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object:1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept
book class:The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter

CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ANIMA CONCEPT 1

Although modern man appears to believe that the non-em-
pirical approach to psychology is a thing of the past, his general
attitude remains very much the same as it was before, when
psychology was identified with some theory about the psyche.
In academic circles, a drastic revolution in methodology, initi-
ated by Fechner 2 and Wundt, 3 was needed in order to make
clear to the scientific world that psychology was a field of expe-
rience and not a philosophical theory. To the increasing ma-
terialism of the late nineteenth century, however, it meant noth-
ing that there had once been an "experimental psychology," 4
to which we owe many descriptions that are still valuable today.
I have only to mention Dr. Justinus Kerner's Seherin von
Prevorst. 5 All "romantic" descriptions in psychology were anath-
ema to the new developments in scientific method. The exag-
gerated expectations of this experimental laboratory science
were reflected in Fechner's "psychophysics," and its results today
take the form of "psychological tests" and a general shifting of
the scientific standpoint in favour of phenomenology.

Nevertheless, it cannot be maintained that the phenomeno-
logical point of view has made much headway. Theory still
plays far too great a role, instead of being included in phenome-
nology as it should. Even Freud, whose empirical attitude is
beyond doubt, coupled his theory as a sine qua non with his

1 [Originally published as "Ober den Archetypus mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung
des Animabegriffes" in the Zentralblatt fur Psycho therapie und ihre Grenzgebiete
(Leipzig), IX (1936) : 5, 259-75. Revised and republished in Von den Wurzeln des
Bewusstseins (Zurich, 1954), from which version the present translation is made.
Editors.] 2 Elemente der Psychophysik (i860).

3 Principles of Physiological Psychology (orig. 1874) .

4 Cf. G. H. von Schubert's compilation, Altes und Neues aus dem Gebiet der
innern Seelenkunde (1825-44).

5 First published 1829. Trans, as The Seeress of Prevorst (1859).

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CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

method, as if psychic phenomena had to be viewed in a certain
light in order to mean something. All the same, it was Freud
who cleared the ground for the investigation of complex phe-
nomena, at least in the field of neurosis. But the ground he
cleared extended only so far as certain basic physiological con-
cepts permitted, so that it looked almost as if psychology were
an offshoot of the physiology of the instincts. This limitation of
psychology was very welcome to the materialistic outlook of that
time, nearly fifty years ago, and, despite our altered view of the
world, it still is in large measure today. It gives us not only the
advantage of a "delimited field of work," but also an excellent
excuse not to bother with what goes on in a wider world.
*3 Thus it was overlooked by the whole of medical psychology
that a psychology of the neuroses, such as Freud's, is left hang-
ing in mid air if it lacks knowledge of a general phenomenology.
It was also overlooked that in the field of the neuroses Pierre
Janet, even before Freud, had begun to build up a descriptive
methodology 6 without loading it with too many theoretical and
philosophical assumptions. Biographical descriptions of psychic
phenomena, going beyond the strictly medical field, were repre-
sented chiefly by the work of the philosopher Theodore Flour-
noy, of Geneva, in his account of the psychology of an unusual
personality. 7 This was followed by the first attempt at synthesis:
William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). I owe
it mainly to these two investigators that I learnt to understand
the nature of psychic disturbances within the setting of the hu-
man psyche as a whole. I myself did experimental work for
several years, but, through my intensive studies of the neuroses
and psychoses, I had to admit that, however desirable quanti-
tative definitions may be, it is impossible to do without quali-
tatively descriptive methods. Medical psychology has recognized
that the salient facts are extraordinarily complex and can be
grasped only through descriptions based on case material. But
this method presupposes freedom from theoretical prejudice.
Every science is descriptive at the point where it can no longer
proceed experimentally, without on that account ceasing to be

6 L'Automatisme psychologique (1889); The Mental State of Hystericals (orig.,
1893); Nevroses et idees fixes (1898).

7 From India to the Planet Mars (orig., 1900), and "Nouvelles Observations sur un
cas de somnambulisme avec glossolalie."

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THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

scientific. But an experimental science makes itself impossible
when it delimits its field of work in accordance with theoretical
concepts. The psyche does not come to an end where some
physiological assumption or other stops. In other words, in each
individual case that we observe scientifically, we have to con-
sider the manifestations of the psyche in their totality.

