Dream:
I was in a museum after hours. The museum looked slightly abandoned, mostly dark, dusty, and had some cobwebs. A woman was walking with me. She had a powerful, numinous presence. We came to a cordoned off exhibit that looked like a pit in the ground with a spiraling walkway along the inner edge. I recognized it as a puzzle room from a Dungeons and Dragon game a friend of mine told me he had encountered in his youth while playing the game. It was supposedly impossible to get through (as the spiral walkway was lined with horrible monsters). I had devised a way to solve the room off the top of my head (during our conversation reminiscing about the game we each used to play). I proposed flooding the entire room and then sending an electric current through the water.
In the dream, the woman and I remarked on this closed exhibit. I felt mildly wistful, but also like this period of my life was ancient history. It had no power over me anymore. The woman and I went into a bathroom that was very large and grand and lined in marble. I thought that maybe she and I were going to have sex, and she was now naked and hermaphroditic (female, but with penis). But suddenly she seemed huge, and I was like a child compared to her. She held me in her lap and put her breast up to my mouth very briefly. She was sitting on some kind of throne as she did this (which might have also been a toilet). This position was like a posture rather than an act. She held me like that only for a second, and then we separated and were back to our normal sizes. We went back into the museum, and she told that she had to leave or maybe die. I was sad about this, but she reassured me that it had to be and that I would be OK. She walked off into an even darker, more abandoned part of the museum and disappeared. I awoke.
This dream offers a very succinct portrait of the end of the anima work, capturing and encapsulating all the important (or archetypal) points. I'll describe these with varying degrees of detail in the following.
1.) The "Great Work" completed (and the Goal of that Work depotentiated) is reflected in the cordoned off museum exhibit that felt like something I accomplished many years ago and which I could now see from a distance and in proportion. I could see this Work as a genuine accomplishment (it was made into an exhibit in the museum, and so memorialized), but simultaneously as a piece of my past, as an episode that was over and from which I have moved on. The symbol of this exhibit that the dream uses is especially apt, because the "solution" to the room involved flooding and then electrifying . . . where the flood would correspond to the dissolution stage that characterizes the introduction to the Work (or the descent that pulls one down to the threshold where the Work can begin), and the electrifying would correspond to the renewing jolt of instinctual, "spiritual" energy that the intimate and transformative relationship with the anima always brings.
2.) The transcendence of the anima to the status of Goddess. Jung did not spend much time talking about the transformation of the anima that accords with the psychic reorganization process I call the anima work, but he did occasionally hint that such a process existed. To my knowledge, this process has not been very well charted or studied by the Jungians (who tend to take the anima more as a fixed entity or being/personage with complete psychic autonomy and somewhat mysterious motivations) . . . but Jung (in his love of quaternities, perhaps) once stated that the anima development process could be broken down into the following four stages of expression: Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia.["The Psychology of the Transference," CW 16, par. 361].
As I've suggested, I think the anima work is better described as a process with general stages or plateaus than as a progression of personages. The fairest I can be to Jung's construction is to admit that his four anima personages do reflect common modes of anima expression . . . but these modes do not have to correspond to the progression of the anima work and can easily be present simultaneously in any stage. The "anima mode" is, I suspect, more a product of a specific man's personality than a universal state of development. What we see, for instance, in Jung's favored anima mode "progression" is, in my opinion, a process of differentiation that Jung undertook where his anima was concerned. So, when he first "met" his anima, she seemed like "Eve" to him, less sophisticated, hungry, desirous, tempting . . . and dangerous. But also maternal. The Helen mode is not much different, except in that the witchy, seductive temptress is now a "golden object" to be coveted from a distance. As Mary, she has lost much of her sexuality, taking on a maternal and spiritual eros instead. As Sophia, Jung found an expression of the anima that he could more easily value. Sophia is wisdom, and therefore, is a kind of intellectual or spiritual abstract only partially attached to Matter.
What is less apparent in Jung's construct of these anima modes is that even as Eve or Helen, the anima contains Sophia, the Goddess, all of the archetypes of the Feminine. But Jung could not, it seems, comprehend the anima in this state of undifferentiated natural complexity. The Anima modes Jung lists demonstrate Jung's own process of learning to valuate his anima . . . but this particular valuation only indirectly reflects the process of the anima work and the actual, instinctual significance of the anima archetype.
