Barbara Hannah

Barbara Hannah tackled the theme of the animus in women's psyche with a comprehensiveness unsurpassed in Jungian literature. Her insight and vigor stem directly from personally grappling with her own animus while integrating the experience and reflections of psychotherapists working directly with C.C. Jung. Her psychological analysis of the minims is presented here in two volumes in essays gleaned from her handwritten notes, typed manuscripts, previously published articles (as well as her notes for those articles) and from her own drafts oilier lectures, given at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich and to various audiences in Switzerland and England. The main objective of these two volumes is to present the reader with an all-inclusive synthesis of the many and complex essays and lectures Barbara Hannah presented on the animus while rendering the wonderful spirit and voice of Barbara Hannah herself.

The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women

The Animus

Laura Mei

The feminine, as [Jung] said, overcomes by taking on and holding out suffering; the masculine overcomes by being active and killing the dragon. Logos is an active principle, Eros receptive and passive.

In a seminar, Jung once said that doubt was the crown of life and that all certainty was merely one-sided. For in uncertainty and doubt, truth and error come together. Doubt is life, truth is often stagnation and death. When you are in doubt, you have the greatest opportunity to unite the dark and the light sides of life. And indeed in my experience the most difficult thing to stand is never being sure one was right in a decision. One must decide, and once decided, one must support oneself in the decision, and yet at the same time one must stand the fact that one may have been quite wrong.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. If we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis we count for [being somebody or] something only because of the essential we embody, and it we do not embody that, life is wasted.

As quoted by Carl Jung in 𝘔𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴, 𝘙𝘦𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴

A great many people make the mistake of believing that one can integrate the shadow by deliberately living its qualities. But this mistake only leads to identification with the shadow. We change roles, so to speak, and nothing is gained.

Perhaps we can get nearer to understanding if we remember that the animus is our unconscious mind and that many of his manifestations are thoughts or opinions. Revengeful thoughts, the feeling of being misunderstood or unappreciated, jealous thoughts, a "wait till I have a chance and I will show them" sort of attitude are all manifestations of the negative aspect of our unconscious mind.

Later in life, doubt is the beginning of wisdom. When you are in doubt you have the greatest opportunity to unite the dark and the light sides of life.

It is only a comparatively small minority that is destined to tread the difficult inner way of coming to terms with the collective unconscious, that longest of all paths, as the alchemists called it. Jung notes that: only those individuals can attain to a higher degree of consciousness who are destined to it and called to it from the beginning, that is, who have a capacity and an urge for higher differentiation. 

Once we have realized that we are not the king of our psyche, not the master in our own house, we are in a much stronger position. We have escaped from our subjectivity, that is, we have gained a tiny piece of objective ground where we can stand and look around us. A great deal that belongs in our own inner world has always been in projection. All those things which we do not see in ourselves are automatically projected onto our environment. We do not 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 projections, but we 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 pieces of ourselves that we have not recognized projected onto our environment.

In Latin, the word 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘴 means intellect, memory, consciousness, character and spirit. In Jungian psychology it is often used primarily to denote the phenomenon of "spirit" in women.

The Animus The Spirit of Inner Truth in Women

Highlights