The Animus The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women Volume One SK Barbara Hannah edited by David Eldred and Emmanuel Kennedy-Xypolitas Chiron Publications Wilmette, Hlinois© 2011 by Stiftung fiir Jung’sche Psychologie and Emmanuel Kennedy. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Chiron Publications, P. O. Box 68, Wilmette, Illinois 60091 From MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS by C. G. Jung, edited by Aniela Jaffe, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, translation copyright © 1961, 1962, 1963 and renewed 1989, 1990, 1991 by tse ye Inc. Used by permission of I Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Jung, C. G.; COLLECTED WORKS OF ©. G. JUNG. © 1977 Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press Jung, C. Gx DREAM ANALYSIS. © 1984 Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. Jung, C. Gs NIETZSCHE'S ZARATHUSTRA. © 1988 Princeton University Press Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press Jung, C. G.: VISIONS. © 1997 Princeton University Press, Reprinted by permis sion of Princeton University Press. From Visions: Notes of the Seminar Giten in 1930-1934, C. G, Jung, copyright © 1998 Routledge. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. Book and cover design by Peter Altenberg Cover art: landscape painting by Barbara Hannah Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hannah, Barbara The animus : the spirit of inner truth in women / Barbara Hannah ; edited by Emmanuel Kennedy and David Eldred. (Polarities of the psyche) es and index. alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-888602-47-0 (vol. 2 vem. Includes bibliographical referer ISBN 978-1-888602-46-3 (vol. | alk. paper) 1, Animus (Psychoanalysis) 2. Women—Psychology. 3. Jungian psychology. I Kennedy, Emmanuel. I. Eldred, David. IIL. Title. IV, Series. BF175.5.A531136 2010 155,3°33—de22 2010003379Contents Foreword by David Eldred vir Foreword by Emmanuel Kennedy-Xypolitas 1x The Problem of Contact with the Animus 1 Animus and Eros 59 The Animus Problem in Modern Women 97 Animus Figures in Literature and in Modern Life 145 The Brontés and Modern Women 237 Victims of the Creative Spirit 261 and Individuation 291 The Bronté The Animus in Charlotte Bronté’s Strange Events 297 Appendix One: Rebecca West's The Harsh Voice 311 Appendix Two: The Regent George IV 313 A comprehensive bibliography and index for both volumes can be found in volume 2.Foreword SK BARBARA HANNAH WAS A STRAIGHTFORWARD, MODEST, YET grand woman, a lover of literature, a close affiliate and friend of both Carl Gustav and Emma Jung, and of Marie-Louise von Franz. She was a first-generation Jungian psychologist, a member of the Psychological Club of Zurich (1916 to the present), and among the first lecturers of the Jung Institute in Zurich. She lec- tured both in Switzerland and England and wrote several books on ©, G. Jung and Jungian psychology. Barbara Hannab’s psychological analysis of the animus is pre- sented here in two volumes. These essays have been gleaned from Barbara Hannah’s handwritten notes, typed manuscripts, previ- ously published articles (as well as the handwritten notes of those articles), her own drafts of her lectures, and the notes taken by participants at those lectures. Barbara Hannah tackled the theme of the animus with a comprehensiveness unsurpassed in Jungian literature. Her insight and vigor stem directly from a personal grappling with her own animus while integrating the experience and reflection of many from the first and second generations of psychotherapists working directly with C. G. Jung. The main objective of these two volumes is to present the reader with an all-inclusive synthesis of the many and complex essays and lectures Barbara Hannah presented on the theme of the animus while remaining as close as possible to the original texts. Authenticity and comprehensiveness have been set as the priori-vu The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women ties in the editing of this work. But when lengthy passages repeat themselves identically from one presentation to the next, synthesis has been pursued. For example, Barbara Hannah discusses the animus in the case of the sixteenth-century nun Jeanne Fery in five different lectures and publications presented in these two volumes. The theme of the animus in the Book of Tobit is found in seven lectures and essays. Some of these lectures were given at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, fr ae presented to various audiences in Switzerland and England. Naturally, a great deal of the material in her later lectures was repeated from earlier works, and much of this repetition is verbatim. If every single sentence that she ever wrote on the animus was published chronologically with no editorial adjustment, these volumes would be burdened with tedious repetition and become unmanageable in size, under- mining the vitality of Barbara Hannah's style and compromising the vivaciousness of the works themselves Nevertheless, when the presentation of a theme would be negatively affected by such editing, repetition has been preserved from one essay to the next. Not one single idea uttered by the author has been neglected. Hand corrections, which she added to the pages of her lectures and the drafts of her publications, have been included directly in the text in order to render the straight- forward manner and unfussiness of Barbara Hannah's literary style. The editorial priority in these two volumes has been set to pre- serve the excellence and comprehensiveness of her work on the animus—that most complex and vexing theme—while rendering the natural and wonderful spirit of Barbara Hannah herself. It was Barbara Hannah's express wish that references and comments be included as footnotes and not relegated to endnotes, and we have respected this wish. David Eldred Zurich April 2010Foreword SK The experience itself is the important thing, not tts intellectual classification, which proves meaningful and helpful only when the road to original experience is blocked. —C. G. Jung THE TWO PRESENT BOOKS ON THE THEME OF THE ANIMUS constitute the third and fourth volumes of the series Polarities of the Psyche. The first two were Lectures on Jung’s Aion (2004) by Barbara Hannah and Marie-Louise von Franz and The Archetypal Symbolism of Animals (2006) by Barbara Hannah. Carl Gustav Jung regarded the human psyche as belong- ing to the most obscure and mysterious realms which we can experience. Whenever Jung writes or speaks of the nature of the human psyche, he relies above all on his personal observations of people. The anima and the animus, two of Jung's most well known concepts, were developed through empirical observation and actual experience. As Jung emphasizes throughout his works, intellect and theoretical knowledge alone do not suffice for the assimilation of unconscious contents and especially those unconscious contents of an archetypal, transcendent nature. Only when such contents appear subjectively out of the unconscious psyche of the indi- vidual can they become a profound experience of reality. For in the process of integration of unconscious components of our per- sonality, we are dealing with creative processes that are steepedThe Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women in mystery and can be truly grasped only by inner experience understood by Jung as “a process of assimilation without which there would be no understanding.” Jung thus considered such ine qua non for bringing unconscious experience as the conditio contents into consciousness, truly understanding them, and gradually liberating oneself from their autonomous, possessive and irrational nature. Jung writes in hiymemoirs: To me there is no liberation @ fous prix. I cannot be liberated from anything that I. . . have not experienced. Real libera- tion becomes possible for me only when I have done all that Twas able to do, when I have completely devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to the utmost. Complete devotion to and participation to the utmost in the “terrifying work on the animus” characterizes Barbara Hannah lifelong struggle to come to terms with the unconscious, an Auseinandersetzung that began in 1929 when she began analysis with Jung and lasted nearly sixty years to her death in 1986. This charisma of her whole being was evident and even palpable to those people who were close to her. It is also mani- fest when one reads certain parts of her papers in this present work, Whatever Barbara Hannah said or wrote on “the vitally important archetype of the animus” was ascertained both from her own subjective experience and from the actual experience of women she knew. Seen in this light, Barbara Hannab’s truly creative writings on the complex theme of the animus are a unique and major con- tribution to analytical psychology. Their value lies in the fact that they stem out of direct, personal, and original experience with the darker layers of the psyche. Barbara Hannah did not gloss over, avoid, or repress but chose the path of experiencing uncon- scious processes to the full, which, according to Jung, is the only way to liberate oneself. She thus created an indispensable vase, a vessel to receive the contents of her unconscious with Eros, that is, her feeling relatedness.Foreword xT Through an honest and conscious confrontation with the unconscious (dream analysis, active imagination, painting, cre- ative writing) Barbara Hannah immersed herself in the inner experience of the powerful archetype of the animus. As she once stated: “It is out of my own experience—this little island and relatively firm piece of ground—that | am trying to write on the problem of the animus.” Analytic practice teaches us that the individual human being to whom unconscious contents become conscious through experience is united with the impersonal cen- ter of psychic wholeness thus making the experienced center into a spiritus rector, a driving force of daily life. Various dreams of and about Barbara Hannah indicate that at the end of her life she achieved as much natural wholeness individual human being can attain in a lifetime. In such a state of the animus, as it was once experienced by Barbara Hannah. as an bein; in an active imagination, transforms itself into the heart of the chthonic spirit of truth. In this form the animus is a mediator of the religious experience, a veritable messenger of “God.” In the words of Marie-Louise von Franz, the animus becomes “the wise guide to spiritual truth ... and the incarnation of meaning,” Emmanuel Kennedy-XypolitasThe Problem of Contact with the Animus aK Editor's Note: This essay on “The Problem of Contact with the Animus” closely parallels Barbara Hannah's text which was pub- lished under the same title by the Guild of Pastoral Psychology in 1951.’ This present version, however, includes some additional information found in her handwritten notes and preliminary drafts but which did not appear in the Guild publication. The discussion of Jeanne Fery, a nun from the sixteenth century, within this essay is a highly abbreviated version of Barbara Hannah's exten- sive analysis of this nun and animus possession, presented in volume 2 of this work: INTRODUCTION One often hears the complaint that too much is said about the theory of Jungian psychology and too little about how this theory works out in everyday life. Even people who have been studying Jung’s works for years complain about this imbalance. This con- cern seems to me particularly constellated at present, for it has never been more obvious that invisible forces are at work which human reason are totally unable to control.” As Jung has pointed out time and again, the only place where there is any hope of our being able to come to terms with these forces is in the individual. 1, Barbara Hannah, “The Problem of Contact with the Animus,” The Guild of Pastoral Psychology, lecture no. 70 (East Dulwich: H. H. Greaves Ltd., 1951) 2, [The initial drafts of this essay were written in the late 1940s. Ed.]a The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women Therefore it seems indispensable to devote this paper on the ani- mus as much as possible to the practical implementation of Jung's concepts. But any reader who has made such an attempt knows the enormous difficulties that such a venture entails. We touch on a fragment of the vast tangle of problems that confront can only us when we approach the theme of the animus By the term animus I understand the masculine spirit or unconscious mind of woman. = pointed out recently that one should differentiate very carefully here between the anima and the animus. The anima, as is well known, is Jung's term for the feminine soul of man. But it is really a contradiction in terms to speak of the animus as the masculine soul of woman (This error was made in the early days of Jungian psychology and is still often done today.) In Latin the word animus means intellect, memory, consciousness, character, and spirit. It is often equated with “mind” and is also used to mean courage, vivacity, bravery, and will. In Jungian psychology it is used primarily to denote the phenomenon of “spirit” in women, and the contrast between the feminine soul (anima) and the masculine spirit (ani- mus) gives us a valuable hint as to the difference between these two figures. In general the animus personifies the spirit in woman while the anima represents the soul in man. In general we can say that, at the more rudimentary levels, the animus in the woman is the producer of opinions whereas the anima in man produces moods. But actually the part of the animus to which we can react and with which we can make contact is the merest fraction of the entity of spirit in the woman. In real life, women generally deal not with the entire animus but with that part of the animus which is mostly an opinionating substitute for the depths of the spirit. This would be the spirit of rationalization which indefatigably occupies itself with making these opinions seem logical—at least as seen from the point of view of the woman or of the collective society, Since a great deal of the animus lies initially in the realm of the unconscious, it is naturally entangled in the shadow, which is not, however, the same as the animus. Much of the shadow consistsThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 3 of personal repressiens or of that which has been forgotten. This more or less corresponds to Freud’s concept of the entire uncon- scious. Jung has noted that the unconscious is also the unfathom- able wellspring of creativity and ideas, the expression of which can glimpse in works of literature, art, music, or dance; in w ancient, and contemporary fairy tales and myths; in the primitiv religions, and so forth, The shadow is more or less the first part of the unconscious which we encounter when we begin to take notice of our inner, unconscious lives. One might say that when a man takes up the problem of his anima he is attempting to find the “inherited collective image of woman [which] exists in a man’s unconscious, with the help of which he apprehends the nature of woman.” At the same time, he finds his own unconscious function of relationship. Therefore, in his search for the anima, the goal of man is at bottom to find the function of relationship which he has always projected onto woman, The goal of woman, on the other hand, is to find the “inherited collective image” of the spirit or mind which she has always projected onto man. The mind of woman—inasmuch as it is almost incredible extent, although she is usually totally unaware of this fact The problem of modern woman in this respect is most clearly described in Jung’s article “Woman in Europe,” with all the symp- uncon: jous—is autonomous and projected onto man to an toms which surround us on every side proving that the masculine side of woman can no longer be denied.