Daryl Sharp expands on Jung's construction in his
Jung Lexicon:
In the first stage, Eve, the anima is indistinguishable from the personal mother. The man cannot function well without a close tie to a woman. In the second stage, personified in the historical figure of Helen of Troy, the anima is a collective and ideal sexual image ("All is dross that is not Helen"-Marlowe). The third stage, Mary, manifests in religious feelings and a capacity for lasting relationships. In the fourth stage, as Sophia (called Wisdom in the Bible), a man's anima functions as a guide to the inner life, mediating to consciousness the contents of the unconscious. She cooperates in the search for meaning and is the creative muse in an artist's life.
This may accord generally with the conventional Jungian take of the anima modes. If I had to compare my construction of the anima work with Sharps modes, I would say that I see the anima work beginning in the 4th, Sophia stage, but continuing beyond this somewhat. I do not see the anima work as leading to a transcendent establishment of the anima as a muse or guide/companion figure. Part of the anima work would include the "seeing-through" and depotentiation of this perspective. A muse is a mythical being that functions as a totem. On one hand, it serves as a gateway where instinctual libido from the Self can flow into the ego, but on the other hand, it places taboos on the relationship with the Self that functionally distances or abstracts the Self from the ego/Self relationship. The persona we assign a muse figure will eventually exert severe limitations on the ego/Self relationship. Ultimately, it can be dysfunctional to assign "muse-like" traits to the Instinctual Self (e.g., fickleness, sensitivity, "womanishness", sentimentality, etc.). These are projections of egoic qualities that the ego personality cannot "own" functionally (i.e., shadow). They amount to "misinterpretations" of the Instinctual Self (and its original envoy, the anima). Also, the problem with muses is that they "betray" us from time to time . . . at least that is how the artist tends to see it.
Jungians are not usually artists (where an "artist" is not merely a part-time art hobbyist), and so perhaps they don't realize this fully, but the artist/muse relationship is a deeply religious relationship in which the muse is petitioned much like the "ancestors" or "spirits" are petitioned by animistic tribalists looking for divine favor in one (egoic) pursuit or another. I have a hard time seeing the artist/muse relationship as an ideal of individuation due to its rather unconscious, spiritualistic construction. I see the anima as determined to return drive and orientation to the ego that had been lost via projections and unconsciousness. The anima doesn't want to end up on a pedestal. It has a job to do, and it will do that job as quickly as the ego allows it to. There is (as Jung noted albeit in somewhat sexist terms) a kind of "toxic" quality to the anima (which is a direct product of the degree of dependency,
NOT intimacy or relationship, the individual's ego has on the anima). This toxicity is a reflection of the anima's connection to the Maternal or the Unconscious-as-Provider. The anima work is a push to reorganize the state of the personality's complex system. That state change requires that the unconscious no longer be viewed as a divine provider. This is why, despite the meaning the anima brings to a man's inner life, it must finally die or be depotentiated. If this doesn't happen, the anima work and the system reorganization will not actually take.
The anima will generally be seen to discourage dependency on it (if such dependency is a factor in the ego's orientation to the anima, which is commonly the case). The anima seeks relationship (with the ego) without dependency, a relationship of equal others. This is actually a factor of the larger archetype to which the anima belongs. Namely, the syzygy, which is the anima-hero pair. In other words, the syzygy dictates that the anima encourages the man's ego to become increasingly heroic, and as it does (at least in the vessel of fantasy or dream), the anima will continue to "unfold" or become differentiated. The heroic ego increasingly valuates the anima, seeking to know it as Other (and not merely as projection of preconception/stereotype).
The defining characteristics of the hero half of the syzygy are burden-bearing and self-sacrifice, both of which require empathy and strong valuation of others and Otherness. The anima half of the syzygy is the archetypal Other that is meant to be valuated, the symbol of valuated Otherness. Therefore, the anima is (among other things) the archetype of
relationality, the archetypal symbol of our sense of relationship to and interaction with others. The anima and the Instinctual Self are the gateway of Otherness, and our ability to valuate others is a direct product of our ability to valuate the inner Other, or the Self.
What must be remarked on (and analyzed) is that there is a conflict between this construction of the anima as the "discourager" of dependency and the conventional Jungian theory of the anima that connects it with "dangerous" projection onto actual women (dangerous, because these projections tend to lead the man to "imprison" these women in the construction of his own anima; this would constitute some degree of devaluing the women's actual otherness in a way similar to the narcissistic personality's devaluation of others). I don't mean to contradict the Jungian notion that anima "obsessions" always lead to projections (and that these projections are mostly destructive). But I would like to revise and refine this Jungian notion of anima projection. To begin with, anima projection is most extreme in a stage that I would consider pre-anima-work. When the anima is still a distant, dark, mysterious object for a man, he is much more likely to project it onto actual women (who may not even resemble his anima very closely). As the anima work begins and progresses, although a man may still be tempted to project and "literalize" the anima, he comes to realize that she is no mere mortal, but rather a semi-divine part of himself.
