Jung’s Anima and Animus Decoded (Jung on Masculinity and Femininity)

Summary

today I want to talk to you about two archetypes first proposed by Carl Gustavong anima and animus femininity and masculinity but it is a lot more complex than this a lot deeper and more profound and it has implications on a variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences i will delve deeper today into into Jung's thinking about these issues and how they relate to narcissism and other mental health pathologies but before we go there I would like to remind you that I am no fan of KL Gustav synchronicity collective unconscious unidentified flying objects UFOs seriously the guy sounds 90% of the time as a deranged and demented new age self-styled prophet rather than a

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  1. 00:02 today I want to talk to you about two archetypes first proposed by Carl
  2. 00:08 Gustavong anima and animus femininity and masculinity but it is a lot more complex than this a lot deeper and more profound
  3. 00:22 and it has implications on a variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences i will delve deeper today into into Jung's thinking about these issues and how they relate to narcissism and other
  4. 00:37 mental health pathologies but before we go there I would like to remind you that I am no
  5. 00:44 fan of KL Gustav synchronicity collective
  6. 00:50 unconscious unidentified flying objects UFOs
  7. 00:56 seriously the guy sounds 90% of the time as a deranged and demented new age
  8. 01:03 self-styled prophet rather than a serious psychiatrist taking into account that
  9. 01:10 Gustaf Jung has been Carl Jung has been hospitalized for psychosis early on in his life and
  10. 01:18 attributed most of his work to this period no no wonder so I'm not a fan and yet I find some of his insights especially the archetypes
  11. 01:31 to be to be of great interest and I am very sorry i grieve the fact that modern academia higher education institutions
  12. 01:42 have given up on the likes of Freud and Jung because these were clever insightful people who have had a lot to
  13. 01:50 say about the human psyche and appropo clever insightful people my
  14. 01:57 name is Sam Vaknin i'm the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited i'm also a professor of
  15. 02:03 psychology and no I don't think UFOs exist and synchronicity and the
  16. 02:09 collective unconscious are rank nonsense but today we're going to
  17. 02:15 discuss anima and animus an entirely different thing anima and animus are Yungian terms they describe the unconscious female image in
  18. 02:28 men and the unconscious male image in women now before we go any further before we study this any more deeply
  19. 02:41 um I would like to make a general comment both Ziggman Freud the Twile
  20. 02:47 mentor of Carl Gustavong and Carl Youngung himself both of them have been
  21. 02:53 mired and immersed and embedded in their own cultures and
  22. 02:59 society freud operated in Vienna at the end of the 19th century and beginning of
  23. 03:06 the 20th century a period of repressed sexuality and Victorian mores
  24. 03:14 jung worked mostly in Zurich but Switzerland was not exempt sexuality was
  25. 03:22 less of a taboo than in Vienna but gender roles were very strict and firm
  26. 03:28 Germanic in a way and so when Freud discusses
  27. 03:34 femininity or masculinity and when Jung discusses femininity and masculinity they adhere
  28. 03:42 very closely to socially assigned performative gender roles women are
  29. 03:49 women men are men yung for example says that the anima the feminine
  30. 03:58 element has to do with relatedness errors and anima and women are more
  31. 04:07 compassionate and more empathic and so on whereas rationality logos is attributed to the
  32. 04:14 to the animus to the masculine principle and to men in general so according to
  33. 04:21 Jung women are compassionate and do well on empathy and relatedness whereas men are logical and rational
  34. 04:33 these are of course stereotypes and the false equation of culturally acquired elements with inborn male and female
  35. 04:44 characteristics is a major detriment a major problem with Jung's
  36. 04:51 work let us agree on some terminology let us disambiguate some words start
  37. 04:57 with archetype jung established a branch of psychology known as analytic psychology and in
  38. 05:04 analytic psychology archetype is any one of a set of symbols which represent aspects of the psyche that derive from the accumulated
  39. 05:15 experience of mankind archetypes are inherited symbols
  40. 05:21 and they are held in what into what Jung called the collective unconscious
  41. 05:27 the archetypes serve as frames of reference with which individuals view the work and as the foundations on which
  42. 05:34 the structure of personality is built you would be surprised what
  43. 05:41 constitutes an archetype i mentioned the anima and animus they're both archetypes but also the persona the persona is the mask that we wear when we interact with other people shadow the shadow is an archetype and even the self the supreme
