Animus & Creativity

inviting & integrating animus

I’ve enrolled in an art class at our local art center. The class, which begins Sunday evening, will cover the basics of drawing. This is one of my manifold attempts over the past year or so at trying activities that may assist me along the path of individuation, and encourage my more unconscious, repressed, or shy aspects to show themselves. Put another way, perhaps it will show them I care.

As a child I was always creating—writing, drawing, painting, making music. I played the flute and the harmonica, and I longed to play the piano. But eventually, I gave up the flute; everyone knows band kids were dorks, and I didn’t want to be one. For the sake of appearances, I sold my creative self down the river, silencing her protests. In her absence, I became a performance of myself—shaped by what I thought I should be rather than who I was.

There’s a lot written by depth psychologists from Jung on about the value of art–so much, in fact, that the thought of trying to corral the subject into a handful of pithy posts overwhelms me. How can I do it credit, while still working so imperfectly on inviting and integrating the creative animus influence in my own life?

Perhaps sharing a dream will illustrate the art of relating to one’s contrasexual part and showing how this recently worked in my life. If this is your first visit to The Third Eve, you may want to read my post about Jungian dream interpretation before continuing.

dream: hello, old friend

I dreamed last month that I went to visit a friend who embodies aspects of the great earth mother archetype, at her home. Her dream home was situated in a grove of tall, ancient trees. The house was a small white frame house that had been added onto time and again and had the air of a comfortably tousled bed. I realized upon entering the house that my friend, who in real life has been divorced and single for over a decade now, had a new partner. He had the tweedy, relaxed air of a somewhat rumpled but intelligent and reservedly friendly professor. The two were so engrossed in their lively conversation that they barely paid me any attention.

I wandered through the house, encountering interesting objects and books, but grew increasingly dissatisfied because the couple wouldn’t entertain me. At one point I meandered through a series of three connected bathrooms which were tiled but had neither counters nor fixtures–suggestions of purification rituals and shadowy, private content waiting to fully manifest.

I found my way to the front of the house and realized I was in an underground aquarium and could see through huge plate glass windows into the outer world beyond. I looked into the world and saw, to my horror, a great tsunami sweeping scores of men, women, and children away in its huge waves. I saw mothers and fathers trying to save their children, their mouths open in silent cries. A beach lay nearby—a place where someone might attempt a rescue, or where a lucky victim might be cast ashore by indifferent waves. I searched for a way into the water, or onto the beach, hoping I might help a few. But it was clear I could do nothing; there was no way in. I stood paralyzed behind the plate glass window.

As I stood there frozen, a strange man approached me. Like my friend’s partner, he too had a rather professorial air about him—but his gestures indicated that he wanted to lead me in prayer. I imagined he was Catholic, for I had anticipated which prayer we were to pray. Hovering just beyond my peripheral vision were a few shadowy others who would join us for prayer.

I had the impression that he was Catholic, and I already knew the prayer we were to pray. I had the sense that a few other people, perhaps a woman or two, were nearby him, hovering in my peripheral vision, and would join us for prayer. The devout figure looked at me expectantly, inviting me to pray as tides of people were swept away before us. Neither he nor his companions showed the slightest concern for the waves or the drowning. They were gripped by the serene, unwavering focus that comes with absolute self-assurance.

I turned away from the devout figure, pretending not to see his gestures, thinking, Praying is useless. That’s when I noticed small plaques mounted beside each window, like the kind you’d see in an aquarium or museum, calmly describing the scene. I acted as though I were reading the plaque before me, though I never took in a word. All the while, I clung to the conviction that prayer was absurd in the face of such disaster—and refused to join the stranger. Never mind that reading plaques was equally absurd.

dream amplification

After I woke up, I knew I had twice encountered my animus in the dream. He was a manifestation of the third stage of animus development, inviting me to enter into a world which would unite symbols of the deep feminine unconscious I could see beyond the window with the here-and-now world of the scholarly observer and interpreter. My friend symbolized the great mother and the world of the earth; her professorial partner symbolized the intellectually creative world, the opposite of the earthbound mother world.

In dreams, large numbers of people and bodies of water often represent the collective unconscious. Perhaps my animus nature was inviting me to enter into an intimate spiritual dialogue about the state of humanity. I might also receive something personal to take away from the disastrous collectivism communicated by the dream.

Because I left the couple and went alone to peer through the aquarium walls into the depths, the dream suggested that I would encounter my animus in the unconscious—privately, and in an intimate setting. The professorial figure, the priestly one, and their connections to the book—and to The Good Book—symbolized a world that is creative, objective, generative, and impersonal. This world stands in contrast to the instinctive, diffuse, and subjective realm of the mother.