Beyond this, the issue of anima projection (or transference) is actually very complex and quite ubiquitous. It cannot, I think, be considered truly pathological in almost all instances. I mean to suggest that the projection of anima (and animus for women) is no "disease", but is actually the root of all erotic attraction between potential partners. Just because someone catches our anima or animus doesn't make the attraction delusional. What tends to damage these relationships is the demand of one or both partners that the other
become the projected animi. To ask another person to be the soul they cannot see or accept in themselves is to ask the impossible while also ignoring the genuine difference of Otherness.
The most common stumbling block where the anima is concerned is to "see her across the room", fall in love with her, but want her to stay right where she is (out of reach, a mystical, totemic object). This generates a specific (and very limited) kind of relationship. I would consider it a less-than-human relationship. It lacks complexity, and Otherness is never engaged with in any intimate way. There is no need to accept shadow or difference in the Other. The Other becomes merely an "artistic rendering" of the true Other. In other words, this kind of relationship shows us choosing our own skewed (self-serving) construct of the Other over the validity and reality of the true Other.
Before and during most of the anima work, the anima is extremely potent. It has "mana" (which the man's ego doesn't understand very well other than to know that he is overwhelmed by it). Projecting this mana onto an actual person can be a great burden to them, and it can also grant them immense power to wound the projecting ego (it can be exceedingly difficult to
not hurt another who invests one with mana, and such delicacy takes a great deal of practice and ethical consciousness to achieve . . . as any analyst could attest; a common problem of mana projections is a kind of unconscious desire to punish or challenge ourselves for some justifiable reason while not managing to take up a truly adversarial position to ourselves . . . we therefore choose a surrogate adversary). This mana-driven wounding allows simple misunderstandings and differences of opinion to be perceived by the person projecting the mana as "violations" or demonic attacks. But as the anima work nears its end and eventually reaches its culmination and depotentiation, the mana granted the anima is dissipated and any anima projections will be less likely to relinquish traits and empowerment that the ego (or conscious personality) is rightfully entitled to. These projections are generally "less dangerous". They do not place ridiculous demands on the projection-bearer to provide salvation or completion to the projector, but are much more likely to include a valuation of Otherness within them. This Otherness is still numinous in a sense, but I believe that it is perfectly natural and healthy to feel some numinous valuation of another's Otherness.
These later anima projections tend to showcase a reversal of motivation or concern. We at first want the anima to take care of us, to nourish and fulfill us. But eventually (as we develop the "heroic attitude"), we want to (not so much "take care of" but)
facilitate the anima, to enable the Otherness it represents. This enantiodromia is actually evident from the onset of the anima work (as the Anima Initiation Dream I previously discussed makes very clear). This reversal of flow is the declared goal of the anima work at the beginning (even if it typically takes us a while to realize and then to actualize it). The experience of the anima and the anima work is in many ways like taking a poison in order to develop an immunity to that poison. Throughout certain parts of the process, we feel poisoned, but this poison is gradually transformed into its own cure or antidote. And in the end, we can no longer be poisoned by this thing. This cure means the depotentiation of dangerous anima projections and the development of a new ability to valuate Otherness (and not perceive others as merely limited and often prejudicial constructs of our own selfhood).
I will write a little more about the anima after the conclusion of the anima work (the depotentiated anima), its function as symbol of relationality, and the post-anima work projections in a later chapter.
3.) The comparison of the Goddess anima to the Great Mother and the indication that the resolution of the anima work requires a kind of final break with the Mother or with the son/Mother, provident relationship with the Self.The relationship between the anima archetype and the archetypal Mother is complex and seemingly self-contradictory. It has certainly been noted in Jungian literature, but hasn't been adequately understood among Jungians, in my opinion. There is a great deal of hullabaloo surrounding the "heroic break with the Mother" that makes this break seem to be some kind of dragon slaying that happens once and for all. This has not been my experience, nor have I ever observed this to be the case in others I've interacted with on an intimate, psychological level. The break with the Mother is, I believe, largely a sham that has been spun by patriarchal "propaganda". That is, the patriarchal male ego declares and celebrates such breaks very enthusiastically . . . but rarely if ever actually manages them. This is due, I suspect, to a lie the patriarchal male usually lives by. This lie tells him that the Mother (and the feminine to some degree) is the dragon that must be slain or subdued by egoic might alone in order for "a man to be a man". But the instinctual unconscious doesn't really seem to operate by this patriarchal paradigm.