1 H These reflections are essential when discussing an empirical
concept like that of the anima. As against the constantly reiter-
ated prejudice that this is a theoretical invention or worse still
sheer mythology, I must emphasize that the concept of the
anima is a purely empirical concept, whose sole purpose is to
give a name to a group of related or analogous psychic phe-
nomena. The concept does no more and means no more than,
shall we say, the concept "arthropods," which includes all ani-
mals with articulated body and limbs and so gives a name to this
phenomenological group. The prejudice I have mentioned
stems, regrettable though this is, from ignorance. My critics are
not acquainted with the phenomena in question, for these lie
mostly outside the pale of merely medical knowledge, in a realm
of universal human experience. But the psyche, which the medi-
cal man has to do with, does not worry about the limitations
of his knowledge; it manifests a life of its own and reacts to
influences coming from every field of human experience. Its
nature shows itself not merely in the personal sphere, or in the
instinctual or social, but in phenomena of world-wide distri-
bution. So if we want to understand the psyche, we have to
include the whole world. For practical reasons we can, indeed
must, delimit our fields of work, but this should be done only
with the conscious recognition of limitation. The more com-
plex the phenomena which we have to do with in practical
treatment, the wider must be our frame of reference and the
greater the corresponding knowledge.

"5 Anyone, therefore, who does not know the universal distri-
bution and significance of the syzygy motif in the psychology of
primitives, 8 in mythology, in comparative religion, and in the
history of literature, can hardly claim to say anything about
the concept of the anima. His knowledge of the psychology of
the neuroses may give him some idea of it, but it is only a knowl-

8 I am thinking especially of shamanism with its idea of the "celestial wife"
(Eliade, Shamanism, pp. 76-81).

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CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

edge of its general phenomenology that could open his eyes to
the real meaning of what he encounters in individual cases,
often in pathologically distorted form.

16 Although common prejudice still believes that the sole essen-
tial basis of our knowledge is given exclusively from outside,
and that "nihil est in intellectu quod non an tea fuerit in sensu,"
it nevertheless remains true that the thoroughly respectable
atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus was not based on
any observations of atomic fission but on a "mythological" con-
ception of smallest particles, which, as the smallest animated
parts, the soul-atoms, are known even to the still palaeolithic
inhabitants of central Australia. 9 How much "soul" is pro-
jected into the unknown in the world of external appearances
is, of course, familiar to anyone acquainted with the natural sci-
ence and natural philosophy of the ancients. It is, in fact, so
much that we are absolutely incapable of saying how the world
is constituted in itself and always shall be, since we are obliged
to convert physical events into psychic processes as soon as we
want to say anything about knowledge. But who can guarantee
that this conversion produces anything like an adequate "objec-
tive" picture of the world? That could only be if the physical
event were also a psychic one. But a great distance still seems to
separate us from such an assertion. Till then, we must for better
or worse content ourselves with the assumption that the psyche
supplies those images and forms which alone make knowledge
of objects possible.

J 7 These forms are generally supposed to be transmitted by tra-
dition, so that we speak of "atoms" today because we have
heard, directly or indirectly, of the atomic theory of Democritus.
But where did Democritus, or whoever first spoke of minimal
constitutive elements, hear of atoms? This notion had its origin
in archetypal ideas, that is, in primordial images which were
never reflections of physical events but are spontaneous prod-
ucts of the psychic factor. Despite the materialistic tendency to
understand the psyche as a mere reflection or imprint of physi-
cal and chemical processes, there is not a single proof of this
hypothesis. Quite the contrary, innumerable facts prove that the

9 Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 331 and else-
where. Also Crawley, The Idea of the Soul, pp. 87L

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THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

psyche translates physical processes into sequences of images
which have hardly any recognizable connection with the objec-
tive process. The materialistic hypothesis is much too bold and
flies in the face of experience with almost metaphysical pre-
sumption. The only thing that can be established with certainty,
in the present state of our knowledge, is our ignorance of the
nature of the psyche. There is thus no ground at all for regard-
ing the psyche as something secondary or as an epiphenomenon;
on the contrary, there is every reason to regard it, at least hypo-
thetically, as a factor sui generis, and to go on doing so until it
has been sufficiently proved that psychic processes can be fabri-
cated in a retort. We have laughed at the claims of the alche-
mists to be able to manufacture a lapis philosophorum consist-
ing of body, soul, and spirit, as impossible, hence we should stop
dragging along with us the logical consequence of this medieval
assumption, namely the materialistic prejudice regarding the
psyche, as though it were a proven fact.

