his relation to the unconscious. It is no mere chance that in olden times priestesses (like the Greek Sibyl) were used to fathom the divine will and to make connections with the gods.
A particularly good example of how the anima is experienced as an inner figure in a man's psyche is found in the medicine men and prophets (shamans) among the Eskimo and other arctic tribes. Some of these even wear women's clothes, or have breasts depicted on their garments, in order to manifest their inner feminine side-the side that enables them to connect with the `ghost land ' (i.e. what we call the unconscious)
The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and-last but not least-his relation to the unconscious. It is no mere chance that in olden times priestesses (like the Greek Sibyl) were used to fathom the divine will and to make connections with the gods.
A particularly good example of how the anima is experienced as an inner figure in a man's psyche is found in the medicine men and prophets (shamans) among the Eskimo and other arctic tribes. Some of these even wear women's clothes, or have breasts depicted on their garments, in order to manifest their inner feminine side-the side that enables them to connect with the `ghost land ' (i.e. what we call the unconscious)