‘ In that essay, Jung say St Masculinity means knowing what one wants and doing what is necess ieve it. Once this has been learned it ry to a is so obvious that it can never again be forgotten without tremendous psychic loss. The independence and critical judgment she acquires through this knowledge are positive 3.C. G, Jung, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious” (1928), in CW, vol. 7 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), par. 301 4. C. G. Jung, “Woman in Europe” (1927), in CW, vol. 10 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), pars. 236-75.4 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women values and are felt as such by the woman. She can never part with them again? If we are to avoid this “tremendous psychic loss,” we are obliged sooner or later to face the problem of the animus The spotlight in this present paper is definitely on the ani- mus and not on the anima, for it is onJy of the former that I can speak from direct personal espencten vhich is the only firm ground one has when one comes to the practical side of such themes). Nevertheless, a good deal of what is said also applies to the anima, particularly in regards to the technique for coming to terms with these figures. My references to Jung’s article, “The Relation Between the Ego and the Unconscious,” for instance, are taken from a place where Jung is speaking primarily of the anima. The main difference that one must always keep in mind is that a woman tends to react with rigid opinions which go irritatingly beside the mark whereas a man is inclined to react with moods or with a peculiarly touchy vanity. In other words, a woman's unconscious reactions are inclined to be those of a somewhat inferior man and vice versa. It is only fair to say that all of the Jungian psychology in this paper naturally comes from Jung and is “begged, borrowed or stolen”! Undoubtedly the reader has read Jung's psychology infi- nitely better presented in his books than here. The thing that I am attempting to do then is to give a fragmentary report on how it seems to me that Jung's ideas work out when women attempt to apply them in their own psychology. Now when a woman writes of the animus, she is always up against the fact that the animus himself may have his own views on the matter. Jung once pointed out in a seminar that, whereas portraits of the anima are exceedingly common in literature, good portraits of the animus are very rare. He thought this might be because the animus to a great extent writes the books of women himself and prefers not to give himself away. (The anima, on the 5. Ibid., par. 260.The Problem of Contact with the Animus a contrary, seems to be rather fond of sitting for her portrait!) Thus when I write, I never feel quite sure how much the animus, like a wily old fox, is obliterating his tracks with his brash! ‘THE PREDOMINANCE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE PERSONALITY The first point on which we must agree before entering on our theme is the fact that the psyche reaches far beyond our con- scious knowledge. The idea that we are really the master in our own house dies hard, and so be it with the pernici “Where there is a will, there is a way.” I emphasize this because long after we have realized the existence of both the personal and wus. slogan: collective unconscious and are quite aware that we have a shadow and an animus or an anima, we find ourselves behaving exactly as if we did not know it at all. It is not easy to shake off nineteenth- century rational ideas with which we and our immediate forefa- thers grew up and which flourish around us as never before. When it comes to realizing that the psyche itself extends far beyond our ego and its conscious knowledge, we are confronted with the realization that we live, in part, in an unknown, invis- ible country. There is indeed a great deal of comparative mate- rial from which we can gather information. The primitives, for instance, have at best one leg in outside reality while the other stands in this invisible world. What they call the land of the spir- its is indeed to them the greater reality of the two, and studying their ways of dealing with their spirits can be compared to read- ing a description of the country before undertaking a journey. We can also find comparative material in many other fields. | men- tion, for instance, the great religions, of both the East and West, the Gnostic systems, alchemy, and, on a lower level, witchcraft and magic. We may say, however, that all secondhand accounts of what Jung calls the collective unconscious have only a relative value. They are absolutely invaluable in amplification and compari- son, but the condtio sine qua non of any real knowledge of the unconscious is actual experience. It cannot be emphasized too6 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women often that psychology is an empirical science. Jungian psychology is frequently misunderstood as a philosophy or even a religion, but always by people who have had no experience of the kind themselves and who therefore find reports of other people’ sume it must be a mat- actual experience so strange that they ter of philosophical or mystical speculation. They are more or less in the position of people listening to an explorer’s account of some strange tribe whose habits oA different from their own that the listener may involuntarily find himself thinking: “He is pulling the long bow” or “fisherman’s tales!” Some people go even further and, when something from the unconscious catches them and forces them to experience it, they think they are seeing “white mice” or, like the comment of the man when he first saw ‘Why, there ain't no such bird.” the duck-billed platypu: Yet, we have not very far to seek to find evidence that we are moved by things within ourselves which differ from our conscious personality. How often do we say, “What possessed me to do that?” Or we are angry with ourselves because we have done the exact opposite from that which we intended. Yet, somehow we hate to draw the logical conclusion and even doubt the evidence of our own senses rather than face the alarming fact that there are “things” within us that can act independently and oblige us to carry out “their” intentions. The following incident may illustrate the difficulty of admit- ting unusual facts. A storm on the Lake of Zurich once detached a floating public bathing raft from its moorings at the upper end of the lake. It was on a winter's night and it drifted right down the lake nearly to Zurich before it was discovered the following day and towed back to its base. This peculiar incident was related at a dinner party that night and a young woman exclaimed with relief, “Why, I saw a bathing raft in the middle of the lake from my window this morning, but of course I did not mention it because I knew it could not really be there!” The young lady was unable to assimilate the evidence before her own eyes, so she simply rejected it until she was provided with a rational explanation. And sai a aieThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 7 like her, we constantly miss the most obvious psychic facts due to the same prejudice. In his seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra, Jung once spoke of the realization that man does not only consist of consciousness but also of the unconscious. And that our conscious will is constantly being crossed by unconscious wills in ourselves. He said: It is as if you were ruler of a land which is only partially known to yourself, king of a country with an tnknown num- ber of inhabitants. You don’t know who they are or what their condition may be; time and again you make the discovery that you have subjects in your country of whose existence you had no idea, Therefore you cannot assume the responsibility, you can only say: “I find myself as the ruler of a country which has unknown borders and unknown inhabitants, possessing quali- ties of which I am not entirely aware.” Then you are at once out of your subjectivity, and are confronted with a situation in which you are a sort of prisoner; you are confronted with unknown possibilities because those many uncontrollable factors at any time may influence all your actions or decisions. So you are a funny kind of king in that country, a king who is not really a king, who is dependent upon so many unknown quantities and conditions that he often cannot carry through his own intentions. Therefore it is better not to speak of being a king at all, and be only one of the inhabitants who has just a corner of that territory to rule. And the greater your experi- ence, the more you see that your corner is infinitely small in comparison with the vast extent of the unknown against you.® Once we have realized that we are not the king of our psyche, not the master in our own house, we are—paradoxically enough—in a much stronger position. We have escaped from our subjectivity, that is, we have gained a tiny piece of objective ground where we can stand and look around us. A great deal that 6. C. G. Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 390.8 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women belongs in our own inner world has always been in projection. All those things which we do not see in ourselves are automatically projected onto our environment. We do not make projections, but we find pieces of ourselves that we have not recognized projected onto our environment.’ How many of us have a favorite béte noire, a dark nasty beast, for instance, who conveniently carries all the qualities that we do not want t recognize as our own. As [ am sure you all know, one does ae voluntarily. This obser- vation is something which apparently one cannot repeat enough, for one continually meets people who know quite a lot of Jungian psychology and yet still do not understand that we do not project voluntarily; in fact, we do nothing of the kind. We simply do not see something which is nevertheless a part of our own psyche. Since at first it is completely foreign to us, we meet it for the first time in someone else as a projection, and then slowly we become aware of its existence also in ourselves. It is nearly seven hundred years since Meister Eckhart exclaimed: “It is all inside, not out- side, for everything is inside. as yet what he meant. But how few people have realized THE SHADOW When we experience the fact that our conscious ego is only an inhabitant in a small corner of a vast territory, we naturally want to know something about the other inhabitants. As is well known, before Jung’s time the unconscious was mainly regarded as repressed material which could just as well be in conscious ness (insofar as it was recognized at all). The latter is at least theoretically true of what Jung calls the personal unconscious. In its personal aspect, the shadow has its home in this layer of the unconscious. It could therefore be called our nearest neighbor in the vast expanse of the unknown that surrounds us. It is clear that considerable knowledge of the shadow is required before we 7. Ibid, pp. 149387 8. See Barbara Hannah, The Archetypal Symbolism of Animals (Wilmette, TIL: Chiron Publications, 2006), pp. 154fThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 9 are in a position to take up our problem with the more distance figures, including the animus. The shadow is a minor figure in oneself, which is, in a negative image of the conscious personality, One usually regards y, the it as something inferior and, in its most common form, it is com- posed of all the negative in oneself, But, in the case of people who are living below their possibilities, the shadow can contain very positive qualities, “up to eighty percent pure gold,” as Jung once said The personal shadow is not all that difficult to recognize. True, qualities which one does not want to see it can entail a long, weary, and an exceedingly painful undertak- ing, But the real challenge comes from the contamination of the shadow with the figures of the collective unconscious in the back- ground. Here is the great complication of the work. People with a sensitive conscience who see their dark side will sometimes lose thei sible for the devil himself! It is thus of utmost importance to learn to discriminate between the shadow in one’s personal sphere and the great figures of the collective unconscious surrounding us.” The figure which is nearest to the ego and shadow is the anima or animus. Jung often speaks of a kind of marriage between the sense of proportion and begin to make themselves respon- animus and the shadow, a combination far stronger than the weak conscious ego. In a seminar given in 1932, he goes into this aspect in considerable detail and points out that a woman must be in possession of her shadow—that is, aware of her inferior side—in order to be in a position to relate to her animus at all. People who think they are just too marvelously good and thus deny their shadows altogether are as if possessed by devils. Women then get all eaten up by the animus, and the animus, in a way, grows fat, he is strengthened by that excellent nourishment. He gets so strong that he can overrule the conscious personality. Thus the connec- tion of the animus with the shadow should be broken despite the fact that one arrives at the animus by way of the shadow. In fact, you can never arrive at the animus unless you see the shadow, 9. C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Transference” (1943), in CW, vol. 16 (Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 1966), pars. 452 and 501ff.30 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women unle: ow, you can detach from the animus, but as long as you don’t see it, you have not a ghost of a chance.” To put it still more simply: you have not got a ghost of a chance while the animus and shadow are married, for the game always stands at two to one against the conscious ego. We shall ologically to be “possessed ter to the role of the shadow s you see your own inferior sides. When you see your shad- ina late medieval case what it means psy. by devils,” and we shall also returr in our problem of contact with the animus. MAKING THE ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE ANIMUS It is a well-known fact quite outside psychological circles that the soul (anima) of man frequently presents herself in personi- fied feminine form. I mention only Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch’s Laura, and Rider Haggard’s She. But the fact that the spirit of woman presents itself in masculine form seems to me much less well known, Had anyone clearly drawn this conclusion until Jung recognized this counterpart to the anima in the unconscious of women?!! Now that we have realized the empirical existence of this figure, this spontaneous product of the unconscious, we can find traces of it in many places, albeit often in a negative form. The demons that possessed women, for instance, were usually of the masculine sex. I mention, for instance, Asmodaeus, the evil spirit that possessed Sarah in the Book of Tobit and killed her seven husbands before Tobias, with the help of the archangel Raphael, exorcised the devil by means of the heart and liver of the fish. Or, for example, the “little master” of witches and the “Grand Master” of their covens were almost always masculine. The fact that the Christian God, particularly the Protestant God, is exclusively masculine presumably made it more difficult for woman than for man to recognize her individual spirit, for it was always projected, in its positive aspect, in the prevailing reli- 10. Thid. 11. [See Barbara Hannah's discussion of this theme in her article, “Animus Figures in Literature and in Modern Life” in this volume. Ed.]The Problem of Contact with the Animus nl gion. This may be one of many reasons why woman realized the existence of her male counterpart so many centuries later than man. T mention this in passing, but it would lead us too far from our subject to continue this theme. It should be mentioned that, in earlier and more peaceful days when the unconscious poured smoothly into the prevailing reli- gion, the great majority of people could find the answer to all these questions—if indeed they were ever asked—within the tenets of their faith. There are people today whose unconscious still fits in the framework of some established religion, and such fortunate people should be disturbed on no account, for in these chaotic days a real hold of any kind in the invisible world is of the greatest value not only to themselves but also to their surroundings. I experienced this vividly last autumn when I went to a Catholic village in Switzerland for a weekend. It contains an largely for monks unusual number of rest homes for Catholic and nuns. I immediately experienced a feeling of the most extraordinary peace in the village which I at first attributed to the herds of cows, the mountains, the autumnal leaves, and the mel- low October sun. However, shortly before, I had spent my holiday in a place where all these things were present without experienc- ing anything of this unusual feeling of inner security. The friend I was with has considerable resistances to the Church and was mildly grumbling about the number of priests and nuns we met: Twas therefore astonished to hear her suddenly say: “I know why it is so peaceful: their religion is really containing the unconscious of these people. They are not split underneath as we are.” But desirable as this condition may be, it is unfortunately today rather the exception than the rule. Particularly the people who come to psychology are usually suffering from some kind of disharmony within themselves. It is true that, in the majority of cases, this dis- harmony is projected onto the outer world. The difficulty is that they cannot get on with their environment in some form or other. I remember Jung saying some fifteen years ago, when he was still in the thick of his practice, that almost everyone came to him for a different reason. In the majority of cases, it sufficed to give12 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women help with the outer difficulties, to open up a new attitude toward them, for instance, or to point out things that have been over- looked. As he also emphasizes in his writings, itis only a compara- tively small minority that is destined to tread the difficult inner cious, that way of coming to terms with the collective uncons longest of all paths, as the alchemists called it. It is this minority whom I have in mind when I speak ofthe problem of eontact with the animus. Jung notes that: only those individuals can attain to a higher degree of con- sciousness who are destined to it and called to it from the beginning, that is, who have a capacity and an urge for higher s also do the animal species, among whom there are conservatives and differentiation. In this matter men differ extremely, progressives. Nature is aristocratic, but not in the sense of bility of differentiation e sively of having reserved the pc for species high in the scale. So too with the possibility chic development: it is not reserved for specially gifted indi- viduals. In other words, in order to undergo a far-reaching psychological development neither outstanding intelligence nor any other talent is necessary, since in this development moral qualities can make up for intellectual shortcomings. It must not on any account be imagined that the treatment con- sists in a grafting upon people's minds general formulae and complicated doctrines. There is no question of that. Each ean take what he needs, in his own way and in his own language." Once we have definitely realized that we have a shadow and are no longer naively projecting all our own bad qualities on our unfortunate neighbors, and are also aware that our consciousness is only an “infinitely small corner in comparison with the vast extent of the unknown against us,” we have gained a piece of firm ground from which we can begin the task of making the acquain- 12. C. G, Juny sychology of the Unconscious” (1943), in CW, vol. 7 (Princeton, N.J- Princeton University Press, 1966), par. 198, 13. Ibid,The Problem of Contact with the Animus 13, tance of our anima or animus. On the one hand, these figures have a personal aspect so that we can talk of my animus or your anima and, on the other, they are inhabitants of the collective unconscious so that it sometimes seems far more correct to speak of the animus and the anima." In quarrels between two women, ly confused if for instance, the matter often becomes hopele they make an attempt to find out who was to blame. And when they first study psychology and begin informing each other that they are quite willing to grant it was the other's animus, the matter usually goes from bad to worse! But in time, when they can see that the whole quarrel was arranged by the animus and that both they can often gain a piece of objec- were more or less his victims, tive ground from which a real understanding can be reached. In the spring term of 1938 in his seminars on Zarathustra, Jung went into this matter in some detail.!