It will not be so easy to reduce complex psychic facts to a
chemical formula. Hence the psychic factor must, ex hypothesi,
be regarded for the present as an autonomous reality of enig-
matic character, primarily because, judging from all we know,
it appears to be essentially different from physicochemical proc-
esses. Even if we do not ultimately know what its substantiality
is, this is equally true of physical objects and of matter in gen-
eral. So if we regard the psyche as an independent factor, we
must logically conclude that there is a psychic life which is not
subject to the caprices of our will. If, then, those qualities of
elusiveness, superficiality, shadowiness, and indeed of futility
attach to anything psychic, this is primarily true of the subjec-
tive psychic, i.e., the contents of consciousness, but not of the
objective psychic, the unconscious, which is an a priori condi-
tioning factor of consciousness and its contents. From the un-
conscious there emanate determining influences which, inde-
pendently of tradition, guarantee in every single individual a
similarity and even a sameness of experience, and also of the
way it is represented imaginatively. One of the main proofs of
this is the almost universal parallelism between mythological
motifs, which, on account of their quality as primordial images,
I have called archetypes.

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CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

119 One of these archetypes, which is of paramount practical
importance for the psycho therapist, I have named the anima.
This Latin expression is meant to connote something that
should not be confused with any dogmatic Christian idea of the
soul or with any of the previous philosophical conceptions of it.
If one wishes to form anything like a concrete conception of
what this term covers, one would do better to go back to a clas-
sical author like Macrobius, 10 or to classical Chinese philoso-
phy, 11 where the anima (p'o or kuei) is regarded as the feminine
and chthonic part of the soul. A parallel of this kind always runs
the risk of metaphysical concretism, which I do my best to avoid,
though any attempt at graphic description is bound to succumb
to it up to a point. For we are dealing here not with an abstract
concept but with an empirical one, and the form in which it
appears necessarily clings to it, so that it cannot be described at
all except in terms of its specific phenomenology.

l Unperturbed by the philosophical pros and cons of the age,
a scientific psychology must regard those transcendental intui-
tions that sprang from the human mind in all ages as projec-
tions, that is, as psychic contents that were extrapolated in
metaphysical space and hypostatized. 12 We encounter the anima
historically above all in the divine syzygies, the male-female
pairs of deities. These reach down, on the one side, into the ob-
scurities of primitive mythology, 13 and up, on the other, into the
philosophical speculations of Gnosticism 14 and of classical Chi-
nese philosophy, where the cosmogonic pair of concepts are
designated yang (masculine) and yin (feminine). 15 We can safely
assert that these syzygies are as universal as the existence of man
and woman. From this fact we may reasonably conclude that
man's imagination is bound by this motif, so that he was largely

10 Commentary on the Dream of Scipio.

11 Cf. my "Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower," pars. 57ff., and
Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, I, p. 71.

12 This standpoint derives from Kant's theory of knowledge and has nothing to
do with materialism.

13 Winthuis, Das Zweigeschlechterwesen bei den Zentralaustraliern und anderen
Vdlkern.

14 Especially in the system of the Valentinians. Cf. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses.

15 Cf. The I Ching or Book of Changes. [Also Needham, Science and Civilization
in China, II, pp. 273f. Editors.]

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THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

compelled to project it again and again, at all times and in all
places. 16

!2i Now, as we know from psycho therapeutic experience, pro-
jection is an unconscious, automatic process whereby a content
that is unconscious to the subject transfers itself to an object, so
that it seems to belong to that object. The projection ceases the
moment it becomes conscious, that is to say when it is seen as
belonging to the subject. 17 Thus the polytheistic heaven of the
ancients owes its depotentiation not least to the view first pro-
pounded by Euhemeros, 18 who maintained that the gods were
nothing but reflections of human character. It is indeed easy to
show that the divine pair is simply an idealization of the parents
or of some other human couple, which for some reason appeared
in heaven. This assumption would be simple enough if projec-
tion were not an unconscious process but were a conscious in-
tention. It would generally be supposed that one's own parents
are the best known of all individuals, the ones of which the
subject is most conscious. But precisely for this reason they
could not be projected, because projection always contains
something of which the subject is not conscious and which seems
not to belong to him. The image of the parents is the very one
that could be projected least, because it is too conscious.

122 In reality, however, it is just the parental imagos that seem
to be projected most frequently, a fact so obvious that one could
almost draw the conclusion that it is precisely the conscious con-
tents which are projected. This can be seen most plainly in cases
of transference, where it is perfectly clear to the patient that the
father-imago (or even the mother-imago) is projected on to the
analyst and he even sees through the incest-fantasies bound up
with them, without, however, being freed from the reactive
effect of his projection, i.e., from the transference. In other

16 Hermetic alchemical philosophy from the 14th to the 17th cents, provides a
wealth of instructive examples. For our purposes, a glimpse into Michael Maier's
Symbola aureae mensae (1617) would suffice.

17 There are of course cases where, in spite of the patient's seemingly sufficient in-
sight, the reactive effect of the projection does not cease, and the expected libera-
tion does not take place. I have often observed that in such cases meaningful but
unconscious contents are still bound up with the projection carrier. It is these
contents that keep up the effect of the projection, although it has apparently been
seen through.