  44. 05:58 being the hero they're all archetypes arch archetypo images primordial images okay so now that we've understood what archetypes are they are figments of
  45. 06:10 the collective collected cumulative wisdom of humanity over the
  46. 06:16 ages let's um revert to anima the problem with anima is that there are two definitions in Jung's writings in
  47. 06:27 the earlier period anima was designated by Jung as a person's innermost
  48. 06:33 being a person's soul if you wish the part that is in closest contact with the
  49. 06:39 unconscious and so anima in the early writings of Y the early work of Yung has
  50. 06:46 nothing to do with femininity it is the antithesis it is the opposite of the persona the persona is the externally directed part of the personality whereas
  51. 06:58 the anima is the internally internalized part the part that is in touch with the
  52. 07:04 unconscious only much later in his later writings did Yung equate the anima with
  53. 07:12 an archetype the anibbound became the archetype that represents universal feminine characteristics or the
  54. 07:18 unconscious feminine aspect of the male psyche animos on the other hand was
  55. 07:25 always in in the totality of Jung's work has always been an archetype in analytical psychology animos is the archetype that represents universal masculine characteristics of the
  56. 07:37 unconscious masculine component of the female psyche anima and animus are therefore internalized figures internalized
  57. 07:48 representations so the anima is the internalized representation of a woman the quintessential woman held by men and the animos is the figure of a man at
  58. 08:00 work in a woman's psyche now because Jung held such rigid views
  59. 08:06 of gender roles because he stereotyped women and
  60. 08:12 men he regarded gender roles as a task as a burden as something that requires an investment consumes energy and
  61. 08:26 generally depletes you a gender role is performative so it requires per a per
  62. 08:33 performance and so according to you Jung all of us suffer from what we call
  63. 08:39 nowadays gender dysphoria we are assigned the gender by society we are trained like so many monkey so much so many monkeys we are
  64. 08:50 trained to become men and women boys become men girls become women
  65. 08:56 and then for the rest of our lives we perform we perform manhood we perform
  66. 09:03 masculinity or we perform femininity but it's a performance and like every performance it requires time and effort
  67. 09:11 and energy and forethought and analysis and cognitions and emotions it consumes you so it's a burden and because it's a burden there the
  68. 09:24 psyche the soul requires some kind of compensation anima anonymous are gender specific archetypal structures in the
  69. 09:36 collective unconscious that are therefore compensatory to burdensome
  70. 09:43 burdensome difficult to maintain conscious gender identities
  71. 09:50 your anima if you're a man your anima is a feminine compensation for the fact
  72. 09:58 that you have to consistently and constantly act as a man and if you're a woman your animos is a
  73. 10:06 masculine element in you which compensate for compensates for the fact
  74. 10:12 that you are not not allowed to express your inner masculinity and that you're
  75. 10:18 supposed to conform to a highly rigid and specific performative gender role
  76. 10:24 these are compensatory mechanisms does it remind you of something narcissism pathological
  77. 10:31 narcissism is a compensatory mechanism it compensates mainly for shame and
  78. 10:38 other negative effects and negative experiences in childhood abuse trauma parentification instrumentalization and so on so these specific archetypes are
  79. 10:50 compensatory and as we will see a bit later during this long lecture there is
  80. 10:56 a connection between the compensatory nature of anima and animus and the
  81. 11:02 compensatory nature of narcissism animous images primarily depict the
  82. 11:11 unconscious masculine in a woman and anima images depict the unconscious feminine in a man of course there is this assumption that there are parts of us which are suppressed and repressed by social expectations mores conventions
  83. 11:27 and norms every man has a feminine part but this feminine part is buried is
  84. 11:35 denied is refrained is repressed because men are not allowed to express their
  85. 11:43 femininity it is a no no sometimes even a taboo the notion of a buried part femininity in men and masculinity in
  86. 11:55 women this notion first appeared in print at least in K Gustavyong's Psychological Types it's a book he
  87. 12:02 published in 1921 one of the most complex and least understood features of Jung's theory is
  88. 12:09 the idea of contraexual archetypes jung wanted to conceptualize
  89. 12:16 the important complimentary roles in human psychological function functioning
  90. 12:22 yungri saw everything in terms of duality or polarity in other words his approach to
  91. 12:29 human psychology was adversarial conflictdriven even if the conflict was
  92. 12:35 subdued even if a conflict was only a background potential it was still there
