2023-04-10 Mon 12:15 PM > [!-cf-]+ [[Related notes]] > - [[Animus]] > - [[Anima and Animus]] > - [[Core Jungian concepts - definitions, examples, images, and comparisons]] > - [[Animus serves Anima]] > When I was writing down these fantasies, I once asked myself, “What am I really doing? Certainly this has nothing to do with science. But then what is it?” Whereupon a voice within me said, “It is art.” I was astonished. It had never entered my head that what I was writing had any connection with art. Then I thought, “Perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that is not me, but which is insisting on coming through to expression.” I knew for a certainty that the voice had come from a woman. I recognized it as the voice of a patient, a talented psychopath who had a strong transference to me. She had become a living figure within my mind. > > Obviously what I was doing wasn’t science. What then could it be but art? It was as though these were the only alternatives in the world. That is the way a woman’s mind works. > > I said very emphatically to this voice that my fantasies had nothing to do with art, and I felt a great inner resistance. No voice came through, however, and I kept on writing. Then came the next assault, and again the same assertion: “That is art.” This time I caught her and said, “No, it is not art! On the contrary, it is nature,” and prepared myself for an argument. When nothing of the sort occurred, I reflected that the “woman within me” did not have the speech centers I had. And so I suggested that she use mine. She did so and came through with a long statement. > > I was greatly intrigued by the fact that a woman should interfere with me from within. My conclusion was that she must be the “soul,” in the primitive sense, and I began to speculate on the reasons why the name “anima” was given to the soul. Why was it thought of as feminine? Later I came to see that this inner feminine figure plays a typical, or archetypal, role in the unconscious of a man, and I called her the “anima.” The corresponding figure in the unconscious of woman I called the “animus.” > — [[Ref. Carl Jung 1961 - Memories, Dreams, Reflections]] (pp. 221-222) # [[Journal section]] ### 2023-12-21 Thu 19.46pm Working on [[CP 650 Thesis Development Paper final assignment 2023-12-20]] yesterday [[2023-12-20 Wed]], learned about Anima that she doesn't get into the abstract stuff. She's concrete. She comes alive in the life. Hm, but abstractions can be alive. But she is not an abstraction makign creature. She lives in the wet, in the moist air close in. A world of abstractions is a world. She can get into that. But she is not herself a purveyor of abstractions. She's an energy, A spirit. An aliveness.