Anima and Animus

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You should find a way to realize your shadow in your life somehow. Next comes the problem of gender. Every man has to be a manly man, and all of the things that society doesn’t allow him to develop he attributes to the feminine side. These parts of himself he represses in his unconscious. This is the counterplayer to the persona. They become what Jung calls the anima: the female ideal in the masculine unconscious.

Likewise, the woman carries the animus in her unconscious: the male aspect in herself. She’s a woman, and the society gives her certain things to do. All that is in her that she has associated with the masculine mode of life is repressed within the animus. The interesting thing is that-biologically and psychologically-we
have both sexes in us; yet in all human societies, one is allowed to accent
only one. The other is internalized within us. Furthermore, our imagery and notions of the other are functions of our biography. This biography includes two aspects. One is general to the human species: nearly everybody has a mother and a father. The other aspect is peculiar to yourself: that your mother should have been as she was and your father as he was. There is a specification of the male and female roles as experienced, and this has com- mitted, has determined, the quality of our experience of these great, great bases which everyone experiences. Everyone experiences  Mother, everyone experiences Father.

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