  93. 12:41 the duality and the polarity implied that some parts had to submit and other
  94. 12:47 parts of human psyche had to dominate yung conceived of the anima initially as
  95. 12:55 numminous in other words a spiritual figure in a men's
  96. 13:01 unconscious strangely he did not say the same about the animus he Jung tended to
  97. 13:07 idealize femininity and women in general originally Jung associated the anima
  98. 13:13 with a mother figure and the animus with a father figure but then he transitioned
  99. 13:20 from there and he began to identify the roots of the animine animos on a broader
  100. 13:26 spectrum by 1925 Jung considered these concepts the two most comprehensive
  101. 13:33 comprehensive foundations of the psyche he said that anima and animus are the two pillars upon which the totality of human psychology is based anima
  102. 13:44 anonymous yung says are inb born as what he called virtual images and these
  103. 13:51 virtual images acquire form in I'm quoting the encounter with empirical
  104. 13:58 facts which touch the unconscious aptitude and quicken it to life Jung
  105. 14:05 1928 however it is here that we are beginning to see the failures and
  106. 14:12 mistakes in Jung's attitude what he considered to be empirical facts were
  107. 14:19 actually time relevant culturebound stereotypes perceptions of
  108. 14:26 femininity and masculinity founded on a highly specific doxastic and axiological
  109. 14:33 framework a framework of beliefs and values the Victorian period regarded women and men as totally separate assigned to them very rigid gender roles
  110. 14:45 and so Jung took these to be universal he believed
  111. 14:51 that everything he knew about femininity and masculinity as gender roles in the
  112. 14:57 19th century is universal and has applied throughout the existence of mankind which is of course profoundly counterfactual nonsensical
  113. 15:10 the initial contraexual content according to Jung is introjected from
  114. 15:16 the infant's relationship with parental figures in other words the
  115. 15:22 infant triggers the anima if the infant is a boy the boy triggers the anima in
  116. 15:29 him by relating to the mother whereas if it's a girl she triggers the
  117. 15:37 animus via her interactions with her father the mother and the father are the triggers that bring to life the energy and the capacity of the animus and the
  118. 15:50 anima however unconscious they may be unconsciously they're active mother and
  119. 15:56 the father activate them developmentally then separation from parental figures as
  120. 16:02 primary objects followed by the idealizing identification of anima and animus with figures in the environment persons of opposite sex is
  121. 16:13 what we call growing up growing up is when we transition our adima or animus to other
  122. 16:23 people who are not parental figures not mother not father but they become the receptacles and the repositories of our anima and animus in other words anima
  123. 16:35 and animus are the bridges that connect us connect us to people of the opposite sex we tend to project our anima and animus which are essentially reflections
  124. 16:48 of our parental figures we tend to project them on people of the opposite sex when we form intimate romantic uh
  125. 16:56 relationships and this of course ties very well with the narcissist
  126. 17:02 uh inexurable urgent need to bond with a
  127. 17:08 maternal figure in his intimate relationships he converts a narcissist converts his partners into maternal
  128. 17:16 figures partly by foring on them imposing on them the
  129. 17:23 anima in the narcissist if he's a male or the animus if it's a a female so what
  130. 17:30 the narcissist does the narcissist imposes the anima in him on his
  131. 17:37 potential intimate partner the anima is the face and the attributes and the
  132. 17:43 contours of his original mother we'll discuss this some other
  133. 17:49 time let's continue with anima and animals because it's a projection
  134. 17:56 because when you when you interact with a person of the opposite sex you're projecting onto her your anima or animus
  135. 18:04 because it's a projection it can be withdrawn a projection can be withdrawn
  136. 18:10 from the objects upon which it had been projected and the a perception of anima
  137. 18:18 and animus as in as intracychic objects then becomes conscious in other
  138. 18:25 words when you bond with a an intimate partner let's assume that you're male
  139. 18:31 when you bond with an intimate partner you project onto her your animan when the relationship goes s when the relationship goes sour when you break up
  140. 18:42 with your intimate partner when you divorce when you dump each other when when there's a devalue even when there's
  141. 18:49 a devalue and discard within the shared fantasy at that point something
  142. 18:55 interesting happens at that point you withdraw the
  143. 19:01 animal and as you withdraw the animal it becomes
  144. 19:07 conscious the deficiency the need the lack of an intimate partner reminds you of your feminine side you are leveraging your feminine
