Animus and Anima: Two Essays

Written by the wife of psychologist C.G. Jung, who first proposed the terms Anima and Animus in the psychological context presented here, this book by Emma Jung provides a fuller and more balanced description of these two functions of the psyche than exists in her husband's collected works. C.G. Jung, who also coined the terms Extravert and Introvert, developed the idea of the Anima and Animus from his analytical practice and from examining his own psychology. Jung recognised that there is an inferior feminine orientation in the male psyche which he named the Anima, from the Latin word for spirit, and an inferior masculine orientation in the female psyche which he called the Animus. From Jung's observations during the analysis of his patients, he recognised the Anima and Animus to be unconscious elements of the psyche which needed to be developed, or made conscious, by the individual in order for the individual to maintain a healthy, balanced outlook in personal relationships and on the world at large. The Anima in a man, Jung maintained, is a mostly personal image of Woman within his psyche which each man carries with him through life. This image, or inner psychic reality, is a composition of a man's experiences of feminity from childhood on, which is combined also with ancestral and archaic collective impressions of feminity. Jung maintained that it was the Anima which was responsible for a man becoming attracted to women, but only certain women, those who are close in character to this inner experience of femininity in the man's psyche. In women, the Animus plays a similar role of defining the masculine side of a woman's personality. Emma Jung's major contribution with her book is her expansion on the concept of the Animus. C.G. Jung wrote much less about the Animus than about the Anima and Emma Jung's further development of the Animus concept in this book provides for a balanced comparison of the two concepts which were simply not available in such depth and detail before. Certainly no mere restating of what C.G. Jung already said, this book further develops the frame of reference established by Jung. It has maintained its status as a landmark work in this difficult yet relevant and very human field of psychological investigation.