° He was speaking of the projection of the dark side and of seeing the devil projected into someone else. He pointed out that, in analysis, the patient is gradually convinced that he cannot assume Mr. So-and-So to be the archdevil who can interfere seriously with his soul, But the first result of seeing this projection is often introjection: the patient assumes that he himself is the devil. Nothing is gained by this, for, of course, the patient is not the devil either; so the latter—along with the projection—falls back into the sauce and dissolves there. Then the analyst has to say: “Now look here, in spite of the fact that you say there is no terrible devil, there is at least a psychological fact which you might call the devil. If you should not find a devil, then you had better construct one—and quickly—before he dissolves in your own system” and everything to be gained by becoming conscious of your shadow is lost.'° Jung goes on to say that one must actually 14, Jung, “The Psychology of the Transference,” in CW, vol. 16, par. 469, 15, Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, pp. 1320. 16, Thid., p. 1320, [Barbara Hannah notes that it should not be overlooked that Jung was speaking of Nietzsche's Zarathustra and pointing out that, as Nietzsche had constructed the figure of Zarathustra, the light aspect of the Self, he should have constructed a counter shadow figure or the latter would—as indeed it did—fall into the “sauce” of his own psyche. She adds that naturally there is always a certain danger in quoting passages out of their context. Ed.]14 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women make a devil, say there is one, and if you doubt it, suppress your doubts as much as you can. For it is just as if you were building a house because you know you need one, and then conclude that there never was a house there and destroy whatever you have started to build: so of course you will never have a house. Therefore in order to construct a devil you must be convinced that you haye to construct him, that va that figure. Otherwise it is absolutely necessary to const the thing dissolves in your unconscious right away and you are left in the same condition as before.!? A belief in the personifi every form of human society. A consensus gentium confirms the existence of some form of devil.!* If we do not allow for the real- ity of the figures of the collective unconscious, we shall either project collective forces onto our neighbors or introject them into ourselves, Therefore it seems to me of vital importance to never forget that the animus—however personally we may take him—is tion of evil per se is found in almost also a figure of the collective unconscious. In another seminar, Jung pointed out that as soon as a woman begins controlling her animus or a man his anima they come up against the herd instinct in mankind. Man’s original state was one of overwhelming unconsciousness, and this condition still partially persists in us all today. As soon as we attempt to liberate ourselves from possession by the anima or animus we get into a different order of things, and this attempt challenges the old order. If one sheep goes ahead of the flock by itself, it is a threat to the others and thus will be ostracized and exposed to attack. Moreover, no sooner do you get rid of a devil than you have all the devils against you. Ifa man makes a modest attempt at controlling his anima, he will be right away in a situation where he is tested to the blood: all the devils of the world will try to get into his anima in order to bring him back into the unconscious fold of Mother Nature. The 17. bid 18. (Consensus gentium (Latin, “agreement of the peoples”): “That which is universal among men carries the weight of truth.” Ed.]The Problem of Contact with the Animus 15 same with a woman. Every devil circulating within one hundred miles will do his best to get the goat of her animus. The truth of these words will be evident, I think, to any woman who has made a serious attempt to come to terms with her animus. The people in her environment are, on the one hand, fascinated by the fact that she has gained a standpoint au- s de la mélée, but, on the other hand, their unconscious— ularly their animi—is irritated by the fact that something dess part has been done contra naturam. Therefore she often finds herself exposed to the most unexpected attacks, usually of a very irra- tional nature. When we first face the fact, however, that we are only con- scious of a small comer of our psyche and that we have to reckon with another will—or other wills—in ourselves, we usually feel we are up against a multitude, a confusion that is hopelessly bewil- dering. The greatest help in this confusion usually comes from dreams, and here it is of the greatest value to turn to the experi- ence of other people in order to learn what is already known about this dark unknown realm in which our consciousness is set like a small island of light. It is obvious that the animus—as a figure with both indi- vidual and collective characteristics—is particularly suitable to be a liaison officer, so to speak, between consciousness and the unconscious. It is true that as we first learn to know him, he usu- ally seems to have little inclination to play such a helpful role. This depends quite a lot on individual conditions. A woman with a positive relation to her father, for instance, usually has a certain subjective readiness, that is, an innate psychic structure for posi- tive experience with the male sex and with the animus. But this is often compensated later in life with a peculiarly devilish animus whose existence she has overlooked. The thing we must never forget in dealing with the animus is that he is dual, he always has a negative and positive aspect (a fact that, of course, also applies to the anima). A woman I met some years ago had a most helpful animus fig- ure whom she called “Archibald.” She never did anything without16 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women consulting this figure. At first, she certainly seemed in a most envi- able position. He always knew the right way even out of the most desperate situations, and when I once heard a long account of his exploits, I admit I was very much impressed. All the same, one could not help feeling even then that she was becoming too depen- dent on this figure, and one or two of us tried to warn her that it would do as well to also put a qu mark against the omnipo- tence of Archibald. He had, Hower already gained far more influence over her than could be reached by any human voice, and she went on trusting herself wholeheartedly to his guidance. It ended, as one might expect, in her becoming more and more pos- sessed by this figure whose previous positive effect became pro- gressively negative. Had she been able to keep a critical standpoint of her own from which she could have recognized the dual nature of this figure, she would not have fallen into this trap. It may seem strange to the reader that any sane woman could personify her unconscious mind or spirit to such an extent that she could consult him about her daily life and allude to him as Archibald. (As we shall see later, it is indeed open to question whether she was wise to involve him so much in her daily life.) But as Jung points out so clearly in his chapter on the anima and animus in “The Relation Between the Ego and the Unconscious,” the anima and the animus do make themselves felt in such a way that one can best apprehend their reality by treating them as autonomous personalities with a life and will of their own.! Taking them in a very personal way helps us recognize their personality and makes it possible for us to make a relation to these figures.” The experience of other people, as mentioned before. is usu- ally insufficient to convince us right away that we really have a personified unconscious mind or spirit that is influencing us without our knowledge. Therefore, we should now briefly con- sider how we can catch the animus at work in ourselves and thus experience him firsthand. 19, Jung, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious,” im OW vol. 7, pars. 296- 340) 20. Ibid., pars. 321-25 CerThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 17 Perhaps the most usual and least unpleasant way of learning to know our animus is through our dreams. In dreams he usually appears personified, and it is there that we first learn to regard him as a person. The many forms he can take are well known, , human and demonic, animal and both negative and posit divine. He very often appears as an authoritative figure, as a priest or monk, as a teacher or ruler. He appears in dreams very often as actual men whom we know or knew, as the father—the first carrier of his image—or as the brother, husband, lover, and so on. (And he is particularly fond of telling us what we should do and of superimposing a network of opinions over our instincts.) The animus also very often appears as a plurality. Jung men- tioned Christina Alberta’s Father by H. G. Wells more than once in his seminars as an excellent example of the way that the animus works in women2! The girl does all sorts of nonsensical things during the day, but in the evening she holds a sort of court of conscience that tells her exactly what she has really been up to. This is a kind of inexorable thinking which she cannot get away from and is a good illustration of the autonomous working of the unconscious mind of women. The parrot, Old Nick, in Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge, plays a similar role.* He is forever destroying Marianne’s fictions about herself and always reappears with some crushing remark just as she hopes he has succumbed in some earthquake, war, or fire. One of the techniques that Jung recommends for getting s to keep a sharp lookout on our acquainted with our animus speech, in particular our thoughts, and to constantly question them as they pass through our minds: “Did I think that?” “Where did that thought come from?” “Who thought that?” This is a most disagreeable technique, and we always find good excuses to avoid 21, [See C. G. Jung, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 95. According to E. A. Bennet, the idea for this novel originated in a conversation between Jung and Wells; see E. A. Bennet, What Jung Really Said (London: Macdonald, 1966), p. 93. See also Jung, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious,” in CW, vol. 7, pars. 284 and 332; and H. G. Wells, Christine Alberta's Father (London: Jonathon Cape Ltd., 1926). Ed.] 22, Elizabeth Goudge, Green Dolphin Country (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1961). The book has been reissued with the title Green Dolphin Street.18 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women it, such as never having the time, and so on. But if we can force ourselves to practice it and to write down the outcome—for we forget such thoughts almost before we think them—the results can be exceedingly instructive. The place where the animus usually makes us most unhappy is when he interferes in our relationships. As mentioned before, the leading principle of women and the anima is Eros, and that of men and the animus is LogosAVhereas Eros wishes to join and unite, the Logos wishes to discriminate and for that purpose to separate. The animus, therefore, can have an exceedingly severing effect. If the relationship—to the husband, analyst, or someone else—is important enough to us, we shall suffer a great deal in this respect. But this also forms an invaluable incentive to investigate and discover the animus. For it is often just here, in the experience of the effects of our animus on others, that we become convinced of the reality of this figure, a figure who previ- ously was but theoretically acknowledged. When opinions which we have always taken for gospel separate us from someone who is vital to our feeling life, we may, for the first time, be willing to question their validity. Here it is a matter of heart and integrity, for logic and argument have no effect whatsoever. We can find a good deal about this aspect in Jung's essay on “The Psychology of the Transference” and also in Aion, his new work on the symbol- ism of the Self, which has just been published in German. It is also in our vital relationships to men that we usually first discover the animus in projection. As long as the projection fits, we are generally totally unaware that it exists. But sooner or later, if the relationship is important enough, it is certain to give rise to trouble. This aspect of our problem is described in an unsurpass- able way by Emma Jung in her excellent article, “A Contribution to the Problem of the Animus.” 23. Jung, “The Psychology of the Transference,” in CW, vol. 16, pars. 353-539; and C. G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951), CW. vol. 9ii (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1959), pars, 43-67. 24: Ena Jung, Animus and Anima: On the Nature of the Animus (New York: The Analytical Psychology Club of New York, 1957), p. IIf. [This essay was read in an English translation at the Psychological Club of Zurich in November 1931 and appeared in spring 1941. WhenThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 19 Although there are exceptions, most women who have expe- rienced the reality of the animus beyond all doubt feel exceed- ingly negative toward him. He is apparently forever thwarting our intentions, spoiling our relationships, replacing our sound instincts and feelings with a mere collection of opinions, and altogether preventing us from living our lives naturally as women: This is only too true of the animus in his negative aspect. And when we only experience this side, we are obliged sooner or later to ask ourselves, Why do I know so little of my own mind? Why am I on such bad terms with my animus? What am I doing that he always thwarts me? Obviously, early experiences with the projected animus—a negative father complex, for instance—play a great role here and must always be taken into account.” But, as Jung says in Psychology and Alchemy: [N]o matter how much parents and grandparents may have sinned against the child, the man who is really adult will accept these sins as his own condition which has to be reck- oned with. Only a fool is interested in other people’s guilt since he cannot alter it. The wise man learns only from his own guilt, He will ask himself: Who am I that all this should happen to me? To find the answer to this fateful question, he will look into his own heart. If then we decide to grow up and become adult in the sense that Jung means here, and if we want to put the “fateful question” to ourselves for which we must look into our own depths, then we shall not be in a position to answer until we have faced the Auseinandersetzung with our own animus.” Etnia Jung’s book was published in 1957, the essay was revised to correspond more closely to the German version. Ed.] 25, Barbara Hannah writes; I do not emphasize the father complex in this paper because its effects are comparatively well known, yet, as these are exceedingly far-reaching, it would be 4 great mistake to underestimate them. 26. C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (1944), CW, vol. 12 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), par. 152. 