18 Fl. c. 300 B.C. Cf. Block, Euhemere: son livre et sa doctrine.

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CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

words, he behaves exactly as if he had not seen through his pro-
jection at all. Experience shows that projection is never con-
scious: projections are always there first and are recognized
afterwards. We must therefore assume that, over and above the
incest-fantasy, highly emotional contents are still bound up
with the parental imagos and need to be made conscious. They
are obviously more difficult to make conscious than the incest-
fantasies, which are supposed to have been repressed through
violent resistance and to be unconscious for that reason. Sup-
posing this view is correct, we are driven to the conclusion that
besides the incest-fantasy there must be contents which are
repressed through a still greater resistance. Since it is difficult to
imagine anything more repellent than incest, we find ourselves
rather at a loss to answer this question.

12 3 If we let practical experience speak, it tells us that, apart
from the incest-fantasy, religious ideas are associated with the
parental imagos. I do not need to cite historical proofs of this,
as they are known to all. But what about the alleged objection-
ableness of religious associations?

12 4 Someone once observed that in ordinary society it is more
embarrassing to talk about God at table than to tell a risque
story. Indeed, for many people it is more bearable to admit their
sexual fantasies than to be forced to confess that their analyst is
a saviour, for the former are biologically legitimate, whereas the
latter instance is definitely pathological, and this is something
we greatly fear. It seems to me, however, that we make too much
of "resistance." The phenomena in question can be explained
just as easily by lack of imagination and reflectiveness, which
makes the act of conscious realization so difficult for the patient.
He may perhaps have no particular resistance to religious ideas,
only the thought has never occurred to him that he could seri-
ously regard his analyst as a God or saviour. Mere .reason alone
is sufficient to protect him from such illusions. But he is less slow
to assume that his analyst thinks himself one. When one is dog-
matic oneself, it is notoriously easy to take other people for
prophets and founders of religions.

i2 5 Now religious ideas, as history shows, are charged with an
extremely suggestive, emotional power. Among them I naturally
reckon all representations collectives, everything that we learn
from the history of religion, and anything that has an "-ism"

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THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

attached to it. The latter is only a modern variant of the denom-
inational religions. A man may be convinced in all good faith
that he has no religious ideas, but no one can fall so far away
from humanity that he no longer has any dominating repre-
sentation collective. His very materialism, atheism, communism,
socialism, liberalism, intellectualism, existentialism, or what
not, testifies against his innocence. Somewhere or other, overtly
or covertly, he is possessed by a supraordinate idea.

l 6 The psychologist knows how much religious ideas have to do
with the parental imagos. History has preserved overwhelming
evidence of this, quite apart from modern medical findings,
which have even led certain people to suppose that the relation-
ship to the parents is the real origin of religious ideas. This
hypothesis is based on very poor knowledge of the facts. In the
first place, one should not simply translate the family psychol-
ogy of modern man into a context of primitive conditions,
where things are so very different; secondly, one should beware
of ill-considered tribal-father and primal-horde fantasies; thirdly
and most importantly, one should have the most accurate knowl-
edge of the phenomenology of religious experience, which is a
subject in itself. Psychological investigations in this field have
so far not fulfilled any of these three conditions.

**7 The only thing we know positively from psychological expe-
rience is that theistic ideas are associated with the parental
imagos, and that our patients are mostly unconscious of them.
If the corresponding projections cannot be withdrawn through
insight, then we have every reason to suspect the presence of
emotional contents of a religious nature, regardless of the ra-
tionalistic resistance of the patient.

28 So far as we have any information about man, we know that
he has always and everywhere been under the influence of
dominating ideas. Any one who alleges that he is not can im-
mediately be suspected of having exchanged a known form of
belief for a variant which is less known both to himself and to
others. Instead of theism he is a devotee of atheism, instead of
Dionysus he favours the more modern Mithras, and instead of
heaven he seeks paradise on earth.

^9 A man without a dominating representation collective would
be a thoroughly abnormal phenomenon. But such a person ex-

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CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

ists only in the fantasies of isolated individuals who are deluded
about themselves. They are mistaken not only about the exist-
ence of religious ideas, but also and more especially about their
intensity. The archetype behind a religious idea has, like every
instinct, its specific energy, which it does not lose even if the
conscious mind ignores it. Just as it can be assumed with the
greatest probability that every man possesses all the average
human functions and qualities, so we may expect the presence of
normal religious factors, the archetypes, and this expectation
does not prove fallacious. Any one who succeeds in putting off
the mantle of faith can do so only because another lies close to
hand. No one can escape the prejudice of being human.

