Carl Jung - Archetypes

Carl Jung > Archetypes

Animus

Animus is the archetype of spirit or intellectual power in women. This is the male aspect of the female psyche, as the anima is the female aspect of male psyche. This spirit in women is projected in various male images and characters like great artists, heroes, warriors, sportsmen, philosopher and so forth. When identified with the animus, women develop an excessive intellectual drive which may end up in criticism and stubbornness.

There is a very important study on the animus archetype in woman elaborated by Jung's wife Ema. Thus she wrote: "What we women have to overcome in our relation to the animus is not pride but lack of self-confidence and the resistance of inertia. For us, it is not as though we had to demean ourselves, but as if we had to lift ourselves" (Animus and Anima , Spring Publications, Dallas, Texas, 1978).

Jung about Animus:
Woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. This results in a considerable psychological difference between men and women, and accordingly I have called the projection-making factor in women the animus, which means mind or spirit. (From The Syzygy: Anima and Animus, Collected Works, 9ii, par. 28f.)

The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman's ancestral experiences of man - and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being, not in the sense of masculine creativity, but in the sense that he brings forth something we might call... the spermatic word. (From Anima and Animus, Collected Works 7, par. 336.)

<< Back to Archetypes