The alchemists (those great miners of the human, and Christian, shadow) often saw the dissolution and Coniunctio as a son/Mother incestuous coupling (as Jung duly noted) . . . and yet, they celebrated this. But how do we reconcile this with Freud and his Oedipal construct (which I believe is very similar to the patriarchal construct in general, although not actually reflective of human instinctuality)? That is, Freud brought to consciousness the Oedipal dynamic that had lain at the root of patriarchal masculinity. For clarity in the current analysis, I would translate Freud's revelation as: the striving of the patriarchal ego never escapes the bondage to the Mother or the Maternal, provident unconscious. This particular kind of egoic, socialized striving for power or self-control or "perfect persona" (and power over others) is the product of a somewhat dysfunctional relationship to the Mother. The Mother and her breast or ability to provide unconditionally become so tempting to the patriarchal ego that this ego is simultaneously seduced and emasculated by the desire. The lust for the breast (or whatever the breast symbol is projected upon . . . often social status or wealth or some form of social achievement) provides all the drive to the patriarchal ego. It has immense mana, since this object of desire is made to define the selfhood the man desires to obtain or project. If he manages to achieve his worldly goal, chances are he will hoard his gold like a dragon. Hoard, but like a dragon, fail to be able to fully utilize his wealth or power in a functional way. The dragon treasure is always merely a decoration or a failed attempt to communicate to others that the dragon desires to be identified by his gold.
But this dragon gold is a torturer of the soul, a Demonic imprisoner. Its dysfunctional isolation of the personality from the sting of Otherness and relationality is the main factor that turns the patriarchal man into such a dragon. The dragon grows inside him (as what I have been calling the Demon of the Complex), and it is a reflection of the providence that confines him, of the Mother. This Demon-possessed man might come to see the maternal qualities in his imprisonment and may even try to strike out against whatever and whomever he projects this Dark Mother upon. Out of this vain desire to strike down the dragon within him, he may develop fantasies of dragon slaying . . . but I do not consider these fantasies truly heroic (for more discussion on this topic, see the thread on
The Hero Archetype).
The instinctual, heroic process I've observed is much more like the alchemical process of succumbing or dissolving. Although this dissolution may begin with unwanted depression or morbid anxiety, the emergence of the heroic ego means an advocacy not for conquering the depression or the darkness, but for diving down into it, allowing it to take and transform the ego. The hero is not the force that Demonically resists change and dissolution. It is the force that believes or understands that it is a "seed-self", that it can be and is even meant to be digested as part of its evolutionary process. It doesn't give in to the fear that the dissolution will absolutely annihilate it. Something in the hero (and it's counterpart, the Fool) is indigestible. This indigestibility is due to the connection to the Self, the recognition that the Instinctual Self is within and serves as the source of the ego in some way (I would say, in a biological as well as spiritual way). To know the Instinctual Self is one's indestructible source is to understand oneself (one's ego) as the stuff of transformation, as meant by Nature to transform, as being a piece of Nature.
This idea is part of the Hermetic philosophy of the alchemists and is captured in the symbol of the prima materia. The heroic ego is the attitude that allows itself to be changed into prima materia. In some alchemical emblems (e.g., the Rosarium Philosophorum sequence) the dissolution is portrayed as a movement toward union of Sol with Luna, an anima figure. This coupling involves a sharing of natures or "twinning" or resonance as the two move toward a state of oneness as the syzygy. To dissolve into a different nature is to sacrifice the identity and nature one believed was fixed and genuine. This old nature (sometimes associated with the figure of the Old King in alchemy) is hard to relinquish, because it was the life raft onto which the ego clung for many years. It seems to be the only thing that will keep one afloat. Letting go of this is an act of faith in something Other, in an instinctual process that is not understood. And because it is not understood, letting go of the life raft means that one must accept the distinct possibility of death or total annihilation.
Therefore the Rosarium sequence shows the Coniunctio ending in death. Only gradually does this death (transformation into the prima materia) show itself to be generative of new life. The alchemists sometimes compared this to returning to the womb (of the Mother).
I think we need to make a stronger differentiation between the Dark Mother, who is often Demonic more so than maternal, and the Mother archetype. The use of one's weakness to oppress and control him is a Demonic quality. It can be a factor in mothering, fathering, or just about any other kind of relationship, but it is always a Demonic factor. The struggle to find independence from the provident maternal need not be a battle against the Mother dragon. The real dragon in this equation is one's addiction to dependency on providence. This can be projected onto a Mother object, but this projection is ultimately misplaced (even if it is reinforced by an actual mother or motherer). What must be severed is the bondage within, which is a bondage we have chosen, not one that was forced upon us by some other.