  145. 19:19 side to find an intimate partner unconsciously but when she's gone your
  146. 19:26 feminine side is sorely missed and it becomes conscious of course the opposite
  147. 19:32 applies in the case of a woman the woman applies the animus the masculine side to
  148. 19:38 her partner when the partner is gone when she breaks up with a partner the animus becomes um visible perceptible
  149. 19:47 and she misses the masculine presence and the animus becomes conscious
  150. 19:54 anima anonymous can act as the ego's interface to the collective unconscious
  151. 20:00 according to to Jung in most clinical instances animus personify the struggle between
  152. 20:09 culturebound collective images of masculine and feminine and the developmental urge to liberate one's
  153. 20:15 individuality from these collective norms in other words the figures of anima and animus embedded in each one of
  154. 20:22 us depending on the on our sex these figures are both the interface to
  155. 20:29 society because they conform to a large extent to cultural mores societal norms
  156. 20:37 and expectations gender roles on the one hand and on the other hand the anima and
  157. 20:43 animus are the great liberators they allow us to experience the opposite sex
  158. 20:50 sex vicariously and in defiance of collective edicts injunctions and
  159. 20:58 norms it's again a kind of gender dysphoria carried to the extreme it
  160. 21:04 leads to transgender experiences the concepts of animus
  161. 21:10 include the potential in women and men to develop both masculine and feminine elements in themselves the contraexual
  162. 21:17 archetypes fuel what used to be known as the eripal predicament part of the
  163. 21:24 edypus complex because the differentiation between the parental imagos and the animous projections leads
  164. 21:32 out of the edipal fixation i'll discuss it some other time what about narcissism
  165. 21:38 i mentioned that there is a kind of interface with narcissism nexus with narcissism a narcissistic identification with a contraexual figure may result in
  166. 21:50 positive or negative inflation in other words you could acquire as the narcissist can acquire grandiosity the narcissist can inflate
  167. 22:04 himself distort his cognitions and embed himself in a
  168. 22:10 counterfactual fantasy regarding his own self-concept by leveraging his anima or
  169. 22:19 her animus the counter contraexual figures are
  170. 22:26 helpful with grandiosity because they are projected onto a
  171. 22:34 partner in the process of idealization which is always a part of co-
  172. 22:40 idealization in other words a male narcissist would project the anima onto
  173. 22:46 an intimate partner who is a female idealize her and by idealizing her idealize himself if she's perfect that makes him perfect
  174. 22:58 alternatively if the narcissistic identification with a contraexual figure is egoistonic in other words it raises gender dysphoria for example in bisexual narcissists or homosexual narcissists this could lead to what is known as
  175. 23:14 flooding of the ego a deterioration the intrusion of unconscious contents into consciousness
  176. 23:23 into the ego and the disabling of the ego's ability to interface with reality
  177. 23:29 in to maintain reality testing so both anima and animus are psychic images each one of them is a
  178. 23:41 configuration based largely on stereotypes and gender roles culture bound and period relevant images and so on it's all true but this configuration arises from
  179. 23:53 a basic archetypal structure according to you and this archetypal structure
  180. 23:59 this archetype these archetypes are not dependent on any specific culture any specific period in history any specific society any spec specific expectations
  181. 24:10 or norms or conventions or so these archetypes are immutable as a fundamental forms which underly the feminine aspect of men and the masculine aspects of women they are
  182. 24:23 opposites as psychic components they are subliminal to consciousness they are preconcious or unconscious and they function from within the unconscious part of the psyche they are of benefit
  183. 24:37 but they can also endanger consciousness there is a process which Jung described and he called it
  184. 24:45 possession yes I told you I don't like Yung he called it possession
  185. 24:53 possession is when there is an identification of consciousness with an unconscious content or unconscious
  186. 25:00 complex or unconscious archetype in other words sometimes there's a situation
  187. 25:08 where the anima and animous archetypes are so overwhelming for whatever reason
  188. 25:14 for example unresolved business with a maternal or or paternal figure these
  189. 25:21 archetypes are active energetically active they're overwhelming they create
  190. 25:28 in therapy abreaction for example so they're overwhelming they can take over they can take over the consciousness which could lead to conscious gender
  191. 25:40 dysphoria or to conscious conflict between ma masculine and feminine
  192. 25:46 aspects and so the anima and animus operate in
