The discussion on Kaleidoscope Roger mentions can be found here:
http://kaleidoscope-forum.org/talk/index.php?topic=1275.0.
It was originally an offshoot of a discussion about Jung's "Amfortas Wound" as a splintering experience that led to his type theory. This notion belongs to John Ryan Haule. His essay on the subject can be found here:
http://www.jrhaule.net/wound.html.
My original response to Remo's claim that the anima and animus are "thinking type" phenomena is copied below.
-Matt
Dear Remo et al,
I feel I should offer some alternative viewpoints here, as someone who identifies as an "Intuitive-Feeling Type" by Jungian standards.
That is, I would consider myself an Intuitive-Feeling type because my first response to everything comes from intuition (I see the pattern of connectedness in a flash) immediately followed, or perhaps simultaneously accompanied by, feeling (sensing the value of a thing or of the intuited pattern, knowing its worth).
By contrast, I had to work very hard to develop my "thinking function" through my apprenticeship as a writer. So, I intuit-feel and then I think it up into language, into an idea. Sensation has come even later (but it seems to operate "pre-cognitively", much like intuition and feeling).
I recognize that as a "feeling type" my way of thinking (I'm using this term out of convenience, it isn't meant as a "typed thinking", and I don't want to engage in an argument about semantics here) is often quite unlike that of most of the Jungians I've encountered. In fact, I recognize many of the similarities between my way of thinking/knowing and Remo's.
But, in spite of this, I have to disagree with Remo's notion that the anima is a thinking type phenomenon. I am also disinclined to draw a strict distinction between the anima and the anima mundi. In my personal experience, these archetypes are absolutely the same thing . . . but looked at from two different stages in the process.
As Remo says of "feeling types", I have not had a negative experience of the anima. My first anima dream (at the age of about 18) depicted her as a mad women who pinned down my arm and injected me with a syringe filled with mercury (although, I had "signed myself up" for this procedure). After that, she was an entirely positive figure.
Drawing primarily from my own experience with the anima, I have come to the following general conclusions:
1.) She possessed a complimentary personality to my conscious personality, and was therefore much more practical (sensation type) than me. Although, she seemed to have fully developed all of her "functions". So she also possessed a more cultivated/conscious intuition and feeling than I did. She was non-intellectual, but certainly very intelligent (was able to discriminate/differentiate ideas based on their value). She seemed to possess skills and characteristics that were within my realm of conscious integration.
2.) She charged me with a powerful feeling that was both sexual and mystical, very numinous . . . and I was always able to identify her instantly in my dreams due to this profound attraction.
3.) Her main message was, "Pay attention to me, not to yourself/your ego." That is, she was always in greater need than I was, and as the anima work progressed, I stopped seeing her as a partner who was there for me, there to complete me, and started seeing her as a character/being that I needed to invest my empathy and energy in. It was I who had to give myself to her.
4.) As I committed to this giving/sacrifice, what I call the "anima work" progressed in the following way: (anima seen as) sexual/mysterious partner (desire driven) --> spiritual/mystical partner (working for the same mystical goal) --> teacher/Sophia/goddess of wisdom --> anima mundi or maternal Great Goddess.
5.) As the anima transforms into a figure very much like the Self, the individual is led toward a dual sacrifice (which is really the only "hard" thing about the anima work, as the rest flows instinctually as long as one gives oneself over to the process). On one hand, the ego's will is sacrificed for the will of the Self. Simultaneously, the anima-as-partner is sacrificed, dies, or is, as Jung phrased it "depotentiated".
I interpret the depotentiation of the anima as an acceptance by the male ego that it/he must now bear the burden of "translating the Self" and carrying the will of the Self into the World. Part of this is refusing to abide by a "providential relationship" to the unconscious or the Self, i.e., one in which we "turn inward" for sustenance or "manna". This is the sacrifice of the dependency on the "maternal unconscious". It shouldn't be confused with a "heroic defeat" of the Mother . . . that is, I think, a patriarchal fantasy largely accentuated as a compensation for fear that one is overly dependent on the ("devouring") Mother.
To make the "healthy" split from the maternal unconscious, one has to be able to acknowledge that one is always in some way dependent on it for all libido . . . but instead of usurping that libido for the ego's favorite delusions and flights and self-gratifications, one seeks to consciously direct the libido in ways that the Self approves of or desires.
