Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

Man’s Inner Woman 45
identity with the anima because, when the ego is not differentiated
from the persona, it can have no conscious relation to the unconscious
processes. Consequently it is these processes, it is identical
with them. Anyone who is himself his outward role will infallibly
succumb to the inner processes; he will either frustrate his outward
role by absolute inner necessity or else reduce it to absurdity, by a
process of enantiodromia. 27 He can no longer keep to his individual
way, and his life runs into one deadlock after another. Moreover, the
anima is inevitably projected upon a real object, with which he gets
into a relation of almost total dependence. 28
Thus it is essential for a man to distinguish between who he is
and who he appears to be. Symptomatically, in fact, there is no significant
difference between persona identification and anima possession;
both are indications of unconsciousness.
27 Enantiodromia is a term originally coined by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
Literally it means “running counter to,” referring to the emergence of the unconscious
opposite in the course of time.
28 Ibid., par. 807.