27. [Auseinandersetzung is used here to mean a full discussion and analysis of a theme along ‘with reaching an agreement or a coming to terms. Ed.]20 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women As mentioned before, the animus is always dual. He ha negative and a positive aspect. If we constantly run up against the negative side, we may assume—as is usually also the case in our human relationships—that we are failing to see his point of view. a NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE ANIMUS This brings us to a way of coming to ferms with the animus which is recommended in the passage {rem “The Relationship Between the Ego and the Unconscious” mentioned above. In regards to the anima, Jung says that a man would be singularly “right to treat the anima as an autonomous personality and to address personal 28 questions to her” and adds, “I mean this as an actual technique. These conversations with the anima or animus are a form of so-called active imagination, a technique which is unsurpassed in providing a middle territory where conscious and unconscious can unite.” (It is altogether beyond the limits of this paper to touch more than the fringe of this subject although it is intimately connected with our theme.) It is, however, not a technique for everybody and, moreover, should not be used lightly, for it has effects which one cannot foresee. This actually applies to all forms of meditation. It is well known, for instance, that the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are so exhausting that certain people have to be sent away or are only given the exercises in a mitigated form.” Another aspect of the same problem is evident 28. Jung, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscions,” in CW, vol. 7, pars. 322f (emphasis in the original) 29. [The visualization methods of active imagination that were discovered by Jung and de- veloped by Barbara Hannah's generation of colleagues are now employed in many contem- porary and highly effective forms of trauma therapy. Ed} 30, [Ignatins of Loyola (ca. 1491-1556) was the main creator and “father” of the Jesuits Ignatius’ diplomacy and leadership qualities made him very useful to the Duke of Najera and Viceroy of Naverra, under whom he served during numerous wars up until his thirtieth year of life. During several months of recovery following a severe injury, he began to study Christian works and then chose to lead a life of self-denying labor and to emulate the heroic deeds of Francis of Assisi along with other great monastic leaders. Upon recovery, he visited the Benedictine monastery of Monterrat, where he purportedly hung his military vestments before an image of the Virgin Mary. He then spent several months in a cave in Catalor where he practiced the most rigorous asceticism. He begged his way on a journey to the Hi Land, as a way of self-denial and sacrifice. While in Paris, his spiritual preaching granted him some attention from the French Inquisition. The spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of LoyolaThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 2 in the lives of the Bronté sisters. They gave most of their energy to the inner world and were correspondingly weakened in the outer world! (It is true that a modern woman who faces her unconscious because her life is disturbed by knowing too little of her own mind or animus, is in a very different position from the Brontés.) Nevertheless technique of active imagination should be used with the utmost seriousness or not at all. Moreover, a relationship to a partner. an analyst, or to someone else who will understand and provide a hold on the outer world is indispensable. Perhaps fortunately. it cannot be emphasized enough that the we have—or almost all of us have—the greatest resistances to using it. Very few people touch it unless they are forced to do so. Most people think that they are inventing the whole thing or else they are afraid of it from the beginning. Some people indeed seem to use it with a sort of fatal facility, they duce fantasies by the dozen without it having any direct effect on them at all as far as one can see. This may occur when people do not give themselves actively to it and therefore it remains ineffective both in a positive and negative sense. Examples of a passive and active attitude toward fantasy can be found in the chapter on “The Technique of Differentiation Between the Ego and the Figures of the Unconscious,” in “The Relationship Between the Ego and the Unconscious” in Jung’s Two Essays on Analytical Psychology.” The form of active imagination that Jung mentions in this pas- sage is that of holding conversations with a personified anima or animus. He tells us here that the art consists in allowing one’s vis 4 vis a voice and placing the means and the medium of expression at his or her disposal. This technique requires a lot of practice. One must learn, for instance, to put a question actively and then to be completely passive until the answer comes of itself. After a bit, are a month-long program of meditations, prayers, and contemplative practi in retreat and asceticism. Ed.} 31, [Barbara Hannah, “Victims of the Creative Spirit,” The Guild of Pastoral Psychology. Jecture no. 68 (East Dulwich: H. H. Greaves Ltd, 1950), included in this volume, Ed. } 32, Jung, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious,” in CW, vol. 7, pars. 342ff es based in part22 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women the answers are usually so far from what one could think of con- sciously that the ques ion of whether or not one actually invents the reply oneself disappears. One must always try to find out who is speaking and, when the conversation is over, weigh it very care- fully as one does in a conversation with a human vis--vis, I have found that one can learn things of the greatest value about one’s animus, as well as other figures . they appear. Moreover, this method is the best one I know vo coming to terms with the unconscious.*® One day, when a woman who did a good deal of active imagi- nation was talking to her animus, she heard him suddenly remark: “You and I are in a most awfully difficult position. We are linked together like Siamese twins and yet belong to totally different realities. You know, your reality is just as invisible and ghostlike to me as mine is to you.” The comment took her by surprise. She had to admit that she had never thought of that before. She had naively assumed that he saw everything in our reality as we do ourselves, In fact, some of his interference had given her the impression that he saw it a good deal too clearly and that this was the reason why he could so frequently outwit us. The woman then asked him, “But if our reality is so insubstan- tial to you, why do you so often interfere?” He replied, “If you leave something undone, it makes a vacuum, and, whether I want it or not, Tam forced to intervene. But I can quite understand that in terms of your world it may often be beside the mark.” Jung has often pointed out that when the animus interferes in our daily life, it is usually in a place where we have not given the matter our fullest conscious consideration and particularly where we fail in the realm of feeling. But it seems to me that the remark about the two realities is very enlightening. It shows us, for instance, that the animus is just as much in need of infor- mation from us about our reality as we are from him about his 35, [Barbara Hannah writes: “By ‘this method? I mean active imagination in general. The visual form in which the woman watches her animus objectively and learns to take a hand in the gaane herself is at least equally effective. Some women prefer to do things silently with {heir animus, just feeling his presence, and so on. The important thing is to find the way which suits the individual.” Ed }The Problem of Contact with the Animus 23 reality. Moreover, just as he can help us in the invisible world of the collective unconscious, so—evidently—we can help him in our reality, We also see here the danger for the woman with the animus called Archibald of consulting him about all of the details of her daily life We find the ing series of dreams and active imaginations which Emma Jung presents and interprets in the second part of her aforementioned article on the animus. The animus, which appeared in the first dream as a bird-headed monster with a bubblelike body, begins same ide form in a most interest- to lose its dangerous and destructive character in a dream where he is living on the moon as the ghostly lover of a human girl. She must take a blood sacrifice to him each new moon, although in between she may live freely on the earth as a human being. As the new moon approaches, the ghostly lover turns her into a beast of prey and, as the brute, she is forced to bring the sacrifice to her lover. Through the s turned into a sacrificial bowl which, like the Ouroboros, devours and renews itself and out of the smoke of the burning blood of the rifice, however, the ghostly lover himself is victim shoots forth a many-colored flower. Ina later fantasy, this same animus, whose name interestingly enough is Amandus (literally, “to be loved”), entices the girl to enter his house, gives her wine, and takes her into a cellar with the purpose of killing her. The girl is suddenly seized with a kind of ecstasy, throws her arms round the murderer in a loving embrace which robs him of his whole power so that, after promis- ing to stand by her in the future as a helpful spirit, he dissolves into the air. Emma Jung points out that the ghostly power of the moon bridegroom is broken by the blood sacrifice (that is, by the gift of libido) and the power of the would-be murderer by the loving embrace. As we are aspiring to deal with the strictly practical side, we should try to translate this into terms of everyday life. What does it mean to give libido and love to the animus? In the first part of her article, Emma Jung has made this clear. It means to give him 34, Emma Jung, Animus and Anima, p. 33.24 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women energy, time, and attention, not only in order to get acquainted with him, but also that he may have the opportunity to express through us his spiritual and mental nature. When we give him libido and love, we consciously and intentionally place our facul- ties at his disposal in order that he may have the means of express- ing the values of his reality in our reality. (This, of course, includes all creative work, which is difficult fr many women unless they have some special gift.) wa In the first example, the girl is turned into a beast of prey. This is a process that we can observe clearly both in life and in analysis, for example, when we spoil an hour with the analyst, for instance, by getting into the animus and letting him twist everything until it is all just beside the point and we are offended, angry, and so forth. When we go home, the animus goes on tempting us: “The analyst should not have said this or that”; “he does not understand me”; “he has a preference for so-and-so,” If we give in to these ideas, it will not be long before we are fired up and completely identical with our emotions, that is, with our passionate shadow who, in turn, identifies with our animal nature. The animus opinions have turned us into a beast of prey. But if we admit and know that we let the animus catch us (in this case, facing the fact that we have lost the hour and made a nui- sance of ourselves, if not worse), we suffer the penalty and thus, by our suffering, give the blood that can transform the animus, Tf anything at all is to be gained, then it is essential to real- ize that it was the animus and his opinions that spoiled the hour against the wish of the conscious ego. The animus, it is true, will always turn the tables very neatly, and if he fails in his endeavor to make a woman blame the analyst, husband, partner, or whoever it be, then he will attempt to throw the whole balance on the woman herself. If she believes him, she will get into a state of inferiority, which is just as destructive as her emotion and rage. This blaming a woman for all that he does himself is one of his best trump cards, for he thus blinds her to his own existence and the thing for which she can really be blamed: failure to know her own animus. In his untransformed state we may always reckon with the fact that he isThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 25 irying to get us back into the “unconscious fold of mother nature” and to prevent any escape from the old order. And we also are very reluctant to leave the false security that pervades such an session. We talk a lot of love of freedom, unconscious state of po: it is true, but this love is inclined to be rather superficial and lukewarm. We also love avoiding responsibility, particularly inner responsibility, It is pleasant to be convinced that we know what to do—and no one is more convincing on this point than the ani- mus—and if once we give up accepting his guidance unquestion- ably, we shall find ourselves in constant doubt. Doubt is indeed very laming to the young, but as Jung once remarked in a seminar, later in life doubt is the beginning of wisdom. He writes: Doubt is the crown of life and all certainty is merely one- sided, For in uncertainty and doubt, truth and error come together. Doubt is life, truth is often stagnation and death When you are in doubt you have the greatest opportunity to unite the dark and the light sides of life> Extreme certainty in the animus is always a sign that only one side of hirn is constellated, for his real dual nature forms a most painful paradox. Enduring this paradox is one of the chief ways we can give the “blood” needed to transform the animus. A situation such as mentioned above, when the animus has twisted what has been said until it is all just beside the mark, is often an excellent opportunity to begin a conversation with him: We must keep an extremely open mind, however, for his logos principle is the direct opposite to relationship, and his interfer- ence, though quite wrong from our point of view, may be logical and even right from his. These conversations, therefore, are quite as difficult as any conversation in the outer world and demand a total effort, for we must see his point of view while we stand firm. in our own. 35. [Sce the essay “Animus and Eros” in this volume; see also Jung, Psychology and Alchenuy, CW, vol. 12, par. 5. Ed. 36, Jung, Dream Analysis, p. 89.26 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women THE ANIMUS IN A HUMAN LIFE (A CasE OF SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POSSESSION AND Exorcism) In order to get a real idea of the practical side of the animus, we must see him at work in a human life. For this purpose, I have taken the material from a very impressive document belonging to the second half of the sixteenth gentury. It concerns the case of a nun named Jeanne Fery ihOvas possessed at a very early age and freed of her possession in her twenties by means of an extended period of exorcisms. Part of this document is auto- biographical; the woman herself describes her experiences while she was possessed. The remainder is an account of the end of the case, including the long and weary process of the exorcism itself. The document is signed by a lawyer in the presence of the Archbishop of Cambrai as well by various confessors, doctors, and other eyewitnesses including many of the sisters in the convent where Jeanne was a nun. Perhaps the reader will be surprised to find such outlandish material in a paper which claims to be dealing with our own daily contact with the animus.” But the people in the Middle Ages still had a naive attitude toward these phenomena and were thus able to describe their experiences much more graphically and simply than our own rational prejudices would ever allow. This is cer- tainly extreme material, and it is an extreme case. Moreover, it is 37. [Dramatic and bizarre symptoms similar to that of Jeanne Fery are to found in contem- porary psychiatric case material in the areas of severe and violent abuse issues, Now, in the ‘twenty-first century, the cause of such symptoms is readily suspected to lie in the realm of repetitive and/or prolonged abuse issues. At the time of Barbara Hannah's drafting of this teat, less than fifty psychiatric disorders were recognized, Some forty to fifty years later, that is, as of the twentieth-first century, nearly four hundred disorders have been identified by the World Health Organization in'their International Classification of Diseases and by the American Psychiatric Association in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The psychiatric dissociative identity disorders, or the more popularly known mul- tiple personality disorder, first attained general professional acknowledgment toward the end of the previous century and were less known in psychiatric circles prior to this time Thus, the association of such symptoms with possible physical or sexual abuse first became popularly acknowledged in psychological literature several decades after the formulation of this text. Nevertheless, this development has no detrimental affect on the content of Barbara Hannah's essays on Jeanne Fery: In volume 2 of this work, comprehensive essays and an analysis of the material from Jeanne Fery are presented; see the discussion of dissociative identity disorders in footnote 41 and in volume 2 of this work. Ed_]The Problem of Contact with the Animus 27 , different standpoint to that of modern psy- is actually invaluable, as the main facts con- reported from a totall chology. But the cast cerning the nature of the demonlike figures of Jeanne Fery agree in essential details with the manifestations of the animus as we observe them from the standpoint of Jungian psychology today This case was evidently very famous in its day. Two editions of the report were printed in Paris in 1586, and it was translated and printed in German in Munich in 1589. Unfortunately, I have not yet been successful in obtaining a copy of the original document. but it is reported in Joseph Gérres, Die Christliche Mystik. This is, of course, a great disadvantage, but we have checked a good many of the reports given by Gérres with the original in the Acta Sanctorum and, though not infallible, we have found him to be very reliable. Gérres goes into considerable detail, but I can only give a short report of the main line of the case and then briefly point out the resemblances between Jeanne’s spirits and the ani- mus as we know him today Jeanne Fery was born about 1559 at Sore on the Sambre and later became a nun in a convent of Black Sisters at Mons en Hainaut in the diocese of Cambrai.