Patriarchalism is a misunderstanding of the function of the ego as one organ of an entire organism. This misunderstanding involves a kind of inflation or overemphasis of the ego as "lord of the personality". I think it is much more likely that the ego, despite all the celebration and adoration patriarchal culture invests in it, evolved as an organ meant to facilitate the instinctual needs of the organism (the Self, to put it symbolically). In the tribalistic environment of evolutionary adaptedness, the ego develops out of the selfishness of childhood toward an orientation that sees the welfare of the tribe as more important than that of the individual. What we see in the development of patriarchy (
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the best and oldest story that portrays this development in mythic/psychological terms) is a devaluation of tribal Eros and a severe increase in classism, hierarchy, and the importance of status (which is obtained more often through self-interest, not empathy or self-sacrifice). Additionally, the rise of proto-modern patriarchy very possibly took influence from the development of proto-industry (again, we see this in Gilgamesh) . . . where "proto-industry" involves a redefinition of the relationship between humanity and Nature. Industrious Man sees that the power of Nature to determine his welfare is more limited than he once imagined. Nature becomes less a Goddess and more "raw material". Nature seems to submit itself or subordinate itself to the desires of Industrious Man. And this sparks a kind of mad hubris in patriarchal man . . . who typically fails to notice that his relationship to Nature as resource or raw material is not unlike the infant's relationship to the mother and her provident breast.
The ego (developing in a patriarchal culture) strives to adapt to and adopt patriarchal structure and its prolonged (and often shadowy) sense of self-interest. In modern and proto-modern societies, Otherness is everywhere, and so self-interest becomes more important to survival. But the way modernism (patriarchy) builds extra self-interest into the construction of socialized ego is, I believe, in conflict with the evolution of this thing we call ego (that I see as evolving in order to facilitate instinctual adaptation to an environment defined by culture rather than a purely material environment). The ego evolved (to put this theory very simplistically) to help keep sociality instinctual and adaptive even as human cultural evolution placed greater emphasis on the value of individuals. Without delving any further into the deeper jungles of speculation where this theory is concerned, I will only note that it is possible that the ego is an incomplete adaptation or an adaptation still in R and D. We may be living our lives with a "prototype personality", a (still buggy) "beta version". That is, this organ of cognition I'm calling the ego is not a fool-proof tool for adaptivity. It is extremely plastic, but also very prone to dysfunction and breakdown. It's like an exotic car that is great to drive . . . when it's actually working right, which seems to be all too rarely.
One of the cardinal "flaws" of the human ego is its need to be reborn or reorganized both constantly (on a fairly subtle level, i.e., "memory consolidation") and extensively (on at least a couple archetypal and universal occasions). That is, we develop an ego as an infant and into childhood adapted to the environment of the mother (which extends to the father and/or other care-providers eventually). Then this infantile ego must undergo construction/reconstruction as the peer environment becomes the environment to which the individual must learn to adapt. After this, the tribal environment of the socialized individual who is responsible for others and for the group necessitates another reorganization. There are arguably other archetypal reorganizations of ego, but I think these are the most significant ones.
The anima work is the instinctual process that underlies the third reorganization from adolescence to socially responsible adulthood. This shouldn't be confused with "social conformity". We are actually most "conformed" to group averages and standards during the second, peer environment adaptation phase (where the goal is commonly thought to be getting as high in the status hierarchy as possible through dominance, cleverness, or sycophancy). But the peer environment tends to be highly competitive and encourages extreme self-interest. The third reorganization of ego is always about curtailing this self-interest and becoming useful to others and to the group. Obviously much more needs to be done to study such stages of development. I am simply working from intuition and psychological observation here. To my knowledge, developmental psychology is not as oriented to evolutionary biology as the approach I'm suggesting is, and doesn't adequately comprehend the importance of humanity
as it has evolved to adapt and live. That is, it is not observing the problem that the environment of evolutionary adaptedness is significantly different than our modern environment . . . and we are driven powerfully to return to the primal environment or to recreate it as a niche within modern society. When we behave without much consciousness, we behave as though we are still in the primal environment (even as this can be dysfunctional or destructive in the modern environment). And our notorious modern anxiety is very often the product of the tension we feel from being essentially "displaced".