^o The representations collectives have a dominating power, so
it is not surprising that they are repressed with the most intense
resistance. When repressed, they do not hide behind any trifling
thing but behind ideas and figures that have already become
problematical for other reasons, and intensify and complicate
their dubious nature. For instance, everything that we would
like, in infantile fashion, to attri bute to our parents or blame
them for is blown up to fantastic proportions from this secret
source, and for this reason it remains an open question how
much of the ill-reputed incest-fantasy is to be taken seriously.
Behind the parental pair, or pair of lovers, lie contents of ex-
treme tension which are not apperceived in consciousness and
can therefore become perceptible only through projection. That
projections of this kind do actually occur and are not just tradi-
tional opinions is attested by historical documents. These show
that syzygies were projected which were in complete contradic-
tion to the traditional beliefs, and that they were often expe-
rienced in the form of a vision. 19

l 3* One of the most instructive examples in this respect is the
vision of the recently canonized Nicholas of Flue, a Swiss mystic
of the fifteenth century, of whose visions we possess reports by

19 This is not to overlook the fact that there is probably a far greater number of
visions which agree with the dogma. Nevertheless, they are not spontaneous and
autonomous projections in the strict sense but are visualizations of conscious con-
tents, evoked through prayer, autosuggestion, and heterosuggestion. Most spiritual
exercises have this effect, and so do the prescribed meditation practices of the East.
In any thorough investigation of such visions it would have to be ascertained,
among other things, what the actual vision was and how far dogmatic elaboration
contri buted to its form.

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THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

his contemporaries. 20 In the visions that marked his initiation
into the state of adoption by God, God appeared in dual form,
once as a majestic father and once as a majestic mother. This
representation could not be more unorthodox, since the Church
had eliminated the feminine element from the Trinity a thou-
sand years earlier as heretical. Brother Klaus was a simple un-
lettered peasant who doubtless had received none but the
approved Church teaching, and was certainly not acquainted
with the Gnostic interpretation of the Holy Ghost as the femi-
nine and motherly Sophia. 21 His so-called Trinity Vision is at
the same time a perfect example of the intensity of projected
contents. Brother Klaus's psychological situation was eminently
suited to a projection of this kind, for his conscious idea of God
was so little in accord with the unconscious content that the
latter had to appear in the form of an alien and shattering
experience. We must conclude from this that it was not the
traditional idea of God but, on the contrary, an "heretical"
image 22 that realized itself in visionary form; an archetypal in-
terpretation which came to life again spontaneously, independ-
ently of tradition. It was the archetype of the divine pair, the
syzygy.

*32 There is a very similar case in the visions of Guillaume de
Digulleville, 23 which are described in Le Pelerinage de Vdme.
He saw God in the highest heaven as the King on a shining
round throne, and beside him sat the Queen of Heaven on a
throne of brown crystal. For a monk of the Cistercian Order,
which as we know is distinguished for its severity, this vision is
exceedingly heretical. So here again the condition for projection
is fulfilled.

J 33 Another impressive account of the syzygy vision can be found
in the work of Edward Maitland, who wrote the biography of

20 Cf. Stoeckli, Die Visionen des seligen Bruder Klaus, and Blanke, Bruder Klaus
von Flue.

21 The peculiar love-story of this youngest Aeon can be found in Irenaeus, Adv.
haer., I, 2, 2ff. (Roberts/Rambaut trans., I, pp. 7ft.)

22 Cf. my "Brother Klaus."

23 Guillaume wrote three Pelerinages in the manner of the Divine Comedy, but
independently of Dante, between 1330 and 1350. He was Prior of the Cistercian
monastery at Chalis, in Normandy. Cf. Delacotte, Guillaume de Digulleville: Trois
Romans-poemes du XIV siecle. [Also cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 315ft.
Editors.]

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CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

Anna Kingsford. There he describes in detail his own experi-
ence of God, which, like that of Brother Klaus, consisted in a
vision of light. He says: "This was . . . God as the Lord, prov-
ing by His duality that God is Substance as well as Force, Love
as well as Will, feminine as well as masculine, Mother as well as
Father." 24

*34 These few examples may suffice to characterize the experi-
ence of projection and those features of it which are independ-
ent of tradition. We can hardly get round the hypothesis that
an emotionally charged content is lying ready in the unconscious
and springs into projection at a certain moment. This content
is the syzygy motif, and it expresses the fact that a masculine
element is always paired with a feminine one. The wide distri-
bution and extraordinary emotionality of this motif prove that
it is a fundamental psychic factor of great practical importance,
no matter whether the individual psycho therapist or psycholo-
gist understands where and in what way it influences his special
field of work. Microbes, as we know, played their dangerous
role long before they were discovered.

