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Introduction:
This is Part 2 of my text-based interview with Emerald from the DiamondNet YouTube channel. You can See Part 1 here. I found her obscure and IMO underrated channel going down the rabbit-hole of YouTube. She talks a lot about the nuts and bolts of spirituality without the fluff, an in particular interest for me are here videos on the Shadow.
I am in the process of doing and integrating my own shadow work through dream analysis with the help of a Jungian psychoanalyst…so you’ll be seeing a few posts about the Shadow in the upcoming weeks! If you’re new to the idea of the Shadow, check out this video here for a simple explanation.
Today we talk about the anima/animus, or masculine/feminine energies within us all. The Anima and Animus energy within us has nothing to do with sexuality or gender identity. Instead, it’s all about creating balance.
What we cover in the conversation:
Understanding Carl Jung’s concept of the Anima and Animus / masculine and feminine traits
How men suppress the feminine and women suppress the masculine
Common misconceptions about what these terms even mean
The impact of the shadow on our relationships
Ways to start noticing and integrating your own shadow
Notable quote from this conversation:
“To speak generally, men’s collective core wound tends to have to do with shame. In contrast, women’s collective core wound has to do with powerlessness.”
Q: What does Carl Jung say about the anima/animus, and how does it impact our views of the opposite sex?
Jung’s idea of the Anima and Animus is that the Anima is the Inner woman in every man, while the Animus is the inner man in every woman.
I’m less inclined to think of it as being so divided along gender lines because my main issue has been around the repression of the Feminine. So, I’ve dealt with many of the symptoms that Jung ascribed to Anima issues.
These aspects of the psyche have to do with our relationship to the archetypal Feminine and the archetypal Masculine… The Masculine and Feminine Principle.
When we have a negative relationship to the Masculine side, the Feminine side, or both, we will tend to project our rejected Anima or Animus onto women as a whole group or men as a whole group.
This can create a lot of issues with misogyny and misandry.
But it goes even deeper than just gender dynamics. We can come into a rejection of everything associated with the archetypal Masculine and Feminine.
So, issues with repressing the Anima can lead to misogyny and a feeling that women control everything.
But it can also lead to an aversion to the emotions, and an antagonistic relationship with the body, the Earth, and the material plane in general. There can also be difficulties with accepting limitations and death.
Q: It seems like the definitions of masculine/feminine depend on the culture/time period, so we can also think about it in terms of traits.
Here is a graph of masculine/feminine traits:
Q: What does this repression of the feminine look like (in men)?
A very common expression of Anima repression in men is where a man will come into resistance to his Feminine side in order to try to be more Masculine and to fit to societal Masculine ideals.
Now, this doesn’t actually work because the rejection of the Feminine doesn’t make someone more Masculine. It just puts them in opposition to parts of themselves and creates issues with shame.
Men who repress their Feminine side tend to exist along a spectrum from more mild Anima repression to more severe Anima repression.
And there is a powerful archetypal story that men who exist along this spectrum project onto the world.
They imagine an image of the archetypal ideal woman (who possesses ideal beauty) sitting up on a pedestal with total power to either validate or invalidate a man’s existence based upon how well he matches up to cultural expectations of Masculinity.
Men who match up to the ideal image of the Masculine get accepted and worshiped by the ideal woman. But men who deviate from the Masculine ideal image have their entire existence invalidated.
And they succumb to shame in the eyes of women and the world.
This ideal woman is both angelic and demonic… above humanity in her perfection and below humanity in her wickedness.
And the more resistance that a man has towards his Anima, the more intensely he will be ruled by this archetype and the narrative that she lives within.
And in the more severe forms of Anima repression, the man will develop an intense attraction repulsion relationship to women.
He will at once be obsessed with women, and he will think about women nonstop. But he will also become deeply misogynistic and hate women because he likes women more than he loves himself.
And he will always be trying to take women down a peg for the control he perceives that they wield over his life and his self-worth.
Women don’t actually wield this power, of course. But because of his Anima issues, he will see women as a gatekeeper to his own sense of validity and worth.
So, he will tend to want to diminish the power of women in a variety of contexts in order to “level the playing field” because of his projection of this archetypal narrative.
And he will feel very resentful towards women and very jealous of them as he perceives them as worthy as they are and as a hivemind of his superiors… while he must prove his worth in the eyes of the projected repressed Anima.
If you go online to a space under the umbrella of The Manosphere… like Incels, MGTOW, Red Pill, and other online spaces like that which are all about encouraging men to be hyper-Masculine by getting rid of their Feminine side, you’ll find a lot of guys who are suffering deeply with the projection of this archetypal narrative.