Although I am far from an expert in developmental psychology, I'm concerned that a failure to understand what I call the Problem of the Modern can lead to the invalidation of much of the data developmental psychologists are gathering. Modernism is not (by the standard of our evolutionary adaptedness) "natural". It is inevitable and must be dealt with functionally . . . but it
is a genuine problem for our species (the resolution of which cannot be made, I believe, in its repeal).
To return to the problem of the Mother, we need to examine the possible relationality between the ego and the autonomous and instinctual Self, between consciousness and the unconscious. The notion (totemized in patriarchy) that the Self can be a provider for an adult ego (where this is projected by the patriarchal ego onto the mother, the mother-as-lover, the natural resource, power, wealth, etc.) is contested by the instinctual Self. It is also not logical; it doesn't provide an accurate paradigm for functional relationality. That is, it is not a matter of natural give and take, of recycling and reciprocation, but seeks to be like a baby bird, stuck in the nest, always opening its mouth to be fed by the Parent (where the Parent can be greed, ambition, or some other self-interested drive). Even though the patriarchal ego can achieve (in the patriarchy) some kind of worldly success, the instinctual drive behind ego-formation is one that includes empathy and an Other-orientation. To the degree that this Otherness is resisted and feared, we tend to live within a limiting and inflexible paradigm . . . essentially, a non-adaptive system that is not able to achieve adequate equilibrium with its environment.
The Demonic urge behind the patriarchal ego seeks to combat this by trying to control and limit the relationship with the environment to one that facilitates or provides for the inflexible, patriarchal ego. We humans excel at manipulating our environment to serve our desires and needs . . . so much so that we tend to forget we are animals that must adapt in order to find equilibrium. The severe control of environment by the patriarchal ego (when it is successful) almost always creates "externalities" that can be injurious to others. The patriarchal mindset holds that these (often not directly intended) injuries to others are an acceptable consequence of what is believed an entitlement to serve the appetites of self-interest. But this is a choice, and this choice implies the belief that Other-consciousness is relatively unimportant compared to self-interest . . . and that self-interest is self-sustaining just as long as everyone is competing with everyone else by trying to satisfy their own self-interest. This is the declared philosophy behind "free market" capitalism. And this philosophy has at times been "justified" with Social Darwinist arguments ("the survival of the fittest"). Social Darwinism was part of the elite ideology underpinning the Industrial Revolution (it seemed to work just fine for those empowered by industry). Even though it has fallen into disrepute (especially since Nazism), we do not often enough recognize its adoption in our beloved capitalist system. Nor do we often enough contemplate that the construction of self-interested competition is actually not at all reflective of our biology, instinct, and evolution (nor is it genuinely Darwinian).
That is, we are an intensely social species, not a species of isolated individuals. The notion that self-interest is a biological imperative and social necessity of homo sapiens does not actually concur with our current understanding of human instinct and biology. What we have allowed to slip into the unconscious is the recognition that, even in modernity, power and social success runs with tribal libido. I.e., "Connections". These back-room and "unconscious" connections are often "the way things get done" in our complex, hierarchical, modern societies. But this tribalistic structure is often hidden from "the masses". Except where struggles to achieve status are concerned. "Status" in modern society is essentially the benefit of membership to a tribe that can afford its members some kind of power. Status is achieved through belonging to a tribe or tribes, through affiliation and general obedience to the laws of conduct that tribe promotes. If you want to "succeed", you have to "play ball" (i.e., belong/conform). This is the larger reality of being a modern citizen. The propaganda about our egalitarianism is perhaps a romantic ideal at best, a ruse of the powerful at worst. But the relationship that modernism and patriarchy have to tribalism still fails the same challenge of modern sociality that tribalism fails. Namely, instead of allowing greater diversity and complexity to exist within a larger tribe, it demands that tribal differentiations define and perpetuate the sense of Otherness across tribes. That is, our unconscious (patriarchal) approach to modernism and its population density issues still fails to adequately valuate Otherness. The humanist idea that the individual is the ultimate unit of social value and belongs to a universal tribe of humanity inspires us, but is very difficult to actualize given the innate, tribalistic limitations on our sense of sociality (our definition of self and Other).