x 35 As I have said, it is natural to suspect the parental pair in all
syzygies. The feminine part, the mother, corresponds to the
anima. But since, for the reasons discussed above, consciousness
of the object prevents its projection, there is nothing for it but
to assume that parents are also the least known of all human
beings, and consequently that an unconscious reflection of the
parental pair exists which is as unlike them, as utterly alien and
incommensurable, as a man compared with a god. It would be
conceivable, and has as we know been asserted, that the uncon-
scious reflection is none other than the image of father and
mother that was acquired in early childhood, overvalued, and
later repressed on account of the incest-fantasy associated with
it. This hypothesis presupposes that the image was once con-
scious, otherwise it could not have been "repressed." It also
presupposes that the act of moral repression has itself become
unconscious, for otherwise the act would remain preserved in

24 Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary, and Work, I, pp. 130. Maitland's vision
is similar in form and meaning to the one in the Poimandres (Scott, Hermetica,
I, Libellus I, pp. H4ff.) where the spiritual light is described as "male-female."
I do not know whether Maitl and was acquainted with the Poimandres; probably
not.

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THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

consciousness together with the memory of the repressive moral
reaction, from which the nature of the thing repressed could
easily be recognized. I do not want to enlarge on these mis-
givings, but would merely like to emphasize that there is gen-
eral agreement on one point: that the parental imago comes
into existence not in the pre-puberal period or at a time when
consciousness is more or less developed, but in the initial stages
between the first and fourth year, when consciousness does not
show any real continuity and is characterized by a kind of island-
like discontinuity. The ego-relationship that is required for
continuity of consciousness is present only in part, so that a
large proportion of psychic life at this stage runs on in a state
which can only be described as relatively unconscious. At all
events it is a state which would give the impression of a som-
nambulistic, dream, or twilight state if observed in an adult.
These states, as we know from the observation of small children,
are always characterized by an apperception of reality filled with
fantasies. The fantasy-images outweigh the influence of sensory
stimuli and mould them into conformity with a pre-existing
psychic image.
*3 6 It is in my view a great mistake to suppose that the psyche
of a new-born child is a tabula rasa in the sense that there is
absolutely nothing in it. In so far as the child is born with a
differentiated brain that is predetermined by heredity and there-
fore individualized, it meets sensory stimuli coming from out-
side not with any aptitudes, but with specific ones, and this
necessarily results in a particular, individual choice and pattern
of apperception. These aptitudes can be shown to be inherited
instincts and preformed patterns, the latter being the a priori
and formal conditions of apperception that are based on in-
stinct. Their presence gives the world of the child and the
dreamer its anthropomorphic stamp. They are the archetypes,
which direct all fantasy activity into its appointed paths and in
this way produce, in the fantasy-images of children's dreams as
well as in the delusions of schizophrenia, astonishing mythologi-
cal parallels such as can also be found, though in lesser degree,
in the dreams of normal persons and neurotics. It is not, there-
fore, a question of inherited ideas but of inherited possibilities
of ideas. Nor are they individual acquisitions but, in the main,

66



CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

common to all, as can be seen from the universal occurrence of
the archetypes. 25

*37 Just as the archetypes occur on the ethnological level as
myths, so also they are found in every individual, and their
effect is always strongest, that is, they anthropomorphize reality
most, where consciousness is weakest and most restricted, and
where fantasy can overrun the facts of the outer world. This
condition is undoubtedly present in the child during the first
years of its life. It therefore seems to me more probable that the
archetypal form of the divine syzygy first covers up and
assimilates the image of the real parents until, with increasing
consciousness, the real figures of the parents are perceived
often to the child's disappointment. Nobody knows better than
the psycho therapist that the mythologizing of the parents is
often pursued far into adulthood and is given up only with the
greatest resistance.

!3 8 I remember a case that was presented to me as the victim of
a high-grade mother and castration complex, which had still
not been overcome in spite of psychoanalysis. Without any hint
from me, the man had made some drawings which showed the
mother first as a superhuman being, and then as a figure of woe,
with bloody mutilations. I was especially struck by the fact that
a castration had obviously been performed on the mother, for
in front of her gory genitals lay the cut-off male sexual organs.
The drawings clearly represented a diminishing climax: first
the mother was a divine hermaphrodite, who then, through the
son's disappointing experience of reality, was robbed of its
androgynous, Platonic perfection and changed into the woeful
figure of an ordinary old woman. Thus from the very begin-
ning, from the son's earliest childhood, the mother was assimi-
lated to the archetypal idea of the syzygy, or conjunction of male
and female, and for this reason appeared perfect and super-

25 Hubert and Mauss (Melanges d'histoire des religions, preface, p. xxix) call
these a priori thought-forms "categories," presumably with reference to Kant:
"They exist ordinarily as habits which govern consciousness, but are themselves
unconscious." The authors conjecture that the primordial images are conditioned
by language. This conjecture may be correct in certain cases, but in general it is
contradicted by the fact that a great many archetypal images and associations are
brought to light by dream psychology and psychopathology which would be abso-
lutely incommunicable through language.

