The Truth About Carl Jungs’s Animus and Anima Archetypes

22.10.26

The animus and anima archetypes are among the most misunderstood ideas in Jungian psychology. Most people reduce them to your “inner man” or “inner woman.” Others turn them into gender stereotypes, assume everyone “has” both, or picture some living entity that haunts people.

But Jung’s original definition is far more practical. It shows exactly how to build a more balanced personality and better relationships.

In this article, I’ll show you what the animus and anima really are, based on Jung’s original principles, and how to spot them in action in your own life.

I’m Rafael Krüger – Jungian Psychology Specialist.

Let’s get into it.

The Animus and Anima

To fully understand the animus and anima, we first have to cover psychodynamics. The foundational premise of Jungian Psychology is that the conscious and unconscious have a compensatory and complementary relationship.

That’s why the most important concept in Jungian Psychology is conscious attitude. The conscious attitude is basically how a person is wired: their basic tendencies, patterns of behavior, and belief system. It’s how one tends to interpret, filter, and react to the world.

But behind these individual tendencies, Jung discovered two foundational layers that give structure to the psyche. The first one is the psychological types – I’m referring to introversion and extroversion, as well as the four psychological functions – thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. The second and deeper layer is the animus and anima.

Because of the compensatory nature of the psyche, everything works in pairs. When something is part of the conscious attitude, its counterpart will be unconscious. For instance, when someone is extroverted, introversion will be unconscious, and vice versa.

The same rule applies to the animus and anima, which are also a pair of opposites. When one of them guides the conscious mind, the other remains unconscious. But before we explore the qualities of the animus and anima, we have to cover Eros and Logos, which are the archetypal principles that generate the animus and anima.

Eros and Logos

In The Red Book, Carl Jung gives us a detailed description of Eros and Logos:

“A descendent of Logos is Nous, the intellect. It is an independent principle of form that means understanding, insight, foresight, legislation, and wisdom. In contrast, Eros has a different purpose. It is not form-giving but form-fulfilling; it is the wine that will be poured into the vessel; it is not the bed and direction of the stream but the impetuous water flowing in it. Eros is desire, longing, force, exuberance, pleasure, suffering. Where Logos is ordering and insistence, Eros is dissolution and movement. They are two fundamental psychic powers that form a pair of opposites, each one requiring the other” (C. G. Jung – The Red Book, p. 365).

Logos is related to the masculine principle and is symbolized by the sun, as it categorizes, judges, and discriminates. Eros, on the other hand, is related to the feminine principle and is symbolized by the moon, because under its mild light everything dissolves and starts to blend together, the lines are blurred, and instead of division, we start seeing how things are related. Eros unifies.

Finally, Carl Jung explains that the conscious mind of men is guided by the Logos principle, and therefore the Eros principle is unconscious, which is personified in the anima.

In women, things are switched. Their conscious mind is guided by the Eros principle. Consequently, the Logos principle is unconscious, which is personified in the animus.

The Persona Compensation

Now that we have covered Eros and Logos and understand the compensatory relationship between conscious and unconscious, grasping the idea of the animus and anima becomes easy.

Emma Jung says Carl Jung “understands these figures to be function complexes behaving in ways compensatory to the outer personality [persona], that is, behaving as if they were inner personalities and exhibiting the characteristics which are lacking in the outer, and manifest, conscious personality. In a man, these are feminine [eros] characteristics, in a woman, masculine [logos]. Normally both are always present, to a certain degree, but find no place in the person’s outwardly directed functioning because they disturb his outer adaptation, his established ideal image of himself” (Emma Jung – The Animus and Anima, p. 3).

In summary, the animus and anima are complexes that compensate for the conscious attitude as well as the persona of men and women. This means that what needs to be compensated is always dependent on the individual personality.

The animus and anima expressions change according to our personal histories, zeitgeist, culture, and societal developments. But because the animus and anima are largely unconscious, they’re typically a touchy blind spot and follow variants of the same pattern.

Jung differentiates their action in a simple manner: the anima is about moods, whereas the animus is about opinions.

That’s why, in a man, the anima’s main function is to give him consciousness of his own emotional life, so that he is guided not by his moods but by principles and a value system. It also gives him insight into his relationships, a true capacity to relate, and helps him find purpose.

In a woman, a positive animus will help her disidentify from her mind and provide true insight, leading to a mature worldview instead of operating with prejudices and prior assumptions that tend to destroy her relationships. It gives the woman a connection with the spiritual realm, inspiration, and the drive to go after what she wants.

Once again, we always have to map how these complexes are operating in the individual personality. Sometimes there’s a lack of important qualities, while other times they’re exacerbated. But first we need to learn the patterns, and then we’ll understand what needs to be integrated. Watch out for the next videos covering the animus and anima individually.

Lastly, the animus and anima are linked with the psychological types, as their technical term is the inferior function.

This means the animus and anima acquire the qualities opposite to our main psychological function. For instance, if you’re guided by thinking, the animus and anima will take on the qualities of the feeling function, and vice versa. If you’re guided by intuition, the animus and anima will acquire the qualities of sensation, and vice versa. The same rule applies to introversion and extroversion.

That’s why you can’t fully understand the animus and anima without the Psychological Types.

• Read this one next – The Truth About Carl Jung’s Psychological Types

Rafael Krüger – Jungian Psychology Specialist

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