Anima and animus
Jung's term for an inner image of the 'other' (in his framing, the feminine in a man and the masculine in a woman) that is projected onto real people and shapes fascination and falling in love. Many modern Jungians treat it as the image of whatever qualities a person has not developed in themselves, regardless of gender.
What drives it
Explains instant fascination with someone who seems to carry a missing part of oneself, and the bitter disappointment when the real person does not match the image. Useful for recognising infatuations and sudden idealisations.
How it shows
Work
The leader captivated by a new hire who seems to embody the intuition, boldness or emotional depth he lacks, who later turns on them. Moods or sudden opinionated certainty that seem unlike the person, which Jung called being 'possessed' by anima or animus.
Relationships
Falling for an image rather than a person: certainty within days that this is 'the one', followed by disillusionment. The partner feels cast in a role: muse, rescuer, oracle.
Self
When you are fascinated by someone, list the qualities you see in them and ask which you lack or have suppressed. The intensity is often about those qualities, not about the person.
What tells it apart
Limerence: Limerence is defined by intrusive thinking and craving for reciprocation; the anima/animus lens looks at what is being projected. Ask what draws them: if the list reads like their own unlived traits, think projection of anima or animus.
Idealisation: Idealisation exaggerates good qualities in anyone (a boss, a guru, a partner); anima/animus projection carries a specific sense of complementarity, the feeling that the other completes oneself.
A test
Ask what this person makes them feel they could become; if the answer describes their own undeveloped side, the projection is at work.
Questions to carry
- When fascinated by someone, what does the person feel they could become in that company?
- Who have I fallen for because of a part of myself I hadn’t lived yet?
Go deeper
- Read: Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung and colleagues, 1964. The one book Jung planned for general readers, finished by his colleagues after his death.
- Watch: When Someone Lives Too Much in Your Mind, Jung at Night, YouTube. A narrated take on why one person can take up so much room in our thoughts, in Jung’s terms. We haven’t checked its quotes against Jung’s own writing.
How strong the research is
weak. Little empirical support, and widely criticised for resting on fixed gender stereotypes; still used in Jungian practice as a way of describing the image projected onto a person one becomes fascinated by.
Where it comes from
Carl Jung, 1920s; developed in Aion, 1951; revised by later Jungians including Emma Jung and James Hillman
On the family tree: Carl Jung
Sources
- C.G. Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, Joseph L. Henderson, Jolande Jacobi and Aniela Jaffé, Man and His Symbols (1964)