Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

Man’s Inner Woman 43
man’s anima functions as a guide to the inner life, mediating to
consciousness the contents of the unconscious. Sophia is behind the
need to grapple with the grand philosophical issues, the search for
meaning. She is Beatrice in Dante’s Inferno, and the creative muse
in any artist’s life. She is a natural mate for the archetypal “wise old
man” in the male psyche. The sexuality of a man at this stage incorporates
a spiritual dimension.
Theoretically, a man’s anima development proceeds through
these stages as he grows older. When the possibilities of one have
been exhausted—which is to say, when adaptation to oneself and
outer circumstances requires it—the psyche stimulates the move to
the next stage.
In fact, the transition from one stage to another seldom happens
without a struggle, for the psyche not only promotes and supports
growth, it is also, paradoxically, conservative and loath to give up
what it knows. Hence a psychological crisis is commonly precipitated
when there is a pressing need for a man to move from one
stage to the next.
For that matter, a man may have periodic contact with any number
of anima images, at any time of life, depending on what is required
to compensate the current dominant conscious attitude. The
reality is that psychologically men live in a harem. Any man may
observe this for himself by paying close attention to his dreams and
fantasies. His soul-image appears in many different forms, as myriad
as the expressions of an actual woman’s femininity.
In subhuman guise, the anima may manifest as snake, toad, cat
or bird; on a slightly higher level, as nixie, pixie, mermaid. In human
form—to mention only a few personifications modeled on
goddesses in Greek mythology—the anima may appear as Hera,
consort and queen; Demeter/Persephone, the mother-daughter team;
Aphrodite, the lover; Pallas Athene, carrier of culture and protectress
of heroes; Artemis, the stand-offish huntress; and Hecate, ruler
in the netherworld of magic.
The assimilation of a particular anima-image results in its death,