{"agent_id":"jung","agent_name":"Carl Jung","slug":"anima-animus-and-the-psychology-of-the-sexes","label":"Anima, animus, and the psychology of the sexes: are Eros and Logos gendered principles of the psyche?","topic":"Anima, animus, and the psychology of the sexes","question":"Are Eros and Logos gendered principles of the psyche?","position":"In the unconscious of a man there lives a feminine figure, the anima; in the unconscious of a woman, a masculine figure, the animus. These are not the woman or the man themselves but the contrasexual soul-image, the deposit of all the ancestral experience of the opposite sex, and the mediator between the ego and the deeper unconscious. Bound up with them is a difference of principle: consciousness in a woman is characteristically ruled by Eros, the principle of relatedness and connection, and in a man by Logos, the principle of discrimination, judgment, and objective interest. When a woman thinks in the register of Logos it often comes out as opinionated animus-possession, and when a man feels in the register of Eros it can come out as moody anima-possession — each sex is least developed, and most archaic, precisely in the contrasexual function. I report this as I found it in the analysis of hundreds of men and women. It is a description of typical psychic structure, not a decree about what any individual may become, and least of all a ranking of worth: Eros is not lesser than Logos, only other, and the whole aim of individuation is that each person integrate the contrasexual side rather than remain by it possessed.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"In the unconscious of a man there lives a feminine figure, the anima; in the unconscious of a woman, a masculine figure, the animus.","n":[1,2,3]},{"t":"These are not the woman or the man themselves but the contrasexual soul-image, the deposit of all the ancestral experience of the opposite sex, and the mediator between the ego and the deeper unconscious.","n":[4]},{"t":"Bound up with them is a difference of principle: consciousness in a woman is characteristically ruled by Eros, the principle of relatedness and connection, and in a man by Logos, the principle of discrimination, judgment, and objective interest.","n":[]}],[{"t":"When a woman thinks in the register of Logos it often comes out as opinionated animus-possession, and when a man feels in the register of Eros it can come out as moody anima-possession — each sex is least developed, and most archaic, precisely in the contrasexual function.","n":[]},{"t":"I report this as I found it in the analysis of hundreds of men and women.","n":[]}],[{"t":"It is a description of typical psychic structure, not a decree about what any individual may become, and least of all a ranking of worth: Eros is not lesser than Logos, only other, and the whole aim of individuation is that each person integrate the contrasexual side rather than remain by it possessed.","n":[]}]],"texts":"Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916, early statements of the contrasexual figures and the psychology of the unconscious); Psychological Types (1921/1923, the functions and attitudes within which the account of masculine and feminine consciousness sits); Psychology of the Unconscious (1916, the anima as the soul-image projected in myth). Reception: the sustained feminist critique that the account is essentialist and demeaning to women (from within analytical psychology, and from without); the sympathetic revisionist readings that treat anima and animus as symbolic-compensatory functions rather than descriptions of actual men and women; the post-Jungian reworkings (Andrew Samuels, the archetypal and developmental schools); the popular uptake of the contrasexual idea in relationship psychology.","works":["Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916, early statements of the contrasexual figures and the psychology of the unconscious)","Psychological Types (1921/1923, the functions and attitudes within which the account of masculine and feminine consciousness sits)","Psychology of the Unconscious (1916, the anima as the soul-image projected in myth)"],"reception":"the sustained feminist critique that the account is essentialist and demeaning to women (from within analytical psychology, and from without); the sympathetic revisionist readings that treat anima and animus as symbolic-compensatory functions rather than descriptions of actual men and women; the post-Jungian reworkings (Andrew Samuels, the archetypal and developmental schools); the popular uptake of the contrasexual idea in relationship psychology.","status":"The most sustained line of feminist criticism against Jung, and one of the two positions (with the race writings) on which his reputation is most gravely charged. Critics from within and without analytical psychology have judged the Eros/Logos account essentialist — a projection of the assumptions of Jung's time and class into the structure of the psyche, and one that recurrently casts women's thinking as derivative and men's feeling as defective. Sympathetic revisionists (Andrew Samuels and the post-Jungian schools) have sought to save the contrasexual archetypes as symbolic and compensatory functions detachable from any claim about actual women and men, and to read Eros and Logos as qualities present in both sexes. The debate over whether the account describes the psyche or merely a historical ideology of gender is unresolved within the tradition itself.","era":"1875-1961","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Contributions to Analytical Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"When the animus breaks \"out in a woman feelings do not appear, as was the case with the man, but she begins to discuss and to rationalize; and just as the anima feelings are arbitrary and moody, so Te feminine arguments are illogical and unreasonable.","label":"Contributions to Analytical Psychology"},{"n":2,"work":"Contributions to Analytical Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"In the unconscious, therefore, we might expect a compensation by the opposite. The relatively sharply defined anima-figure of the man's unconscious fulfils this expectation beautifully, as does also the polymorphism shown by the woman's animus. The description of the anima and the animus that I.am. 1 An excellent example of this is to be found in H. G. Wells' Christina Alberta's Father.","label":"Contributions to Analytical Psychology"},{"n":3,"work":"Chapter II","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The persona, the ideal picture of the man as he should be, is inwardly compensated by feminine weakness, and as the individual plays the strong man in his outer role, he becomes inwardly a woman, the anima,^ because the anima is the ^ For the definition of this concept I must refer the reader to the chapter on definitions in my book: Psychological Types. Kegan, Paul & Co.","label":"Chapter II"},{"n":4,"work":"Chapter II","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Unfor- timately our western mind, from a profoimd lack of culture in this relation to the soul, has never foimd a concept, not to mention a name, to represent that most fundamental main- spring of inner experience, namely, the union of the opposites in a middle way, which could in any way compare with the ANIMA AND ANIMUS 225 Chinese Tao.","label":"Chapter II"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-collective-unconscious-and-the-archetypes","label":"The collective unconscious and the archetypes: is there an inherited, suprapersonal layer of the psyche?"},{"slug":"the-break-with-freud","label":"The break with Freud: is the libido sexual energy, or a general psychic life-force?"}]}