  193. 25:52 relation to the dominant psychic principle of a man or a woman in other words in every man and woman we have an explicit overt visible
  194. 26:04 text which is a narrative on how to be a man how to be a woman gender roles
  195. 26:10 scripts and we follow them this is the dominant psychic principle of manhood
  196. 26:16 and womanhood and at the same time subversively like some kind of
  197. 26:23 insurgents or terrorists the animus undermine these dominant and explicit
  198. 26:30 psychic principles they kind of challenge them
  199. 26:36 in many ways again you can see the adversarial conflictual view of Jung
  200. 26:43 with regards to some processes in the psyche as the contraexual psychological
  201. 26:51 counterparts of maleness of maleness and femaleness anima and animus are there to
  202. 27:00 always destabilize the gender role always question it always propose
  203. 27:07 alternatives by projecting themselves so we could say that the
  204. 27:14 animus act as what Jung called the psychopmpi psychop is a guide the guide
  205. 27:22 of the soul a mediator between the unconscious and the conscious realms so
  206. 27:28 anima and animus are a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious they're psychopy they're not only a
  207. 27:34 bridge but they are guiding they're they provide guidance they structure they
  208. 27:40 introduce order and this is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man or a
  209. 27:47 wise woman and so the parental role of the anima and
  210. 27:54 animos or the parental sorry the parental reflections the imago parental personification the parental
  211. 28:02 embodiment of mother and father also carries with it the element of guidance
  212. 28:08 the element of sagacity the element of wisdom and the safe or secure bridge
  213. 28:17 between conscious ious and unconscious they anonymous unnecessary links with
  214. 28:23 creative possibilities and instruments of individuation remember that in the process of individuation there's a lot
  215. 28:30 of exploration a lot of experimentation individuation is about
  216. 28:36 resolving the initial doubts it's about asking yourself who am I including am I
  217. 28:42 a man or a woman am I a boy or a girl individuation is what Ericson called a
  218. 28:48 process of moratorium it's a process of um indecisiveness exploring all the
  219. 28:55 possibilities and the anima and animus are there to guide you because they are
  220. 29:02 contraexual the fact that a boy has an anima informs
  221. 29:08 the boy that he is a male and similarly the animus in the woman in the girl
  222. 29:16 informs her that she should become a woman because they are contraexual as personified components of the psyche the anima and animus connect
  223. 29:27 and involve us with life they are what Jung called personification the tendency
  224. 29:33 of psychic contents or complexes to take on a distinct personality separate from
  225. 29:40 the ego freud implied therefore that we all harbor a multiplicity of personalities
  226. 29:48 which today we call self states philip Bramberg's work stretching all the way
  227. 29:54 to my own work we assume that the personality is is a piece of fiction does not exist what we do have is a series of self
  228. 30:05 states and Jung is not far from this in his principle of personification a complete realization and integration of either image the anima or the animus it requires a partnership with the opposite
  229. 30:21 sex it is through a relationship with the opposite sex through this interpersonal exchange that we
  230. 30:29 reconcile with the anima or animus it is then that we integrate the
  231. 30:35 anima and animus there's no longer a splitting defense against the anima and animus i'm
  232. 30:41 a boy don't remind me that I have a feminine aspect it is through a relationship with a girl a man has a
  233. 30:50 relationship with a woman and he learns to accept his femininity through her
  234. 30:56 because in many ways he becomes one with her not in all ways that's unhealthy but
  235. 31:02 in some ways he becomes one with his intimate partner and this oneness this
  236. 31:09 unitary non-sympiotic nature of the healthy relationship legitimizes the
  237. 31:15 anima in the men or the animus in the woman among his definition uh
  238. 31:23 definitions of anima you remember that anima went through a major transformation in Jung's writings but
  239. 31:29 Jung summarized anima animus as soul images when he was asked to elucidate
  240. 31:35 this statement he he called each one of them the not
  241. 31:41 eye so the not eye for a man probably corresponds to something feminine and
  242. 31:48 the not I in a woman would be something masculine something outside herself something that belongs not to her but to some kind of soul or spirit which is
  243. 31:59 ostensibly according to Jung the collective spirituality of humankind
  244. 32:05 transmitted from one generation to the next and actually embedded in the brain the anima or animus as the case may be it's a factor which happens to happens
  245. 32:16 to to an the individual it's an a priority element of moods reactions
