Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

108 Bringing Fantasies into Life
nothing of the sort occurred, I reflected that the “woman within me”
did not have the speech centres I had. And so I suggested that she
use mine. She did so and came through with a long statement.
Intrigued by the fact that a woman could interfere with him from
within, Jung concluded that she must be his “soul,” in the primitive
sense of the word, traditionally thought of as feminine.
I came to see that this inner feminine figure plays a typical, or archetypical,
role in the unconscious of a man . . . . I called her the “anima.”
The corresponding figure in a woman I called the “animus.”
Jung also realized that by personifying that inner voice he was
less likely to be seduced into believing he was something he wasn’t
(i.e., an artist). In effect, he was writing letters to his anima, a part
of himself with a viewpoint different from his conscious one. And
by writing out, or sculpting, his fantasies, he gave her no chance “to
twist them into intrigues”:
If I had taken these fantasies of the unconscious as art, they would
have carried no more conviction than visual perceptions, as if I were
watching a movie. I would have felt no moral obligation towards
them. The anima might then have easily seduced me into believing
that I was a misunderstood artist, and that my so-called artistic nature
gave me the right to neglect reality. If I had followed her voice,
she would in all probability have said to me one day, “Do you imagine
the nonsense you’re engaged in is really art? Not a bit.” 106
The object of active imagination, then, is to give a voice to sides
of the personality one is ordinarily not aware of—to establish a line
of communication between consciousness and the unconscious. It is
not necessary to interpret what the material “means.” You do it and
you live with it. Something goes on between you and what you create,
and it doesn’t need to be put into words to be effective.
106 Ibid., Find