*® Jeanne’s report begins with the statement that she knows it was the curse of her father which delivered her over to the devil. (She evidently had a very bad relationship with him; today we would call it a severe negative 38. Joseph Gorres, Die Christliche Mystik, Band V (Regensburg: Verlagsanstalt GJ Man. 1836-42), pp. 176ff, [According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Johann Joseph Gorres (1776- 1848), a professor at the University of Heidelberg and later at the University of Munich, was one of the most influential Catholic and political writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Die Christliche Mystik proved a strong stimulant to Christian faith and dealt a de- cisive blow to the superficial rationalism prevailing in many religions matters at that time in Germany. Ed.] 39, [Barbara Hannah writes: “Just before the date that this manuscript was promised, the photostats of the original French edition arrived from the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris ("Histore Admirable et Veritable des Choses advenuse & lendroict d'une Religieuse professe du convent des Socurs noires . .. .” A Pasi, chez Gilles Blaise, Libraire au mont S. Hilaire a Timage Sainte Catherine. M.D. LXXXV1). There was only time to check very roughly, but T was thus able to confirm my previous impression that Gorres gives a reliable account of the case. The original, however, is considerably longer, and therefore some interesting and subtle details have been omitted. The whole book would be worth further study.” In the extensive essay on Jeanne Fery that appears in volume 2, a discussion of information froin the original documents is presented. Ed.] 40, [The diocese covers northeastern France and western Belgium. Ed.]28 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women father complex.) She goes on to say that the devil appeared to her when she was four years old in the shape of a handsome young man who offered to become her father? As he gave her white bread and apples, she accepted his suggestion and came to regard him as her real father. While she was a child, there were two of cond alv ‘en. This lasted until she was s prevented her from these father figures, and the se feeling the strokes when she was bi twelve years old, when, tired of nvent where she was being educated, she returned to her mother, Her mother, however, soon sent her away to Mons as an apprentice to a dressmaker, Here she seems to have been left almost entirely to her own devices. At this point, the first young man appeared to her again and told her that, as she had accepted him as her father, she must now—being no longer a child—renounce her baptism and all the ceremonies of the Christian Church, ratify her earlier agreement, and promise to live according to his will. He told her that everybody lived this way, although they did not say so. He threatened her with dire punishment if she refused and promised her gold and silver and every delicious food she desired if she accepted. After a short resistance, she agreed to everything, and immediately a multitude of spirits appeared and forced her to sign the contract with her blood. (This was a shock to her as she had never seen more than two or at most three of these figures before.) They then enclosed the agreement in a pomegranate and forced her to eat it, It was marvelously sweet... up till the last bite which was more bitter than she could endure. From that time on, she took a great disliking for the Church, At times, her feet were so heavy that she could barely reach the entrance door. Nevertheless, she did not sever her relationship with it. Her spirits did not insist on her doing so, but she had to 41, [As mentioned above, Jeanne Fery’s symptoms today would most likely be ascribed to a dissociative identity disorder, multiple personality disorder, the symptoms of which tend to stem from multiple, severe, and extended childhood abuse issues. Such abuse practices both violent and sexual in nature—were, according to French forensic experts, apparently common enough in earlier centuries. Ed] 42. (This is an apt description of an introjection of significant others, that is, the assimilation of the convietions, threats, and actual sentences of perpetrators which is typical of vietims of abuse. Ed}The Problem of Contact with the Animus 29 give them her tongue so that they could control her confessions Her outer confessions were naturally entirely falsified, but, inter- estingly enough, she apparently had to confess the exact truth to one of her spirits particularly concerning any pious action or prayer and was then forced to perform severe penance. She was also obliged to take the host out of her mouth at Mass and hide it in her handkerchief, and then—although she tried to keep it in a clean place—it was spirited away.* Her spirits taught her to despise everything to do with Christianity and scoff at a God who could not save himself from the cross. She believed them implicitly, thought Christ worse than the thieves with whom he was crucified, and could no longer understand how people could revere such a God. They persuaded her to think herself the hap- piest and most privileged of mortals. After she entered the convent, she had to sign a new contract with the spirits, pledge them both her soul and body forever, and oath was repeated again on the night that she took her final vows as a nun. She also had to renounce the pope and the “evil arch- bishop” to whom she had made her Christian vows. The spirit in possession of her tongue made her very bright and witty, and, in order not to lose this gift, she gave one spirit her memory, another her reason, and a third her will. As she says, they thus entered and took up their abode in her, each in his own place. They also took possession of her body, again appearing as a legion of devils for this purpose. The so-called “spirit of blood’”—sometimes called the devil or even the god of blood—played a great role in the cer- emonies. (As becomes clear in the account of the exorcism, a spe- cial devil seems to have taken possession of each part of her body, and each had to be driven out separately by the archbishop.} They made her take part in mock communions held in their own honor and gave her “wonderful food” in the days of penance while they made her fast during Church festivals. One spirit, who she par 43, [These are examples of dissociative fugue and splinter personality clusters typical of dissociative identity disorder. Ed. | 44. [These are further diagnostic symptoms of dissociative identity disorder or the more known multiple personality disorder. Ed.]30 ‘The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women ticularly liked, seemed always to have been with her, But some of them were very cruel. So she slowly became less wholehearted in her veneration of them. She even came to think that if a sign was vouchsafed her as the sacraments were being made by the devout, she then might worship Christ as well as her other gods. This made her spirits very angry. They made her take a piece of the host and obliged her to pierce it witha knife. She writes that when she thus pierced the host, blood éved forth and the whole room was filled with a bright radiance which surrounded it. Then she was very frightened, for all her spirits fled with terrible shrieks, and she was left alone exhausted on the floor. She now realized for the first time that she had been deceived and, when she thought of the visionary sign that had been granted her, she fell into despair. The spirits then returned and, changing their tune, reproached her for her treatment of the true God— who they now said was also their God—and told her that her sins would never be forgiven, so she had better follow the example of Judas Iscariot and hang herself with her leather girdle. She gave it into their hands and told them to hang her if they pleased. But, although they tried to kill her in every way they could, their attempts were always thwarted. She also failed—despite a crowd of spirits who were helping her—at several actual attempts to kill herself. Then a time of great suffering began for Jeanne. Her spirits prevented her from confessing to a priest. For the first time, the authorities began to notice that she was not what she should be as a Christian and a nun. The matter was taken up by Louis de Berlaymont who was Archbishop and Duke of Cambria at that time. He took a most active part in her liberation, but although it was her transference to him that eventually freed her, the spirits ini- tially blinded her to him, Although she had at once felt an impulse to take refuge with him, he seemed to her to be severe and terrible, She says that although the spirits tormented her with the most hor- rible visions of hell and so forth, Mary Magdalene appeared as her protector and never gave way. Jeanne assures us that all this really happened and was neither simply fantasy nor imagination.The Problem of Contact with the Animus 31 There are still a few facts which we must take from the other part of the document. We learn there that, although she was exorcised at once, her liberation actually required two years. It entailed the most rigorous efforts on the part of the exorcists. particularly of the archbishop himself, and of several of the sisters who assisted them in their work. Incredible efforts were actually demanded from the archbishop. At one point, he was forced by Mary Magdalene to take the nun into his house where she stayed for a year in the face of the most spiteful gossip from the whole diocese. Jeanne’s own attitude varied. A vision of Mary Magdalene, who, interestingly enough, first appeared when she threw herself at the feet of the archbishop, would strengthen her wish to be freed. The spirits, however, still had a great deal of power over her, and most of the time she showed the greatest obstinacy and resistance. Her spirits pounded her with their advice to commit suicide or, according to Jeanne Fery, threw her violently about the room and even out of the window. She was always black and blue, and her health suffered so severely that one time her doctor and several others were highly concerned that she may actually not recover. At other times, her senses deserted her and she was practically out of her mind. She was taken around to all the sacred relics within reach, bathed in holy water, and constantly exor- cized. Slowly, the evil spirits had enough of such treatment and departed—all except one: the original father figure. He told her that he had no intention of deserting her. He had done everything for her—made her witty, intelligent, and so on—and that if he left her, she would regress to a mere child of four, that is, the age when she was first possessed. She was also most unwilling to be parted from him and fell at the feet of her exorcists, begging them to leave her just this one time. When this request was refused, she cried: “O what a bitter separation” and was in complete despair. She only consented when her main exorcist promised her that he would be her father and the archbishop her grandfather. When the last spirit had left her, she lay exhausted, a natural simple child who could only say: “father,” “house,” and “pretty Mary.” It required repeated blessings from the archbishop to free32 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women her tongue and the other members of her body, and even then she had to be reeducated like a child. A year of penance was then ordered during which her spirits constantly returned and tried to regain possession of her. Mary Magdalene also reappeared several times, always with a strengthening effect. Neverthele: Jeanne had constant relapses, and once the archbishop was so violently attacked by the spirits that we are told he was only just able to defend himself and escape w/ life.® The final scene (with which I would like conclude this report) is particularly interesting from our point of view. Jeanne asked all the priests and sisters who had been helping her to gather around, and then, in the presence of her protecting saint Mary Magdalene, she began her final combat with her spirits. She held a long conversation with them herself. (This is the only case T have met so far where the sufferer does the talking herself. Such con- versations are common in the books, but it is usually the exorcist who talks to the spirits.) During this conversation—which, unfor- tunately, is not reported in detail—she cried out in anguish sev- eral times, saying that the spirits were torturing her unbearably. She also begged for the help of all those present. They prayed for her unceasingly and at la although completely exhausted, she purportedly emerged from the fight healed and victorious. Shortly afterward, Mary Magdalene appeared to her once again and assured her that there would be no return, Jeanne was finally able to return to a normal life with the other nuns of her convent with the condition that the archbishop himself (although freed from all outer obligations) had to remain her confessor and spiri- tual guide for the rest of his life. As a good many of the details reported border on what could seem to be the so-called supernatural, I would like to quote a ‘0 matter how one chooses to interpret these credibly documented events, the vivid- ness ofthese psychic fgures—even if their source is strictly limited to the psyche of Fery herself—serves as a witness to the sheer force and the reality of psychic personifications independent of any personal or historical setting. That such psyehie constellations dramatt. cally affect others in the immediate environment can be witnessed today; for instance, in observing how symptoms of personality disorders, dissociative identity disorders, or acate Psychosis of one family member contaminate and distort the perceptions, convictions, and behavior of all other members of the family: Ed]The Problem of Contact with the Animus 33 short passage from Psychology and Religion. Jung gives here a succinct statement as to the standpoint of his psychology toward such material. This standpoint, he writ is exclusively phenomenological, that is, it is concerned with occurrences, events, experiments—in a word, with facts, Its truth is a fact and not a judgment. When psychology speaks, for instance, of the motif of the virgin birth, it is only con- cerned with the fact that there is such an idea, but it is not concerned with the question whether such an idea is true or false in any other sense. The idea is psychologically true inasmuch as it exists. Psychological existence is subjective in so far as an idea occurs in only one individual. But it is objective in so far as that idea is shared by a society—by a consensus gentium.