  246. 32:22 impulses in a man of commitments beliefs and inspirations in a woman in both of
  247. 32:28 them there's something that prompts you to take cognizance of whatever is spontaneous and meaningful in your
  248. 32:35 psychic life they anima and animus are therefore found sources of
  249. 32:42 self-awareness and creativity because they're constantly there nagging at you if you will and they give rise to attributes and traits and behaviors even
  250. 32:55 which are alien to your gender role um you're a man you're a man's man and
  251. 33:01 suddenly you're tender and soft and kind and compassionate and and empathic and
  252. 33:07 that doesn't sit well with the classic gender role of a macho man you cry or
  253. 33:13 you do something that is your animal similarly you're a woman and suddenly you are tough competitive ambitious um and um disempathic and rational and
  254. 33:25 logical and so on and that doesn't sit well with the stereotype or the gender role of a woman and that is your
  255. 33:31 masculine side behind the animus Jung said lies the archetype of many just as
  256. 33:38 the anima is the archetype of life itself so there's a layer there's a layer which is the anima and anima is identified with what Freud would have called libido the force of
  257. 33:50 life the alarm vital and superimposed on it is the interpretation of life the exploration of life and making sense and meaning of
  258. 34:01 life and that is the men's preserve that is a masculine trait of course you can see the prejudices of yung in action
  259. 34:10 possession by either Anima or animus remember possession is when unconscious content takes over consciousness
  260. 34:17 possession by either animala or animals it transforms the personality of course because it gives prominence to traits
  261. 34:23 which are seen psychologically as traits of the opposite sex either way a person
  262. 34:29 loses individuality and then in either case both charm and values
  263. 34:37 so if there is a possession if the anima side in a man takes over he becomes
  264. 34:44 dominated by it and by the aeros principle so he becomes restless promiscuous moody sentimental exactly like the stereotypical woman of the 19th
  265. 34:55 century with her inevitable hysteria whereas uh and so this is
  266. 35:02 unconstrained overwhelming disregulating emotionality that's how Jung saw it of
  267. 35:08 course which is all wrong similarly Jung believed that if a woman subjected to is
  268. 35:14 subjected to the dominance control or invasion hostile takeover of the animus
  269. 35:21 and logos um she becomes bossy managerial obstinate ruthless and
  270. 35:28 doineering either way they become one-sided they become
  271. 35:35 one-dimensional he he implied that when the animus and animal take over it's a reductionist process it's not a healthy thing um these people who are possessed
  272. 35:48 by the animals or or animals in a woman animal in a man these people are
  273. 35:54 inferior because they're gullible they become they become seduced other people other
  274. 36:02 forms meaningless attachments can take over them second rate thinking
  275. 36:09 um marching forward under crazy unrelated conviction in short when
  276. 36:16 you're taken over when you're taken over by these archetypes when you're a man and taken
  277. 36:22 over by the feminine anima a woman taken over by the masculine anima you are
  278. 36:28 reduced to a caricature of the opposite sex and your functionality deteriorates
  279. 36:35 dramatically james Hillman wrote a book titled Anima an anatomy of a personified notion 1972 I think then there was an addition in 1975 if I'm not mistaken and
  280. 36:47 he says that he wrote that um it is she who personifies the
  281. 36:54 unconsciousness of our entire western culture and maybe the image by which we will be liberated imaginatively positive or natural animus in contrast to the negative and acquired
  282. 37:07 animus suggested in 1981 in other words both Ilman and Ulanov introduced
  283. 37:16 um or expanded the remit of animus to the collective social sphere whereas Ulanov
  284. 37:24 said that uh there are two types of animus
  285. 37:30 positive and natural as distinct from negative and acquired implying that
  286. 37:36 women have a negative acquired animus whereas men have a positive and natural animus um it's a a an indirect criticism of feminism of course while Hillman said
  287. 37:49 that anima is actually should be the organizing principle because through anima we're going to be liberated and
  288. 37:56 become creative and imaginative the anima can be considered as a general form an archetype or also as a particular embodiment of the archetype in a specific individual a kind of
  289. 38:08 personal complex so back to archetypes the archetype is a
  290. 38:14 psychological motivational pattern it is inherent in the human human nature of all people as Jung put it it's a typical basic form of certain ever recurring
  291. 38:27 psychic experiences it's a uni it's it has a universal aspect it's a universal
  292. 38:33 and it has features which are also universal and Jungu referred to or related to
