Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

42 Man’s Inner Woman
them—a man can come into possession of his soul rather than be
possessed by it. As with any complex, the negative influence of the
anima is reduced by establishing a conscious relationship with it.
Jung distinguished four broad stages of the anima in the course
of a man’s psychological development. He personified these, in
accord with classical stages of eroticism, as Eve, Helen, Mary and
Sophia. 24
In the first stage, Eve, the man’s anima is completely tied up
with the mother—not necessarily his personal mother, but the archetypal
image of woman as faithful provider of nourishment, security
and love—or, indeed, the opposite. The man with an anima of
this type cannot function well without a vital connection to a
woman and is easy prey to being controlled by her. He frequently
suffers impotence or has no sexual desire at all.
In the second stage, personified in the historical figure of Helen
of Troy, the anima is a collective sexual image. She is Marlene
Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Tina Turner, Madonna, all rolled up into
one. The man under her spell is often a Don Juan who engages in
repeated sexual adventures. These will invariably be short-lived, for
two reasons: 1) he has a fickle heart—his feelings are whimsical
and often gone in the morning—and 2) no real woman can live up
to the expectations that go with this unconscious, ideal image.
The third stage of anima development Jung calls Mary. It manifests
in religious feelings and a capacity for genuine friendship with
women. The man with an anima of this kind is able to see a woman
as she is, independent of his own needs. His sexuality is integrated
into his life, not an autonomous function that drives him. He can
differentiate between love and lust. He is capable of lasting relationships
because he can tell the difference between the object of
his desire and his inner image of woman.
In the fourth stage, as Sophia (called Wisdom in the Bible), a
24 See “The Psychology of the Transference,” The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW
16, par. 361; also Marie-Louise von Franz, “The Process of Individuation,” in C.G.
Jung, Man and His Symbols, pp. 185-186.