67



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

human. 26 The latter quality invariably attaches to the archetype
and explains why the archetype appears strange and as if not be-
longing to consciousness, and also why, if the subject identifies
with it, it often causes a devastating change of personality, gen-
erally in the form of megalomania or its opposite.

*39 The son's disappointment effected a castration of the her-
maphroditic mother: this was the patient's so-called castration
complex. He had tumbled down from his childhood Olympus
and was no longer the son-hero of a divine mother. His so-called
fear of castration was fear of real life, which refused to come up
to his erstwhile childish expectations, and everywhere lacked
that mythological meaning which he still dimly remembered
from his earliest youth. His life was, in the truest sense of the
word, "godless." And that, for him though he did not realize
it meant a dire loss of hope and energy. He thought of himself
as "castrated," which is a very plausible neurotic misunder-
standingso plausible that it could even be turned into a theory
of neurosis.

4<> Because people have always feared that the connection with
the instinctive, archetypal stage of consciousness might get lost
in the course of life, the custom has long since been adopted of
giving the new-born child, in addition to his bodily parents,
two godparents, a "godfather" and a "godmother," who are sup-
posed to be responsible for the spiritual welfare of their god-
child. They represent the pair of gods who appear at its birth,
thus illustrating the "dual birth" motif. 27

26 Conforming to the bisexual Original Man in Plato, Symposium, XIV, and to
the hermaphroditic Primal Beings in general.

27 The "dual birth" refers to the motif, well known from hero mythology, which
makes the hero descend from divine as well as from human parents. In most
mysteries and religions it plays an important role as a baptism or rebirth motif.
It was this motif that misled Freud in his study of Leonardo da Vinci. Without
taking account of the fact that Leonardo was by no means the only artist to paint
the motif of St. Anne, Mary, and the Christ-child, Freud tried to reduce Anne and
Mary, the grandmo ther and mother, to the mother and stepmo ther of Leonardo;

" in other words, to assimilate the painting to his theory. But did the other painters
all have stepmo thers?! What prompted Freud to this violent interpretation was
obviously the fantasy of dual descent suggested by Leonardo's biography. This
fantasy covered up the inconvenient reality that St. Anne was the grandmo ther,
and prevented Freud from inquiring into the biographies of other artists who also
painted St. Anne. The "religious inhibition of thought" mentioned on p. 79
(1957 edn.) proved true of the author himself. Similarly, the incest theory on

68



CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

41 The anima image, which lends the mother such superhuman
glamour in the eyes of the son, gradually becomes tarnished by
commonplace reality and sinks back into the unconscious, but
without in any way losing its original tension and instinctivity.
It is ready to spring out and project itself at the first opportu-
nity, the moment a woman makes an impression that is out of
the ordinary. We then have Goethe's experience with Frau von
Stein, and its repercussions in the figures of Mignon and
Gretchen, all over again. In the case of Gretchen, Goe the also
showed us the whole underlying "metaphysic." The love life of
a man reveals the psychology of this archetype in the form
either of boundless fascination, overvaluation, and infatuation,
or of misogyny in all its gradations and variants, none of which
can be explained by the real nature of the "object" in question,
but only by a transference of the mother complex. The complex,
however, was caused in the first place by the assimilation of the
mother (in itself a normal and ubiquitous phenomenon) to the
pre-existent, feminine side of an archetypal "male-female" pair
of opposites, and secondly by an abnormal delay in detaching
from the primordial image of the mother. Actually, nobody can
stand the total loss of the archetype. When that happens, it gives
rise to that frightful "discontent in our culture," where nobody
feels at home because a "father" and "mother" are missing.
Everyone knows the provisions that religion has always made in
this respect. Unfortunately there are very many people who
thoughtlessly go on asking whether these provisions are "true,"
when it is really a question of a psychological need. Nothing is
achieved by explaining them away rationalistically.

L 42 When projected, the anima always has a feminine form with
definite characteristics. This empirical finding does not mean

which he lays so much stress is based on another archetype, the well-known incest
motif frequently met with in hero myths. It is logically derived from the original
hermaphrodite type, which seems to go far back into prehistory. Whenever a
psychological theory is forcibly applied, we have reason to suspect that an arche-
typal fantasy-image is trying to distort reality, thus bearing out Freud's own idea
of the "religious inhibition of thought." But to explain the genesis of archetypes
by means of the incest theory is about as useful as ladling water from one kettle
into another kettle standing beside it, which is connected with the first by a pipe.
You cannot explain one archetype by another; that is, it is impossible to say where
the archetype comes from, because there is no Archimedean point outside the
a priori conditions it represents.