® There is no doubt from the number of witnesses, in whose presence the document was signed, that this report was estab- lished by a consensus gentium. Moreover, this is only one of hundreds, or even thousands, of such reports. Therefore, we are concerned with the fact that a of the reality of these phenomena and not with the question of whether the supernatural elements in the case actually happened or not. It seems to me that Jeanne’s experience with her spirits gives us an unusually clear picture of how the animus can possess a mnsensus gentium was convinced woman and wrap her away from the world in a sort of cocoon of fantasies and opinions. But, as he represents her unconscious mind, he can simultaneously make her very intelligent, and even witty, so that she can impress her environment even though she cannot relate to it. No one noticed that there was anything wrong with Jeanne until the sign from the host threw her into a violent conflict. It was then, at that moment, that something was first noticed. It is very difficult for us to realize the extent to which 46. C. G, Jung, “Psychology and Religion” (1940). CW, vol. 1] (Princeton, N.] Princeton University Press, 1969), par. 4.34 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women mankind is possessed and that a girl like Jeanne might easily escape detection because she would not seem so very different than many other young girls or women Of course, when possession has an effect on the environ- ment which passes a certain degree—as was the case with Hitler, for instance—it is evident to everyone who stands outside the le. As Jung waites i Ps essay, “Wotan,” in 1936: charmed ci The impressive thing about the German phenomenon is that one man, who is obviously “possessed,” has infected a whole nation to such an extent that everything is set in motion and has started rolling on its course towards perdition.17 These words were written in 1936 and were amply borne out by subsequent events. But the fact that such a thing was pos- sible “in a civilized country that has long been supposed to have outgrown the Middle Ages” is a symptom of our modern state of mind which we cannot afford to overlook.** To put the blame de Vautre coté de la riviére is worse than useless, for by such a procedure we encourage the whole problem to remain in its projected form and forfeit all chance of doing anything about it in ourselves. Many women would be able to find certain parallels to Jeanne’s childhood experience with her spirits if they looked back thoughtfully on their own childhood. Some children still escape—when the outer world seems cold, unsympathetic, or unbearable—to an imaginary world peopled with figures not fully dissimilar to Jeanne’s spirits. This often seems harmless enough and may even bear wonderful fruit later in life if this inner world is subjected to hard creative work as in the case of the Bronté siblings. But when it is indulged in too long or is used as a mere escape from the knocks and disappointments of outer 47. C. G, Jung, “Wotan” (1936), in CW, vol. 10 (Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press, 1964), par. 355, 48, Ibid., par. 373. 49. [*On the other bank of the riven.” Ed.): : : The Problem of Contact with the Animus 35, life, it severs the child from her relationship to her environment and attracts a negative animus similar to Jeanne’s spirits, out- landish as this medieval language seems to our present rational way of thinking. Perhaps we can get nearer to understanding if we remember that the animus is our unconscious mind and that many of his manifestations are thoughts or opinions. Revengeful thoughts, the feeling of being misunderstood or unappreciated, achance and I will show them” jealous thoughts, a “wait till T hav sort of attitude are all manifestations of the negative aspect of our unconscious mind which is lying in wait for us today just as it was in the time of Jeanne Fery. In a discussion at the Eranos Conferences in Ascona, Jung once pointed out that the animus, in and of itself, is neither good nor evil, but is a completely dual figure. He only becomes infernal when he hooks onto egotistical demands in the human being. Jeanne, it is true, evidently had unusually few roots in the outside world. Her negative father complex does not seem to have been compensated by the mother, for all we hear about the latter is that she soon sent her away to a considerable distance. Moreover, she evidently took no trouble to see that the girl was looked after, for Jeanne tells us she was left almost completely free while she lived with the dressmaker. Her childish lapses would not have bound her quite in the same manner if they had not been ratified when she grew up: As [ tried to point out in my paper on “The Problem of Women’s Plots in The Evil Vineyard,” there are always recurring moments when we get a chance to change our course, to see what the ani- mus is doing.*! This ratification would represent such a moment: 50. Barbara Hannah is probably referring here to Jung’s lecture, “Zur Psychologies des Geistes,” that is, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,” given at the 1945 Eranos meeting in Ascona, Switzerland. The essay was later published in the Collected Works, vol. Gi, under the same title, were he states that “it can never be established with one-hundred percent certainty whether the spirit-figures in dreams are morally good. Very often they show all the signs of duplicity, if not outright malice.” He then mentions more positive ani- ‘mus figures such as the wise old man, the doctor, the magician, the priest, the teacher, grand- father, helpful dwarves or animals, and so forth. He also notes their role in the enantiodromia between good and evil. See C. G. Jung, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales” (1948), in CW, vol. 9i (Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press, 1968), par, 3974 51. [Barbara Hannah, “The Problem of Women’s Plots in The Evil Vineyard,” The Guild of36 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women Jeanne evidently knew already here that she was doing wrong, for we hear that she resisted for a time. It is interesting that this resistance was directly followed by the appearance of a “legion” of spirits. In other words, she had ratified her agreement and thus set the seal to a continuance of the infernal aspect of her animus. ss in To a lesser degree, we can observe the same proc ourselves each time we give to an animus opinion, for it is immediately followed by a che mbt other opinions. To return for a moment to our previous example of spoiling an hour with the analyst by animus opinions. Unless we can pull ourselves together and see what we have done, a whole chain of resistances, opin- ions, and arguments will automatically follow. And, as we saw, in no time we shall be identical with our animal shadow, that is, completely unconscious and possessed by the animus much Jeanne herself. Now, in order to keep her witty tongue, she was obliged to give her memory, reason, and will to three separate spirits. Every reader who has had practical experience in the field of analysis will, at all events, recognize this mechanism. In some cases, it really seems as if what was said was twisted before it reaches the patient’s consciousness. This mechanism is particularly clear as regards memory. One often has the feeling that some little demon is constantly at work taking away the important things and replacing them with inappropriate, clever, yet meaningless opinions. The language of those days seems to me particularly apt in this respect Interestingly enough, the downfall of Jeanne’s spirits and the first step toward her recovery occurs when she thinks that she might have Christ as well as her other gods and then asks for a sign. The sign, however, because it comes from the opposite pole, throws her into an unbearable conflict, into all she had been try- ing to avoid. The spirits then behave in a way that is most charac- teristic of the animus; they throw over everything they have said before and reproach her for having denied the true God. Here Pastoral Psychology, lecture no. 51 (East Dulwich: H. H. Greaves Ltd., 1948), included in volume 2 of this work. Ed.)The Problem of Contact with the Animus 37 we see how brilliantly the animus can turn the tables when it suits him to do so and how he can reduce a woman to a hopeless state of inferiority. Such devious duplicity which puts the blame on the woman no matter what happens—particularly for what he has done himself—is really the hallmark of the animus in his negative aspect. It seems to me that the most enlightening and certainly the most reassuring thing about the whole case is the intervention of Mary Magdalene, the great sinner and the great lover. Jeanne has to reach complete despair, see herself as Judas Iscariot, and try to draw the logical consequence before this figure is constellated. In other words, she must go to the brink of desperation. In psy- chological language, Mary Magdalene would be a configuration of the Self. It is true that there is no shadow figure in the material; Jeanne is, so to speak, living on the shadow level herself so that it would be, in any case, her better qualities which were repressed. Moreover, in the earlier stages of analysis, for instance, the figures of the shadow and Self often appear as one. There are two important details omitted by Gorres. First, it was at the moment when Jeanne threw herself at the feet of the archbishop that Mary Magdalene first appeared in a vision, a gesture that recalls Mary Magdalene herself washing the feet of Christ with her tears and anointing them with the precious oint- ment (Luke 7:38). This shows us that it was Jeanne’s transference to the archbishop that first released positive and healing forces in her own psyche. Gérres also omitted to note that the autobio- graphical account, which was said to have been dictated by Mary Magdalene, was written in one sitting, an example of what may have been automatic writing. Mary Magdalene fits the role of the redeemer to perfection. First, she represents the one who—as a prostitute—sinned and repented or, in psychological language, accepted the responsibil- ity for her dark side. Therefore her intervention points to the fact that Jeanne may not seek the easy way out. She must see what she has done and take the consequences. Second, Mary Magdalene, as the great lover, represents woman’s best defense against being38 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women possessed by the animus. Here, a woman takes the heart as her guiding principle and listens to her true feelings instead of having opinions about how she ought to feel. (Naturally, psychological types play a certain role here, but we have no time to enter into this aspect.) With the intervention of Mary Magdalene, Jeanne can no longer function with such dup! between the Catholic and demon-possessed worlds. Theapproach of any image of the Self always tears away the veils of hypocrisy and illusion and confronts us with what we really are. As a Catholic nun living nearly four hundred years ago, Jeanne was naturally in a very different posi- tion to what we would be today. The solution of exorcism, which is to drive out one opposite in order to cling entirely to the other, naturally strikes us today as unsatisfactory. But at that time, it was presumably the only solution, and even today there are a few cases where people seem to be possessed by “alien spirits” from the col- lective unconscious, that is, by something to which it is impossible for them to make any kind of relationship. | have heard Jung say in more than one case that the only thing to be done was to help the patient lock away a certain aspect of the animus. The practice of exorcism is by no means so much on the shelf in Church circles as one is inclined to assume. The work of the Capuchin monks in this direction, for instance, is well known and much respected, in Switzerland at any rate. I admit, however, that I was agreeably surprised to learn from his biography that the late Nugent Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln and formerly Vicar of Brighton, had practiced exorcism himself on more than one occasion. He undoubtedly took the existence of possessing demons seriously and sought the advice of experts concerning the problem of what to do with the spirits after he had cast them out. This problem- atical issue appears again and again in the medieval literature on the subject. Jeanne’s transference to the archbishop undoubtedly played the leading role in her recovery. It is interesting that the positive 52. Bishop Nugent Hicks (1872-1942); see Maurice Headlam, Bishop and Friend (London: Macdonald and Co., 1945), pp. 78f.The Problem of Contact with the Animus 39 aspect of the animus only appeared in projection. There is no mention in Gérres of Christ or of any male saint. The archbishop was more or less in the same position as a modern analyst, but of course he met the problem in the contemporary framework of the Church, and thus in a very different way than we do today. It is interesting that her spirits attacked him so intensely that he could hardly defend himself (which was always a much- dreaded effect of exorcism). There are certainly parallels today, but I should like to leave this point to the greater experience of male analysts. The fact that Jeanne herself took such an active role in the final scene of her liberation agrees with modern experience: Nothing can be done if the will to be cured is lacking, if the patient herself will not take an active role. Moreover, the fact that Jeanne was now on such terms with the people around her as to be able to ask them for their collaboration shows how far she had moved from the witty, intelligent but isolated girl who, according to her own account, apparently wished so much to impress her surroundings. She is now sufficiently related to her environment to expose herself in her weakness and has gained sufficient humil- ity to know that the people who she wished to outshine are really in a position to help her. The appearance of Mary Magdalene “herself,” who tells Jeanne that she is finally liberated, agrees with our own experi- ence, according to which it is only with the help of the Self that we can be freed from the animus in his possessive aspect. The Self, as is well known, represents a unique individual experi- ence, but at the same time, it also has a collective aspect in that it reaches far beyond the comprehension or experience of any individual. Although the animus can represent the principle of individuation, he characteristically has a purely collective stand- point. Jung has often pointed out that the animus thinks in terms of 11,000 virgins, that is, statistics and numbers. We can see 53. See Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW, vol. 12, par. 329, note 452 54, Jung wrote in 1940: “Optimists invariably hope that humanity learns by its mistakes, and that things will be better after a particularly foolish error. But history teaches us the opposite.40 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women this in our material when he tells Jeanne—on the occasion of her that “everyone lives that way, signing her first contract with him. although they, of course, do not s Like all material from the past. the story of Jeanne has mainly a comparative value. It shows us how that era regarded certain psy- chic phenomena and observable psychic facts, facts which appear ever and again down through thg’ generations in new clothes. Perhaps the most striking diffefence is the attitude toward the opposites. A Jungian psychologist would presumably have seen a value in that last spirit, realized his dual nature, and known how to help the girl transform him into a function between conscious and unconscious where, as Jung often says, the animus and anima are in their right place.® But in those days, the relativity of good and evil was still entirely unrecognized. 