In patriarchy we can detect a kind of forced ignorance of our individual and collective dependencies. This is even an obvious (yet widely denied or ignored on a psychological level) political problem, especially in the United States. "Oil dependency" gets the most press, but perhaps just as significant is "labor dependency" as we outsource more and more jobs, making skilled labor increasingly scarce in the American economy. The waning of skilled middle class labor positions in the United States has placed more emphasis on service jobs, which tend to be unskilled by comparison . . . and this threatens to dismantle the bulk of the middle classes. There seems to be general denial or repression of this concern in mainstream media-broadcast political discussions in which "the economy" is defined more and more by the elite classes who can benefit by global trading and the outsource of skilled labor as an investment. Yet we fail to recognize (and respect) the complex system that a massive, modern economy presents. That is, the middle class is a staple of modernity. It is the rather mysterious emergent property of modern social self-organization. We don't understand entirely the importance of the middle class to a global (or even national) economy, because the relationality of the middle class to the whole system is incredibly complex and hard to measure. But it is very possible that the destruction (or merely paring down) of the middle class could affect the entire complex system like the destruction of a key species can affect an ecosystem, creating a catastrophic chain reaction.
I don't mean to say I understand this to be the case. I merely mean to suggest that no one really does, this is the problem of complexity in general . . . so extreme economic ideologies (like free market capitalism) are more likely to have disastrous long-term effects than economic practices that seek to have consciousness of valuation of the system as a whole as well as specific self-interest. The free-market ideology takes as its main opponent "governmental regulation" of business and seeks to alter government by advocating deregulation and the dismantling of governmental attempts at balancing economy and social class through social welfare programs (yet it also seems to be hypocritically fond of "corporate welfare", again showing its strange addiction to/demonization of the Breast). This has come to seem perfectly sane to many of us today. But seen more neutrally, this looks very much like a religious ideology or fundamentalism. It seeks sustenance without being sustaining. "Competition will provide" is its underlying motto. It is no different than the faith-based dependence on manna from heaven. It's a Catholic-like "Faith Alone" fundamentalism.
I don't know if this can be a sustainable and adaptable approach to survival in the modern world . . . but it is, I feel, in distinct contradiction to the ego reorganization of the anima work, which seems to function (at least essentially) as if we are living in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, i.e., in an archaic and "primitive" fashion. The push of the anima work is one toward social responsibility and Other-orientedness. And this archaic drive tends to place the individual in conflict with the pressures of modern society and its indoctrination into and worship of self-interest and status-building. I don't mean to romanticize tribalism or neo-primitivism. It is, in fact, the inability to be adequately conscious of our tribalistic affiliations and sociality (which are instinct driven), that prevents modern society from genuinely reaching our democratic, humanist ideal. Unconscious tribalism tends to engender an Us vs. Them attitude and encourage fundamentalist approaches to whatever the prevailing ideology or dogma of the tribe might be. But I do think that within the instinct or archetype of tribal Eros there is the prima materia of empathy for Others. And this primary empathy and valuation of Others (initially Others who are very similar to oneself and may even be kin) can, I believe, with the plasticity of ego consciousness, be interpreted as a universal (non-tribal) ethical philosophy. This is the case because empathy and relationality are human drives . . . whereas the ego is the interpreter, facilitator, and narrativizer of these instinctual drives. Left unconscious, these drives will be interpreted in the simplest and strictest possible way (as the tribal dogma dictates), but channeled through the extreme plasticity of egoic consciousness, a basic drive like empathy can be construed as an all-embracing ethical philosophy.
The anima work does not create egoic plasticity like this, but it helps activate and facilitate it. Complex adaptive systems, we have learned, are natural products of evolution. There is often great plasticity and resilience in these systems (and humans have exploited this extensively in their non-sustainable use of natural resources). Simpler, more rigid systems cannot withstand as much damage or opposition. The anima work is a movement to valuate the flexibility and plasticity of the human brain's conceptualizing and narrativizing capacities . . . and therefore, to harness these capacities to natural self-organizational principles, to adaptive systemic complexity. The qualitative feeling of this complexity and plasticity can seem at first (to our culturally rigidified egos) to be a lack of stability or stasis. But once we work through that egoic prejudice, we find that this added (or newly valuated and facilitated) plasticity can make us more adaptive and resilient. Those engineers now studying and designing artificial systems have discovered that this is a universal principle, and not merely a tribal or partisan ideology.
This is a long and winding way to get us back to the confrontation with the Maternal Unconscious. What I mean to suggest through these economical, political, and ecological anecdotes is that the patriarchal paradigm that designates the battle with the Mother as the conquering of inner (and perhaps outer) darkness misunderstands how the true confrontation with the Mother requires not might, but flexibility. Eventually, all might must be sacrificed, and with this sacrifice comes the recognition that there is no absolute erasure of the bond to the Maternal Unconscious possible. To suggest there is is to deceive ourselves and cast this bond into shadow. What is within our capacity is the choice not to usurp or demand from the instinctual unconscious, but to serve and facilitate it.