  293. 38:39 myths mythology where mythology he said distills cultural expressions of
  294. 38:45 archetypal motives but for any archetype each individual has his or her particular version it is not true that my
  295. 38:57 archetypes are the same as your archetypes every individual modifies the archetype somehow amends
  296. 39:05 it adapts it to conform to the personality of the individual so it's a
  297. 39:11 complex that varies from one person to the next depending on life experiences
  298. 39:17 constitutional psychological factors and so on and this complex the animus
  299. 39:24 archetypes by definition they are kind of complexes this complex is uh stable
  300. 39:30 because it's attitudinal emotional motivational it forms a pattern within
  301. 39:36 the overall personality and across the lifespan so let's translate this into
  302. 39:43 daily life in any relationship with a woman a man will tend to project
  303. 39:49 elements of the anima complex and he will project it as a kind of image
  304. 39:56 in a way he will re to retouch the woman like as if photoshop photoshop the woman
  305. 40:03 it's very very close to idealization it's it's hair thin
  306. 40:10 um boundary between them the difference between this and idealization is that
  307. 40:17 when the narcissist projects elements of hisma complex he idealizes the woman he
  308. 40:24 converts her into a perfect being a godlike entity with with perfect
  309. 40:31 elements and so on whereas when a healthy person projects the animal complex it is not split it is not all
  310. 40:38 good or all bad it's not idealized or devalued it's very realistic the anima
  311. 40:44 picture the anima complex in a healthy person includes both negative and positive aspects of femininity it's a
  312. 40:52 gray zone not black and white and then this animal complex is projected onto
  313. 40:58 the woman and from that moment on the man perceives the woman through a filter
  314. 41:04 it's like a lens that reveals only those aspects of the real woman that conform to the unconscious prototype of his in other words the anima distorts the true
  315. 41:16 picture the true information about the intimate the female intimate partner it
  316. 41:23 renders her a clone a close replica of the anima complex within the men of course the opposite applies to a
  317. 41:34 woman when a woman bonds or falls in love with a man or wishes to form an intimate or romantic relationship with a man she projects onto the man her animus
  318. 41:45 complex and from that moment on she sees the man as an extension of or outside
  319. 41:51 reflection of her animus complex so when we fall in love with other
  320. 41:57 people we actually fall in love with archetypes within our unconscious and
  321. 42:05 these archetypes have been formed by our parents the mother forms the anima the
  322. 42:11 father forms the animus there's a subtle skewing of attitudes and responses to
  323. 42:18 the intimate partner based not on how he or she are actually are or even not on
  324. 42:25 how he or she present themselves but on the anima image that is projected onto
  325. 42:31 them or the animous image that is projected onto them these images these submerged archetypes partly conscious partly unconscious affect the
  326. 42:43 interpretation of how we perceive the presentation of the other when we come
  327. 42:50 across a potential intimate partner she presents herself but then immediately she's distorted by the male the men's
  328. 42:58 anima similarly the woman distorts potentially male partner by using the
  329. 43:05 animus image so you see the close
  330. 43:11 proximity between this and the mechanisms of snapshotting and
  331. 43:17 introjection in the narcissistic shared fantasy what the narcissist does it projects
  332. 43:24 onto the intimate partner a diseased imperfect and incomplete
  333. 43:31 animal the narcissist mother is a dead mother dead mother she has been
  334. 43:37 emotionally absent neglectful doineering overprotective parentifying instrumentalizing abusive traumatizing and so on a bad mother not good enough
  335. 43:48 mother and this mother creates in the child a deformed defective
  336. 43:56 deficient dysfunctional sick animal when the child grows up and
  337. 44:03 becomes a narcissist the child the this adult
  338. 44:09 projects this diseased animal onto a potential intimate partner
  339. 44:16 and expects her to conform to this sickness to this projected
  340. 44:23 sickness you could put it in simple terms the narcissist as a child had a bad mother and a bad role model for what it is to be
  341. 44:36 female the first female the child comes across is the mother if the mother is the wrong sort of mother if the mother
  342. 44:43 is a bad mother then the child will develop an image of femininity which is wrong which is sick which is bad which is dysfunctional the anim would be inoperative would be all
  343. 44:56 wrong and when this child grows up and teams up some let's assume it's a man teams up with a woman and wants to form an intimate romantic relationship the child the this kind of man would project