They often don’t realize that their issue is actually an Anima issue, so they look outward to things like women and Feminism (and other forces in society that they see as Feminine or Feminizing) to blame as the source of their problems.
And they see this as a Masculinity crisis and seek to solve this Masculinity crisis by doubling down on polarizing in the Masculine and to push their Feminine side away.
And this leads back into the same cycle of feeling powerless to women and unconscious goddess worship regarding the image of the ideal woman.
This is the most common form that I’ve seen Anima issues come up in. If you want to see what Anima repression/possession looks like, just go onto an Incel forum and you’ll see the archetypal story playing itself out.
The internet is really helpful for getting a clear snapshot of this issue that has probably existed in the Collective Shadow for centuries if not millenia.
Men have always had lots of societal pressure to rid themselves of their Feminine side to avoid being seen as effeminate. And there’s a lot of social shame that has historically been applied to men for these deviations from Masculine cultural expectations.
Men tend to repress their Feminine side because they have been taught to be ashamed of the Feminine and to see it as weak.
Women also tend to repress their Feminine side for similar reasons.
We really have a collective Anima issue as a world where the Feminine has been pushed underground… and the Masculine has been over-extended into.
This is why I repressed my Feminine side for a long time. And even as a woman, I can see my past self in men who are dealing with Anima repression.
Q: What about those repressing the masculine side (in women)?
On the flipside, we can also deal with repression of the Masculine side.
Animus repression can lead to misandry and a feeling that men hold all the power. This is similar to how Anima repression functions.
But Animus repression can also lead to an aversion to order, forward movement, and decision making. This also manifests as uncertainty about our purpose and an inability to consciously create a vision of what we want in the future. And when this happens, we become unable to impose our will to enact that will upon the world.
You can find Masculine repression issues in people who are feeling directionless in life or who have issues accessing their own power.
Now, the core Anima repression wound is shame.
The Anima repression story of the ideal woman on the pedestal is all about an invalidation of being and being deemed as unworthy in the eyes of the ideal woman.
To speak generally, men’s collective core wound tends to have to do with shame.
In contrast, women’s collective core wound has to do with powerlessness. So, women who are out of touch with their Animus tend to feel powerless.
When the positive Masculine hasn’t been integrated, this disallows us from crystallizing our intuitions into usable insights. This creates a lack of clarity.
And as a result of this lack of clarity, we don’t know what we want. This creates a situation where we become aimless and ineffective.
Basically, in order to have the power to bring about our wanted outcomes, we have to know what we want. And we need the Masculine side to clarify the non-linear intuitions that come from the Feminine side.
The archetypal story that gets projected onto the world as a result of Animus repression is one where men are viewed as the gatekeepers of power.
While the ideal woman is seen as the gatekeeper to male worth, the ideal man is seen as the gatekeeper to female power.
So when a woman hasn’t integrated her Masculine side, she will tend to see men as tyrannical and as holding all the authority and power.
This is further enforced by men who are dealing with Anima repression and trying to dethrone the pedestalled ideal woman by diminishing women’s power.
And women tend to approach the projection of this ideal male gatekeeper to power through two different modes… fight or fawn.
She will either become Animus possessed with the negative elements of the Masculine and try to out-tyrant the tyrant. And she will fight against the tyranny of the ideal Animus figure that she projects onto the world.
Or she will fawn to the men she projects her repressed Animus onto. And she may end up in relationships with men who resemble the tyrannical Animus image in varying degrees.
She will mistrust her own ability to wield power, so she will look to her partner as the one who has the power and to take all the responsibility and make all her decisions for her.
Now, I’ve talked about these dynamics mostly along gender lines. But as I said before. I’ve dealt with issues of repressing my Feminine side before.
So, these behaviors will show up in anyone who has a problematic relationship to their Feminine and Masculine side.
The Masculine and Feminine are two sides to one coin. If we repress the Masculine side, our Feminine side will be impacted negatively. If we repress the Feminine side, the Masculine side will be impacted negatively.
Q: Is there anything you'd like to share about your YouTube channel or courses?
Yes! If anyone wants to learn more about Shadow Work, you can check out my FREE 60-Minute Shadow Integration Masterclass called “The 6 Simple Steps to Shadow Integration.”
You can watch the masterclass for free by going to shadowintegration.org/masterclass
Recommended Reading and Videos
Meeting The Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature (great book)
The Invisible Partner (book)
Thanks for reading! If you’re doing your own shadow work, or have in the past, feel free to share and comment below.