69



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

that the archetype is constituted like that in itself. The male-
female syzygy is only one among the possible pairs of opposites,
albeit the most important one in practice and the commonest.
It has numerous connections with other pairs which do not dis-
play any sex differences at all and can therefore be put into the
sexual category only by main force. These connections, with
their manifold shades of meaning, are found more particularly
in Kundalini yoga, 28 in Gnosticism, 29 and above all in alchemi-
cal philosophy, 30 quite apart from the spontaneous fantasy-prod-
ucts in neurotic and psychotic case material. When one carefully
considers this accumulation of data, it begins to seem probable
that an archetype in its quiescent, unprojected state has no
exactly determinable form but is in itself an indefinite structure
which can assume definite forms only in projection.

*43 This seems to contradict the concept of a "type." If I am
not mistaken, it not only seems but actually is a contradiction.
Empirically speaking, we are dealing all the time with "types,"
definite forms that can be named and distinguished. But as soon
as you divest these types of the phenomenology presented by
the case material, and try to examine them in relation to other
archetypal forms, they branch out into such far-reaching rami-
fications in the history of symbols that one comes to the con-
clusion that the basic psychic elements are infinitely varied and
ever changing, so as utterly to defy our powers of imagination.
The empiricist must therefore content himself with a theoreti-
cal "as if." In this respect he is no worse off than the atomic
physicist, even though his method is not based on quantitative
measurement but is a morphologically descriptive one.

*44 The anima is a factor of the utmost importance in the psy-
chology of a man wherever emotions and affects are at work. She
intensifies, exaggerates, falsifies, and mythologizes all emotional
relations with his work and with other people of both sexes. The
resultant fantasies and entanglements are all her doing. When
the anima is strongly constellated, she softens the man's char-
acter and makes him touchy, irritable, moody, jealous, vain, and
unadjusted. He is then in a state of "discontent" and spreads

28 Cf. Avalon, The Serpent Power; Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra; Woodroffe,
Shakti and Shakta.

29 Schultz, Dokumente der Gnosis, especially the lists in Irenaeus, Adversus
haereses. 30 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy.

7 o



CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES AND THE ANIMA CONCEPT

discontent all around him. Sometimes the man's relationship to
the woman who has caught his anima accounts for the existence
of this syndrome.

H5 The anima, as I have remarked elsewhere, 31 has not escaped
the attentions of the poets. There are excellent descriptions of
her, which at the same time tell us about the symbolic context
in which the archetype is usually embedded. I give first place
to Rider Haggard's novels She, The Return of She, and Wis-
dom's Daughter, and Benoit's L'Atlantide. Benoit was accused
of plagiarizing Rider Haggard, because the two accounts are
disconcertingly alike. But it seems he was able to acquit himself
of this charge. Spitteler's Prometheus contains some very subtle
observations, too, and his novel Imago gives an admirable de-
scription of projection.

*4 6 The question of therapy is a problem that cannot be disposed
of in a few words. It was not my intention to deal with it here,
but I would like to outline my point of view. Younger people,
who have not yet reached the middle of life (around the age of
35), can bear even the total loss of the anima without injury.
The important thing at this stage is for a man to be a man. The
growing youth must be able to free himself from the anima
fascination of his mother. There are exceptions, notably artists,
where the problem often takes a different turn; also homo-
sexuality, which is usually characterized by identity with the
anima. In view of the recognized frequency of this phenomenon,
its interpretation as a pathological perversion is very dubious.
The psychological findings show that it is rather a matter of
incomplete detachment from the hermaphroditic archetype,
coupled with a distinct resistance to identify with the role of a
one-sided sexual being. Such a disposition should not be ad-
judged negative in all circumstances, in so far as it preserves
the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual
being has, up to a point, lost.

*47 After the middle of life, however, permanent loss of the ani-
ma means a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human
kindness. The result, as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness,
stereotypy, fanatical one-sidedness, obstinacy, pedantry, or else
resignation, weariness, sloppiness, irresponsibility, and finally
a childish ramollissement with a tendency to alcohol. After
31 Cf . the first paper in this volume.

7



THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

middle life, therefore, the connection with the archetypal sphere
of experience should if possible be re-established. 32

32 The most important problems for therapy are discussed in my essay "The Rela-
tions between the Ego and the Unconscious" and also in the "Psychology of the
Transference." For the mythological aspects of the anima, the reader is referred to
another paper in this volume, "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore."


7*




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