The Anima
The contrasexual soul-image in a man.
The Anima is, in Jung's framing, the unconscious feminine soul-image in a man — an autonomous personification of his inner contrasexual nature, mediating between the conscious ego and the deeper unconscious. He called her the archetype of life.
- Eros
- Mood
- Numinosity
- Mediation
- Relatedness
Jung formally introduced the anima in 'Marriage as a Psychological Relationship' (1925, CW 17) and gave the mature account in Aion (CW 9ii). She is the archetypal deposit of 'woman' in the male psyche — initially fused with the personal mother, projected back onto her, and only later (through what Jung called individuation) recognized as an interior figure.
He sketched four developmental stages, often illustrated by Eve (the purely biological/maternal anima), Helen of Troy (the romantic and sexual), Mary (the spiritualized capacity for devotion and friendship), and Sophia (Wisdom — the anima as guide to the inner life). Integrated, she becomes what Jung in Aion (§33) calls 'the Eros of consciousness,' granting feeling-judgment and contact with the symbolic life. The work is not to suppress her but to enter into conscious dialogue. Jung's framing here is heteronormative and tied to the gender categories of his time; contemporary post-Jungian practice treats anima as a soul-image present in psyches regardless of sex.
Unintegrated, the Anima rules through moods — unaccountable irritability, sentimentality, sulks, vague resentments — and through compulsive projection onto actual women, who are then loved as carriers of an inner image that reality cannot sustain.