The devout figure might be symbolic of the Great Father archetype, while my friend was the Great Mother. I needed to move beyond relating to the two dream figures as a mere observer wandering through their house. I needed to sit at their table in conversation as a peer. When I can do this, I’ll also enter into dialogue with Spirit at the animus figure’s invitation to pray.

However, I turned away from them.

turning away

Many times the turning away or running away motif occurs in dreams during which the dreamer encounters the anima or animus during a new phase of psychic activity. Even if the animi figure has been encountered many times and is integrated into conscious living, there are many facets to the inner guide that will always lie outside the grasp of the conscious mind. When the dreamer is ready, the contrasexual or intersexual inner guide will appear to invite the individual into deeper relationship. Nearly always, the initial meeting is rebuffed by the dreamer, often because the dreamer does not want to face something frightening or upsetting. For example, if the stranger is a frightening or threatening figure—robber, rapist, witch, hag, succubus, etc.—it is only natural for the dreamer to run away or try to hide.

“You can run, but you can’t hide” from the animus or anima, though. The challenge for the dreamer is to move toward the animus or anima and to face what they’ve been avoiding.

dream interpretation

The moment I awoke, I knew I had offended my animus—by pretending not to see his gesture of invitation, and by refusing to engage with him about my conviction that prayer was useless. I told him I saw what I had done and that I was sorry. But I also told him I still believed it: prayer would not have saved the people being swept past by the waves. In both settings where I encountered the animus—seated in intimate conversation with my friend, and beckoning me to pray for those being carried away by the tsunami—there was a shared, immovable sense of impossibility. I couldn’t break into the conversation between him and my girlfriend, and I couldn’t break out of the aquarium to reach the floodwaters and try to save the drowning.

The obstinacy of rigid animus contents is legendary. There’s a drive toward completion and possession that can be as insistent as a man’s erection demanding satisfaction. Certainly, he may overcome the urge by sheer force of will—but not without effort, or the determined distraction of mind and body. The animus is no less demanding. What we deny, he pursues with greater force and insistence. If I continue to resist him, he may well show up in future dreams regressed to a Johnny Depp figure—climbing aboard uninvited and plundering my booty.

complexes

My animus is showing me that my stubborn fixation on the big picture—the crashing waves, the masses in pain, my guilt over being safe, my role as the intelligent observer, my helplessness—is obstructing an intimate relationship with the Great Father and Great Mother within. Seen together, they are figures of wholeness. I recognize a complex here: my actual mother and father were, and always have been, so absorbed in their love for one another—an endless romance—that little spiritual or emotional energy remained for their children. We were raised to be thinkers and doers, not feelers or diviners, not the kind who search for water with nothing but our intuitions and a thin willow branch.

Jung wrote that individuality and group identity are incompatible: you can have one or the other, but not both:

Any large company of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid and violent animal. The bigger the organization, the more unavoidable is its immorality and blind stupidity. . . Society, by automatically stressing all the collective qualities in its individual representatives, puts a premium on mediocrity, on everything that settles down to vegetate in an easy, irresponsible way. Individuality will inevitably be driven to the wall (par. 240).

One of the central challenges the dream presented was this: I must leave the familiar if I am to move forward into the great unknown. I must step away from the crowd—from cultural norms, parental beliefs, and inherited conventions.

It’s clear I cannot reach the Gandhi stage of animus development—an animus who is a living prayer, who would die for his faith—if I won’t even pray alongside the Herr Professor Animus of my recent dream. Jesus said that whoever is unwilling to leave behind father, mother, sister, brother, homes, and ancestral lands is not worthy of the kingdom of God. So it is with our archetypes: anyone who cannot defy the taboos of the first mother and father is unfit to receive the bounty of the archetypal Great Father and Great Mother.

I see how often I choose the lesser, safer path, rather than make the courageous plunge into the waters of baptism.

paper white as snow

This is why I enrolled in the drawing class: it is my sin offering to the animus, and to the Spirit who animates him. I take up a drawing board, and the part of me still stuck in Mr. Chain’s ninth-grade art class turns it into an altar. I offer newly sharpened pencils, an untouched artist’s eraser, charcoal, and paper white as snow.

Why spend so much time and effort in this direction? Because if I focus only on the animus of the word, I’m doing what I already know. The familiar breeds habit. In art, there’s a greater chance the unconscious will take form—be made visible.

I’ll report back on how my animus and I are getting along after our first drawing class, which is, incidentally, taught by a man.

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notes

Jung, Carl. The Collected Works. Vol. 7. Trans. R.F.C. Hull, Ed. H. Read, et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953-1979.

resources

• “The Animus.” The Third Eve, Jun 2008.
• “Animuse.” The Third Eve, Mar 2010.
• “I Need a Hero.” The Third Eve, Jul 2024.
• “Jungian Dream Interpretation.” The Third Eve, Feb 2008.