  344. 45:08 onto her the wrong anima the defective anima that had been created in his early
  345. 45:16 childhood and this anima will distort the perception of the intimate
  346. 45:22 partner and this is exactly the mechanism that is in operation in the
  347. 45:28 shared fantasy so relating to a real woman requires the man to try to relate
  348. 45:36 to disown to the disowned part of himself which is his female side his
  349. 45:42 femininity this and this generates very positive dynamics because it drives the man
  350. 45:50 towards a higher level of integration within his conflicted self-experience every man has an animma part the anima part is the woman it's
  351. 46:01 feminine the man disavows this part rejects this part denies this part but
  352. 46:09 when the man comes across a woman falls in love with her he projects onto her
  353. 46:15 this rejected part and because he loves her he learns to love it to love this
  354. 46:21 part as well he learns to love his anima as well and by loving it he integrates
  355. 46:28 it with the rest of his personality and he becomes an allrounded figure partly
  356. 46:34 masculine partly feminine the gender role is the same he's a man and he acts
  357. 46:40 as a man and thinks as a man and everything but he allows himself to experience his feminine side he wants to
  358. 46:47 cry he cries he wants to um he wants to act maternally with his newborn baby he
  359. 46:54 does he's not ashamed he's not afraid he doesn't reject this side of him
  360. 47:01 fataroli in 2002 wrote a book titled healing the soul in the age of the brain becoming conscious in an unconscious world was published by Viking in New York and he wrote when the projection of the
  361. 47:17 subsequent battle with the anima bearer happen in a patient's relationship with his
  362. 47:23 psychoanalyst as sooner or later they always do this constitutes the
  363. 47:29 transference I'm going to read it again because it's a profound insight when the projection of the anima
  364. 47:37 and the subsequent battle with the bearer of the animal happen in the patient's relationship with the psychoanalyst this is what we call
  365. 47:49 transference transference says fatoli is usually understood as the tendency to react to another person as if he or she were an
  366. 48:00 emotionally important figure from childhood the idea being that feelings about a person from the past memory of which is being resisted are transferred onto a person in the present in addition and more significantly transference is
  367. 48:16 the tendency to react to another person as if he or she were an emotionally important but unconscious part of oneself here we recognize in the other person um something that we cannot tolerate recognizing in ourselves so that our
  368. 48:33 feelings about something internal are transferred onto someone or something external the philosopher Kigo identified this latter dimension of transference without
  369. 48:45 calling it that as an inverted image of the internal in which in which what is
  370. 48:51 threatening to emerge into awareness from inside is experienced as something pressing in from the outside well said as you see anima
  371. 49:03 anonymous are critical functions they're archetypes they're buried in the unconscious but they're critical
  372. 49:09 functions in all interpersonal relationships and they're the bridge
  373. 49:16 between some very important parts of the unconscious and consciousness in this sense I think Yung put his finger on on some important issues i completely
  374. 49:28 differ with his structural model with his dynamics with his thinking i'm not a
  375. 49:35 young but I think this is a profound insight
  376. 49:41 and is easily applicable and allows us to gain insight
  377. 49:47 into the narcissistic condition i think it provides us with added penetration
  378. 49:53 and and aha moments when it comes to the narcissist some unconscious structures
  379. 49:59 in narcissism are distorted beyond redemption and these are the ones that that connect
  380. 50:08 the narcissist to other people and so inevitably these submerged unconscious sick archetypal
  381. 50:19 structures infect the totality of the interpersonal interaction and render it
  382. 50:25 as distorted and thwarted as the narcissist in a world
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Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

today I want to talk to you about two archetypes first proposed by Carl Gustavong anima and animus femininity and masculinity but it is a lot more complex than this a lot deeper and more profound and it has implications on a variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences i will delve deeper today into into Jung's thinking about these issues and how they relate to narcissism and other mental health pathologies but before we go there I would like to remind you that I am no fan of KL Gustav synchronicity collective unconscious unidentified flying objects UFOs seriously the guy sounds 90% of the time as a deranged and demented new age self-styled prophet rather than a

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