0. THE ARCHETYPAL BACKGROUND In the case of Jeanne Fery we must, as it were, strip off a layer of our contemporary rational prejudices. For here we witness a fragment of a human life in an age when the consensus gentium was entirely convinced of the existence of the invisible aspect of life and of the inexorable reality of compelling forces which motivate us—with or without our knowledge. But in order to get more of an idea of the nature of these forces and their effect on It swings from white to black and black to white and, when the cycle is fulfilled, it begins all ‘over again. Consciousness has increased but historical evidence shows that morality has not Tam sure, however, that this is a wrong way of looking at life, We should leam to think differently .... The individual should turn his attention to his own problem and stop worry- ing about the 11,000 virgins. They are really no business of ours. It is thinking in the wrong ay to think statistieally and to worry about the state ofthe world in twenty years time. Other people will live then and it will be their problem; we live now and are our own concern. ‘The modern way of thinking in terms of thousands and millions of people is really a neu- rosis, we simply use it as an escape from the problem of our own life. If someone really tries to answer the questions in his own life, he will have plenty to keep him employed and he will not need to interfere with other people.” C. G. Jung, “The Process of Individuation,” notes on lectures given at the Eidgendssische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, June 1939-March 1940, p. 120. [The notes from these lectures were prepared by Barbara Hannah. The lecture mentioned occurred on February 23, 1940. Ed.] 55. C, G, Jung, Visions (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 1209. [For Jung’ reference to the anima as a bridge between the two worlds, see also Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, vol. 1, p. 7. Ed.)The Problem of Contact with the Animus 4 the human being, along with the possibilities of how to cope with them, we should attempt to strip off another layer, as it were, and try to see something of the dual nature of these forces that form the collective archetypal background of each individual psyche Jung has often pointed out how well we can see this background in the innumerable myths and fairy tales which are to be found all over the world. And in this treasure trove we can find the back- ground of myriad aspects of our problem portrayed ever again in innumerable guises We will take just one relatively simple fairy tale from the Grimm brothers to illustrate this point, titled “The Goose Girl.” Marie-Louise von Franz was kind enough to draw my attention to this story. It suits our purpose particularly well, for here the role of the shadow—which was missing in the material of Jeanne Fery is clearly portrayed. The fairy tale goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was an old queen who had a beautiful daughter. She had long been widowed by her late husband. When the princess grew up, she was betrothed to a prince who lived a great distance away. Now this queen loved her child with all her heart. So when the princess's wedding day approached and her journey to that distant kingdom lay near, the elderly queen packed her most pre- cious vessels of silver and gold, her most costly trinkets and jewels, and gave everything she had to the royal dowry of her beloved daughter. The queen arranged to send along a handmaiden to accompany the princess on the journey and present her to the bridgegroom. Each was given a horse for the journey, but Falada, the horse of the king’s daughter. was most excep- tional... for he could talk." When the hour of parting had 56. Barbara Hannah writes: Marie-Louise von Franz is our expert on fairy tales at the C. G. Jung Institute, Zirich, I would like to express my gratitude to her here, for she has taught me practically all that I know concerning this issue. 57. Barbara Hannah notes: the origin and meaning of the name Falada are unknown, but according to J. Bolzte and G. Palooka, the different versions of this horses name indicate that it was a stallion and not a mare. J. Bolzte and G, Polkoka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder42 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women come, the elderly Queen Mother went into her bedroom, took a small knife, and cut her finger until it bled. Into a white handkerchief fell three drops of blood, and it was this hand- kerchief that she gave to her daughter saying: “Dear child, preserve this carefully, for it will be of way.” So the princess put the whitgiandkerchief to her bosom, mounted her horse, and, in;sbrrow, took her leave. After she had ridden half a day, she was overcome by a parching thirst and said to her maid: “Dismount please and take the golden ervice to you on your cup which you have brought for me. Do fetch some water from the stream, for I should like to drink.” “If you are thirsty,” snapped her maid, “then get off your horse and drink out of the stream yourself. | am your maid, not your servant.” So, in her thirst, the princess alighted from Falada, bent down over the water in the stream, put her lips to the water, and drank, for she was not given the golden cup. Then she turned toward the sky above and said, “Ah, heaven,” and the three drops of blood anst knew, her heart would break in two.” But the king's daughter vered, “If this your mother was humble, said nothing, and mounted her horse again They rode many miles further, but the day was long, the sun scorching, and her thirst great. So when they came again to a mountain stream, she asked her maid to dismount and fetch her water in her golden cup, for she had long ago for- given and forgotten the girl’s ill intent. But the maiden said even more haughtily that if she wished to drink, she could get it herself. Then, in her dire thirst, the king's daughter dismounted, bent over the flowing stream, put her lips to the water, and drank. And wept, turning again to the sky above and murmured, “Ah, heaven.” And the drops of blood again replied, “If this your mother knew, her heart would break in two.” As she twas leaning over the stream to drink, her eyes closed in sorrow, so great were her worries, and the hand- und Hausmeirchen der Briider Grimm, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1915).| | | | The Problem of Contact with the Animus kerchief fell out of her bosom and floated away without her noticing it. The maid, however, saw it and rejoiced, for she knew that she now had power over the bride. With the loss of the handkerchief and the three drops of blood, she knew that the princess had become weak and powerless, So when the princess returned to mount her horse, the maid announced that Falada was more suitable for her and told the princess that she would do just fine on the old nag. Then the maid demanded that the princess exchange her royal apparel for her own humble garments and compelled her to take an oath by the heavens above that she would say not one word of this to anyone at the royal court. For an oath to heaven broken would be dealt with swiftest death. Falada observed all of this and remained silent. Having donned the royal attire, the maid now mounted Falada while the true bride mounted the nag in domestic clothes. Onward they traveled over mountain and dale until they arrived at the royal palace Great rejoicings greeted them as they passed through the palace gates, and the youthful prince leapt forth, coming to the service of his bride-to-be. She was a bit more plumb than he had been told, a good bit older than he had imagined, but honorable as he was, judged he not her lack of beauty, flinched he not an eye, but lifted her from her stallion and escorted her up the broad stone stairway into the palace. The poor princess stood dumbfounded and mute, watching this all from below. The prince’s father, a proud yet elderly king, happened to be looking out of the window and there, standing forlorn in the courtyard below, was a delicate and most beautiful handmaiden. He immediately went into to the royal apart- ment and asked the bride-to-be about the girl who had accompanied her and who was now standing down below. “Oh, I picked her up on my way for a companion,” was the answer. “Just give the girl something to work at so she may not stand idle.” 4344 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women But the old king had no work for her and knew of noth- ing else better than to have the princess help a little boy tend the geese. Conrad was his name, and thus the true princess had to help a barefoot country boy take care of the squab- bling flock. Soon afterward, the false bride said to the young king, “My dearest husband, I beg youJo do me just one small favor. Lask you so little.” a He answered, “I will certainly do so, and most willingly.” “Then send for the butcher and have the head of the horse on which I rode cut off, for it vexed me maliciously on the way.” She was, of course, afraid that the horse might betray how she had mistreated the queen's daughter. She continued thereafter to badger the prince until he promised, much against his will, that it would be done. Soon the faithful Falada was to die, This came to the ears of the real princess who was deeply and hopelessly distraught. She knew there was nothing to be done, for she feared not only his certain death but, if she were to say anything at all, her own So she secretly promised the butcher her most valuable coin of pure gold if he would perform a small service for her. There was a large, darkened gateway in the shadows of the town through which she passed each morning and evening, to and fro, with the geese. Would he be so good as to nail Falada’s head above the archway so that she might see him coming and going every day. The butcher promised to do that. And thus he cut off the head, nailed it fast above that arch cast in shadow, and pocketed the gold coin. Early each morning, when she and Conrad drove their flock beneath this arch, she said: “Alas, my Falada, it causes me such sorrow to see you hanging there.” And the head would answer, “Alas, Young Queen, how ill you fare. If this your mother knew, her heart would break in two.” Then Conrad and the princess left the town and drove their geese into the countryside. When they had finally come to the meadow, she mounted a little hillock and sat downThe Problem of Contact with the Animus in the grasses to free the lovely tresses of her hair which toppled down like pure gold. Conrad, already infatuated in his assistant, delighted all the more in the shining brightness of her unraveling curls and could not resist from plucking a herd hair or two. But the princess was faster than this goos and said, “Blow thou gentle wind I say, blow Conrad's little hat away, and make him chase it here and there, until I've braided all my hair... and bound it up again.” And there came a gust of wind which tossed Conrad's hat ever further away, and it was his father’s and even his grandfather's old shepherd's cap with a lovely white feather, 30 off he scurried to fetch it. When he finally came back, she had long finished combing her hair and had pinned it up again. And he could get nothing of it. So Conrad fell into an irritated mood and refused to speak to her. And thus they watched the geese until they rose to return home in the evening. The next day, when they were driving the geese out through the dark gateway, the maiden said, “Alas, Falada, hanging there.” Falada answered, “Alas, Young Queen, how ill you fare. If this your mother knew, her heart would break in two.” And so the days and weeks passed. Out through the gates in the morning, a word with Falada, then into the pastures and up on the hillock where she would begin to comb out her hair. Conrad would try to clutch a handful, the princ would call the wind, and away his hat would fly. When he came back, her hair was tucked up beneath her bonnet and he could get not a single strand. Then the day would be spent in irritated silence and back through the arch they passed again in the evening Day after day, Conrad was thwarted in his attempts to get a single strand of her glisten- ing golden hair. So one evening after they had come home, Conrad begged for a short audience with the aging king, In frustra- tion, he expressed his wish to the king to be assigned another assistant for pasturing the geese. The king inquired about the46 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women ‘Because she reason for his request, and Conrad answere vexes me the whole day long.” The king was upset that this dainty girl could be so unruly, and wanting to protect the young lad who was always so dutiful with the royal geese, he commanded him to relate what it was that she did to him. So Conrad said, “In the morning, when we pass beneath the dark gateway out of the town, there is a horse's head on the wall, and I have heard her,sdy to this head, ‘Alas, Falada, hanging there.’ And the head replies, ‘Alas, Young Queen, how ill you fare. If this your mother knew, her heart would break in two.”” Conrad went on to relate the other details of what happened out in the fields with the geese and how she commanded a wind to come, and it came up so fast that he always had to chase his hat or it would be gone forever. The elderly king, wizened in years, informed the boy that he himself would take the matter in hand and requested the boy to drive his flock out again as usual the next morning. As soon as dawn alit across the fields, the king placed himself behind the curtains of an opened window looking out over the dark archway, and he himself then heard the maiden’s conversation with the head of Falada. Disguised as a old hunchbacked shepherd, he hurried over a shorter route out into the pastures, hid himself in a thicket on the hillock, and watched as the goose girl and the goose herd approached with their flock. When she sat on a small flat stone in the meadow, she began to unravel her hair. Then he heard her say, “Blow thou gentle wind I say, blow Conrad's little hat away, and make him chase it here and there, until 've braided all my hair .. and bound it up again.” Then came that merry gust of wind and carried off Conrad's hat so very far away that he had to scurry like a rabbit if he had any hopes at all of seeing it again. So the maiden unraveled her majestic tresses, which caught the sunlight like fireflies at night, so marvelous was the sun in her hair, and she quietly combed and plaited her tresses and rolled it up under her bonnet. All of this the king observed.| ' ‘ The Problem of Contact with the Animus Having seen enough of such affairs in his lengthy years, and well understanding that something dire was amiss, he quietly slipped away. When the goose girl came home in the evening, he called her into the royal hall and asked why she did all these things The princess quickly tried to make up some story, but never imagining that she would have to stand before a king, she was entirely unprepared. It took a little severity and deter- mination with a bit of that austere dignity of a royal king to get her to loosen up her tongue just enough to say, “I dare not mention my sorrows to anyone at the court, for unto heaven above have I sworn silence to all members and servants of the royal family. If 1 speak, 1 shall surely lose my life.” He left her no peace, but true to her wows, she refused to say a word, Much to his surprise, the king could draw noth- ing out of her. Suspecting that such sovereignty in front of a king could only be coming from royalty itself, he said, “If you will not tell anything to the members of the court, then crawl into the cool silence of the cast-iron stove that heats the grand ballroom in winter and speak your sorrows to yourself.” And he exited the chamber. In despair and sorrow, and with such a dire need to speak freely her sorrows even if to a stove, she entered the ballroom, closed the door, and crept into the large iron oven, where she began to weep and lament, sobbing forth from the depths of her heart, saying, “Here am I deserted by the whole world, and yet am a king's daughter, and a false maid has forced me to remove my royal attire, and she has taken my place with my bridegroom. But lo... T have sworn not to say aword under the heavens, and true will I be even if T have to perform menial service herding the geese until the day I die. Yet, if this my mother knew, her heart would break in two The king, naturally, had positioned himself in an adjoin- ing room and set his ear against the stovepipe so that he could carefully catch her every word. When her sobbing had subsided, he entered the royal chamber again and bade48 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women her come out of the stove. Ladies-in-waiting were called to take her at once to the royal baths, garments of a queen were brought for her, garlands of flowers set in her hair, and soon her true beauty was ever more marvelous to behold... for her suffering had made her a truly royal woman The king summoned his son and revealed to him his true bride standing now before hin The young prince rejoiced with all his heart when he&aw her beauty and her youth and grace. It was as if a millstone fell from his chest, no doubt in relief and gratitude to have found his true bride. He promptly announced the immediate preparations of a great feast to which good ministers and friends from all the land were invited. Shortly thereafter, the prince sat at the head of the table with the true princess on his left and his “bride to be” on the right. So haughty was this veritable maid, and so convinced was she of her unblemished path to glory, that she failed to take notice of the golden-tressed woman sitting just across the table. Naturally, her oversight—or maybe it was simply stance blurred vision—was to an ample extent due to the of a good quantity of ale and the fact that her focus anyway converged not on the woman across the table but on the wild boar sizzling on the spit over oak splits crackling in the royal fireplace near the heaps of potatoes, corn, and pies on side tables. When all had quenched their hunger and thirst to their hearts content—and the maid’s heart was large indeed—the old king interrupted the ruckus and proclaimed at full volume that the time had now come for a riddle to be asked, a duty that every king had to fulfill at the royal banquet in honor of his future daughter-in-law. The self-acclaimed future queen ruffled herself up to the challenge of a riddle and to the thrill of being the center of attention. “Now, when you take your post as queen,” asked the king, “what punishment would you serve to a person who betrayed you as royalty, forced you to the lowliest of labors, humiliated you, and threatened to kill you if you spoke a word.”The Problem of Contact with the Animus 49 “You ask me what punishment merits a servant who thus threats her queen?” she asked in brazen confidence. “Why such a scoundrel deserves a fate no better than to be stripped naked in front of the town, stuffed into a barrel studded with nails, harnessed to two white horses, and dragged through one street after the next until she is dead.” “A truly noble answer with which I heartily agree,” answered the king, “and a better sentence His Majesty him- self could not pronounce. 