Therefore, the dependency we develop on the anima as we come to valuate it is meant to be relinquished. The anima is not meant to be a surrogate Mother or muse or constant companion and buoy. It is a process that brings attention to our dependency on the providence of the unconscious and allows us to see how this usurpation depletes and infects the very source of instinct we want to sustain us. The illness of the anima is a common dream theme. It locates the need for attention and care in the anima or Instinctual Self. It isn't the ego per se that needs to be "healed". The (old) ego is the disease that has poisoned the Self. It has become a thorn in the lion's paw. The anima is the drive or intelligence that draws the ego's attention to this wound site and makes a case for the valuation of healing. As the ego comes to accept this argument, it increasingly adopts the heroic attitude and moves toward the union of the syzygy. But this "seduction" into heroism eventually leads the heroic ego to a place in which it must sacrifice itself or accept that it (the ego) is the real problem. And the final act of this sacrifice is giving up the dependency on the Mother-Anima and with it, the inspirational drive that nourishes the ego's heroism. So anima and hero die together as we come to accept that the true meaning of the anima work was never to "feel heroic" or to "win the anima or soul twin", but to develop the courage and the empathy necessary to see how the old construction of the ego is the real disease of the personality and to figure out the "solution" or the beginning of the Logos (the "attitude of surrender and service") that can begin the systemic reorganization process of the psyche.
This Logos means starting over in a more or less equal partnership with the instinctual Self and actively co-creating the new dynamics of the "reborn" ego (where co-creation is a communication and cooperation or mutual empathy in which neither party dictates to the other). Still, the Self contains the ego. The Self is the fundamental drive and nature of the psyche. The ego is always only a kind of go-between or conduit. The needs and the instinctual urges driving behavior and thought come from the Instinctual Self, but are interpreted through the ego and its dynamic, personal memory. As much as the ego might believe in its own autonomy, I see this feeling of autonomy or free will as largely an illusion. Even the source of uniqueness is generated by the Self (as the product of the individual's genetic distinctiveness and his or her unique personal experience). As the fundamental source of life and personality, the Self is and will always be a Great Mother figure to some degree.
And this means that, even as we make the heroic sacrifice to separate from the rigid paradigm of dependency on the instinctual unconscious, we can only do this with the acceptance that we, as egos, are small, subordinate organs in a much greater whole that we will never dictate or determine. What the heroic ego comes to realize is that it has the power to both aid and impair the Self, and both options will lead to aid or impairment of the ego respectively. The heroic ego is essentially responsible for the welfare and functionality of the Self, which is responsible for the adaptiveness, drive, and health of the whole organism. The ego is perhaps more the provider than the Self is, and what it provides is access to environment, where this "access road" is made out of language, attitude, philosophy, functional fictions, Logos.
In the dream above, the anima is enthroned and raised to status of Mother Goddess, but her ritual act is meant to show that 1.) what was inspiring and empowering in the anima's love and attention was like the Great Mother's breast, a kind of providence that should be recognized as such, and 2.) this providence is no longer necessary for the more conscious and self-sufficient heroic ego and will therefore now be taken away. The dream ego also sees that it must give up the sense of numinous eroticism that had stimulated it to pursue the union with the anima and has here been pared down to its Maternal essence.
The posture assumed briefly in the dream is also reminiscent of some enthroned statues of Isis and Hathor. When I had this dream I was also reminded of an image I saw in one of Jung's alchemy books of Sophia nursing a Hermetic philosopher. There is also an implication, therefore, of inheritance. This sustenance will no longer be provided, because the ego is now able to provide for itself. It doesn't have to project anima or Mother onto another person in order to experience it. What the man undertaking the anima work realizes is that he is consciously becoming like the anima as the work progresses. It is as if she is transferring personality traits to the ego. Part of the anima depotentiation is a factor of this transference of selfhood (often experienced as wisdom or gnosis) to the ego. To the degree that the anima can be "incorporated" into the ego, it is a matter of returning previously unowned egoic traits that had been left to be projected on the female Other. What remains after this transfer is the Self (or Self-as-Other), which cannot be absorbed into consciousness. What is inherited from the anima where the Self is concerned is the anima's role as envoy to and translator of the Self. These duties now pass to the ego, and it is with these new duties that the Work proper begins. The learning and translating of the Self's language or Logos is equivalent to what the alchemists called the Philosopher's Stone or the
filius philosophorum. That is, after the prima materia is derived from the Solutio/Coniunctio, it is often called the Stone as it undergoes the rest of the process.