I had two "detachment" or depotentiation dreams that helped me understand this. In one, I was the lover of the daughter of God (portrayed as a mafia "Godfather"). She was abducted by a strange mystical cult. I recovered her once, but she was taken again. As I continued to search for her, a booming voice (of God) assaulted me from the heavens and told me I must desist and accept that this was the way things had to be.
In the other depotentiation dream, I met my anima in an empty museum in which a "great work" I had made was cordoned off and dark (depotentiated). I went with her into a bathroom where she held me on her lap and gave me her breast to suck (she was a hermaphrodite in this dream, or as Remo says, "The queen with a phallus"). Then she told me that she was going away (or dying) and that she would never return . . . but that I knew that this had to be so. I grudgingly accepted this, and she disappeared.
In fact, it was so. I have never had another full blown anima dream since this one. Anima-like characters still show up in my dreams occasionally, but they are always minor, background characters and usually exude a quality of "old friend" I hadn't seen in many years.
I believe that this series of dreams (and the corresponding experience/consciousness) follows the alchemical process (especially as depicted in the first opus of the Rosarium Philosophorum emblems). That is, the peak of the anima experience ends at the coniunctio, after which she is depotentiated. The post-coniunctio stages (e.g., the putrefactio and purification/albedo), I believe represent the painstaking stage of "sorting out" the whole anima experience and differentiating the ego from the Self. This differentiation has to be performed in order for the ego to have a healthy, conscious relationship to the Self. Insomuch as the ego is Self-identified (or inflated), it will be usurping the Self's libido for egoic interests.
Trying to usurp the Self (or ask for it to provide for the ego) after the coniunctio is likely only to result in depression (putrefactio), as there won't be enough energy coming to the ego in the form of "manna" to sustain a totally functional life. Therefore, one must "purify" the ego (from inflated archetypal identifications) in order for the "soul" to return and for the first rebirth (depicted sometimes as the white stone or white tincture) to occur. I see this as setting up a polaric relationship between ego and Self that functions like a battery for libido.
At this point, the ego has assumed the "job" of the anima . . . as facilitator and translator of the Self.
I have seen no evidence that this process is much different in women (with the animus) as it is in men (with the anima). In fact, I think there are many indications that this entire process (which is often thought of as mystical or spiritual) is deeply biological. The animi archetype, then, is the archetype that draws the individual away from a parental unconscious on which s/he is dependent and uses sexual attraction to reconnect the individual to a partner-type relationship to the unconscious/Self.
As this archetype is severely projected (when it is activated), it would also serve as the human equivalent of the "mating instinct" that drives one toward a compatible mate. The drive toward a mate (and away from the parent or "out of the nest") is also an "individuation" in which one discovers "who one is" in regard to the parents and the various "parental institutions" in our cultures on which we had become unconsciously dependent. In other words, this anima work is, in my opinion, an "independence movement" . . . of which "consciousness" (in the Jungian sense) is a byproduct.
I don't disagree with Remo (and many others) that there is a great deal of confusion (and perhaps intellectualization) surrounding the animi in Jung and Jungian writing . . . but I do not think they can be seen as merely a thinking type phenomenon, since they seem to have a biological purpose that is equivalent in both sexes.
I also agree with Remo that Jung's conflicted portrayal of the animi is probably the product of something he didn't confront sufficiently in himself. But I have the feeling that (in trying to understand Jung's portrayal of the animi) we need to consider that we are getting two "animi stories" from Jung. "Professionally" he often depicted the animi as equivocal figures that need to be just as much resisted as embraced.
But (as Remo also notes), if one maintains such a resistant (or as Remo says, "Neoplatonic") attitude toward the anima, the anima work will not progress very far. "Courageous surrender" (to the instinctual process) is the only method of "doing" the animi work. Yet, Jung seems to have gleaned a great deal more about the anima and the Self than one can from resisting the anima (he even understands the eventual depotentiation of the anima). Therefore, I suspect that there is a severe discrepancy between what Jung wrote about the anima and what he actually experienced. It seems he gave a great deal more to this process in his private life than he was able to clearly weave into theory in his writings.
But, regardless of how true this hypothesis might be, it is clear that any discrepancy like this still indicates an unresolved conflict in Jung. My personal belief is that this remained unresolved because Jung never found an adequate way of understanding and making peace with the inflation that is a substantial byproduct of the anima work. I.e., he still felt ashamed about this inflation and could not bring its lead into the alchemical work to process it consciously. But that's a whole other topic.
Yours,
Matt