1 must say that we will always remember the wisdom of this, your one truly royal decree. It shall be fulfilled to the letter. my maiden, and this at once And off she was dragged, howling into the city square, desperately trying to understand what had gone wrong. Soon she was standing on a platform above the crowd, flailing about, trying to hide her bountiful nakedness as the roar of the crowd reached ever more inspiring levels of jubilation. One could soon hear the clippity-clopping of white horses’ hooves and the thudding wrench and bounce of the barrel battering along in the streets, while the nuptial ban- quet was celebrated with grandeur, grace, and lowe. With the sentence executed, the festivities closed, and the marriage night consummated, both prince and princess, future king and queen, reigned over their kingdom, flourishing in peace and happiness forever. As von Franz always points out in her lectures on fairy tales and myths at the C. G. Jung Institute in Ziirich, one cannot take the characters directly as pieces of an individual psychology.* They are rather archetypal, basic structural elements of the col- lective unconscious and the anticipations of individual character- istics. From this standpoint, the princess would represent a kind of prototype or archetypal foundation of the ego, the maid would represent the shadow. Conrad would be associated with the animus in his infantile and irresponsible aspect, the prince then 58. M-L. von Franz, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1997), p.40.50 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women representing the animus in his positive aspect. The king would be seen as the animus in its wizened aspect or as the collective ruling principle, and so on. Taking a look now at this fairy tale from the point of view of analytical psychology, we see that the princess has grown up at the court of a queen, that is, in the realm of the Eros principle. We hear that her father has long beep/dead and the only suggestion of the male principle in the al condition is to be found in the talking horse, Falada. In other words, instinct and animus are entirely undifferentiated and appear as one and the same. She must travel a long distance with this contamination of instinct and animus in order to find the prince, her counterpart and true animus, and to enter the realm of the Logos reigned over by the old king. The Queen Mother sends her forth not only richly equipped with a dowry, that is, with all the gifts and talents that she has bestowed on her, but also with the maid, her shadow, originally in its right place as her servant and follower. But the mother, as an experienced woman and as a mature personality, knows that this transitus from one principle to its opposite will be fraught with danger, So she takes a small knife, a symbol of the logos principle toward which the girl will be journeying, and wounds herself with it. Thus, through sacrifice and pain, she provides her daughter with three drops of blood, the juice of life, the essence of the heart and of feeling, as an elixir to protect her in all the dangers she may meet. 1 would like to remind the reader here of the great power that the blood spirit had over Jeanne Fery; he even called himself a god. But in that case, it was a symptom that the animus had invaded the very citadel of the Eros principle. Here, on the con- trary, the blood is in its right place and comes from the body of the mother. In this connection, it is also interesting to remember that it was by the help of Mary Magdalene, in one aspect the great lover, that Jeanne was first able to resist her spirits and to begin the work of liberating herself from their domination. The trouble with the shadow first begins when the princessThe Problem of Contact with the Animus 52 does not insist on the maid fetching the water from the stream while she still had the blood-sprinkled cloth and was thus in a position to do so. Now we know that a stream of water at such times represents “the river of life.” It is only when one approach- es the challenges of life that the shadow is constellated. As long as we keep out of it, it is possible to keep our innocence and integrity. But when it is time to step out into life, then the real personality, which includes the shadow, is constellated. We can observe the same weakness in ourselves each time we do not take the full responsibility for that which we are, or for that which the situation demands, We take the path of least resistance, just as the princess did when she fetched the water herself rather than take the trouble to assert herself and keep the maid in her right position. But we forget that we thus lose a piece of ourselves which then falls into the power of the unconscious, in this case the shadow. This lowers our consciousness—as it did that of the princess—and the next time our attention wanders at the critical moment, we then lose our elixir, our protection against the pre- dominance of the shadow, as the princess lost the blood-sprinkled cloth. The protection is very beautifully symbolized here by the drops of blood coming from the very heart of the Eros principle. When the princess loses this connection with the leading prin- ciple of womanhood, she delivers herself into the hands of her own shadow. She has given away the key to her position and it fol- night the day, that she must give everything else that she ry, her clothes and even her most valuable instinct and animus—into the hands of her shadow, who then takes over the leading role and reduces the prototype of the ego to the rank of her maid. The princess then does the only thing she can do to save her life. She humbly accepts the role of the servant and promises never to tell anyone what has happened. When we have allowed the shadow to take over the reins by neglecting the things that we ought to have done, we can only follow the example of the princess and practice the virtue of complete humility. We must see what we have done and accept the consequences on the same principle that, in order to regain lows.52 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women control of a skidding car, we must steer first into the skid. There is no hope of regaining control over our shadow if we make matters worse by refusing to see what has happened. The princess is wise enough to accept the situation. She behaved like a goose and she uncomplainingly becomes a “goose girl.” Her situation, however, is now very bad. The animus and the shadow are married which, as we saw, is the worst thing that gm happen. And here even her friendly instinct, Falada, is sont ft to the butcher. The archetypal situation portrayed here is one which is frequently set in motion when a woman loses the game to her shadow. The shadow not only marries the animus but destroys the woman's instinct as well. And all the princess can rescue is the head. (Talking to a head is a well-known archetypal motif: Wotan and Mimir’s head, for instance.) The head in this case represents, above all, the natural mind, a kind of inexorable ruthless truthful- ness which exists in every woman although she usually prefers to turn a deaf ear toward it. (This is the mind we have already mentioned as Christina Alberta's court of conscience and as the parrot, Old Nick, in Green Dolphin Country.) The fact that the princess rescued this mind and allowed it to speak to her daily was the act that in the end saved the situation. Many a woman's whole life depends on whether she can take this opportunity or not, for this is the inner voice that knows who she is and that will never allow her to deceive herself. Every morning, as the princess drives her geese under the dark gateway—the darkest and saddest place in her via dolorosa—she greets Falada’s head and expresses her regret that he must hang there. He hails her as “Young Queen” and reminds her that her mother’s heart would break if she knew what had happened. In other words, he pulls her up in her sin of having taken the path of least resistance and reminds her that her humility as goose girl is no final solution, He thus faces her with her whole real- ity which, as Jung emphasizes in Psychology and Alchemy, is the thing that we fear the most. As we are especially told, the 59, [Via dolorosa, “path of pain or suffering” Ed] 60. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW, vol. 12, par. 439: also pars. 240f, 325, 437n.The Problem of Contact with the Animns 53 princess was very humble and therefore hated to assert herself with the maid. But she simply cannot leave her opposite quali- ties—pride and worldly ambition—in the hands of her shadow or they will inevitably destroy her. She must remember who she is and take the responsibility for her position, or she will break her mother's heart, that is, kill both the very essence of her being and the feminine principle of Eros. This fairy tale also shows us a very beautiful piece of the archetypal foundations of the whole invaluable technique of holding conversations with our animus. If we can get things straight with our own unconscious, if we can reach the inner truth, it will often radiate out into the outer world and set things straight there in a way that we could never reach by other means. When the prince: suffering and allowed the voice of truth to reach her, she has gathered sufficient strength to meet the further travails of the day without fear. She must herd her geese, that is, keep those fluttering, snattering, and militant animals together, see that they get enough food and drink, and not allow any of them go astray. Geese are connected with Nemesis, for instance, the goddess of fate, and with the Russian arch-witch Baba Yaga. The princ through losing the blood-sprinkled cloth, has lost her connec- tion with the positive mother figure, thus it may just have been inevitable that she must become the servant of a negative mother figure and herd her geese. The story of combing her hair contains something of the same idea. In this case, her individual hairs would represent her thoughts. And Conrad, as the infantile and irresponsible ani- mus, naturally does everything he can to get her thoughts into his power and to pursue them for his own end; that would be, for instance, to fill her with animus opinions. She lost the game to her shadow on her journey to her positive animus and she must now deal with him in a less favorable aspect. Through her conversations with Falada, she remains in touch with enough of the forces of nature to help make it possible for the wind to assist her by blowing Conrad’s cap away every morning so has passed through the dark gateway ofst The Animus; The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women that he has to attend to his own affairs and she can arrange her thoughts unmolested in peace. The wind is perhaps the most primordial image that exists of the spirit per se, and here again we get a wonderful glimpse into the archetypal background of our problem.*! We see that the negative, infantile, teasing animus is powerless against th irit itself and that, if we can reach these depths in our psyche, we can reach powers that can help us when we are wade soelp ourselves. If the princess, as the prototype of the ego, had relied on rational and conscious means, she could only have quarreled with Conrad, and he would certainly have been able to obtain some of her hairs. This shows us that the direct way of argument with the animus is often unwise and only results in opinions and a hopeless feeling of defeat. Furthermore, it gives us some idea of the total effort which is required on the long path of reaching a modus vivendi with our animus. It is interesting that Conrad, when he is defeated in his plans, is the one who makes the matter known to the king at court. Thus Conrad is indirectly the means toward the solution. Here we see the dual role of the animus particularly clearly. If the princess had given way to this childish, teasing, and foolish aspect of her animus and allowed him to steal her hair, she would have been in the same position as Jeanne Fery at the beginning of her posses sion when she, apparently harmlessly, accepted the “apples and white bread” from the father figure. The princess would thus have taken the first step on a similar road to Jeanne Fery and, if she had failed to pull herself together and turn to Falada, the appar- ently harmless, if teasing, Conrad may soon have taken on a more negative or even infernal aspect. But, as she stands her ground, Conrad is obliged to apply to a higher authority and the positive side of the animus begins to come into play. This gives us some idea of the vital issues that are lying con- cealed behind the apparently unimportant matter of the thoughts 61. Barbara Hannah writes: I would like to mention just one well-known example of “the rushing mighty wind” that preceded the eloven tongues of fire when the spirit entered the Apostles at Pentecost (Acts 2:2)The Problem of Contact with the Animus 55 which pass through our mind as we go about our daily life. Every time we give way to an animus opinion, we are allowing our little Conrad to steal a hair and thus we are moving imperceptibly but surely in the direction of Jeanne Fery. Whereas each time we can think of a way of preventing this theft, of resisting the insinuating animus opinion, we move a step nearer to the solution which is waiting for us all—as it was for the princess—although in each individual case it comes in a different form. When the king had tested Conrad’s statements by concealing himself and listening to the girl’s conversation with Falada, and after he had seen the wind grant her request, he sent for the goose girl and asked her to tell him her story. She kept faith with the shadow, however, and refused to break her oath of silence. This also gives us a valuable hint as to our dealings with our own shadow side. A great many people make the mistake of believ- ing that one can integrate the shadow by deliberately living its qualities. But this mistake only leads to identification with the shadow. We change roles, so to speak, and nothing is gained. But by keeping faith with the shadow, as the princess does here, we grant it its right to exist and pay our debt to it. For, after all, the maid had spared the princess's life when she had it in her power to utterly destroy her. The king then persuades the princess to crawl into the iron stove and to tell it her troubles. The stove here presents the mother’s womb into which she must creep for rebirth or the alchemical stove where the process of transformation takes place. Here the princess may speak, for she lays her faith in the hands of the Self so that it, and not the ego, may decide. She also opens herself to the possibilities of a transformation so that the king, who has listened through the stovepipe, can now reestab- lish her in the royal rank to which she was born. He dresses her in royal apparel and arranges the wedding feast so that, at last, after much tribulation and error, she reaches the positive animus figure in the person of the king's son. 62. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW, vol. 12, pars. 338, 449.56 The Animus: The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women The false bride—the shadow—sits on his other side at the feast and pronounces her own punishment under the impression that she is condemning someone else. The shadow thus over- reaches itself and has to submit to being depotentiated. She is dragged naked in a barrel though the streets until she is dead, that is, she is reduced to an inanimate shadow that follows the ego as the ordinary shadow follows a (This motif shows a differ- ence between the archetypal€vents in fairy tales and individual cases. Archetypes never really die, so the death of an archetype means transformation.) But the princess, as the bride of the king's son, must take over the responsibility for who she is and not allow her naturally retiring disposition to mislead her again into playing only a portion of her role. CONCLUSION The fairy tale has shown us an infinitesimal fragment of the inex- haustible combinations and possibilities which lie concealed in the archetypal foundation of every individual. As Jung sd epilogue to his article, “The Psychology of the Transference”: The series of pictures [from the Rosariumn Philosophorum| that serve as our “Ariadne thread” is one of many, so that we could easily set up several other working models which would display the process of transference each in a different light But no single model would be capable of fully expressing the endless wealth of individual variations which all have their raison d'etre. The same applies to any story that one may attempt to use as an “Ariadne thread” in the problem of contact with the animus. The endless wealth of individual variations which each of us meets in our effort to make the acquaintance of the animus (as well as in our negotiations with him) are simply inexhaustible. In a paper of this length, it would be a hopeless task to show him 63. Jung, “The Psychology of the Transference,” in CW, vol. 16, par. 538.