Anima and Animus: Jung’s Inner Feminine and Masculine
Anima and animus are Jung’s names for the contrasexual side of the psyche: an inner feminine image in a man and an inner masculine image in a woman. He saw them as bridges between the conscious ego and the deeper layers of the unconscious.
What are the anima and the animus?
Both words are Latin. Anima means soul or breath, animus spirit or mind. Jung used them for an archetypal figure that, in his view, carries the qualities a person has not developed consciously because they did not fit his or her gender role. In a man this figure appears as feminine, in a woman as masculine.
In Psychological Types (1921) he called it the soul image and described it as the inner counterpart of the persona: the persona faces the outer world, the anima or animus faces the inner one. His later and more developed account is in “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious” (1928) and in the third chapter of Aion (1951), “The Syzygy: Anima and Animus”.
Jung considered the anima and animus deeper and harder to integrate than the shadow. While the shadow is usually recognizable as one’s own, the contrasexual figure feels genuinely other.
Projection and falling in love
Like other archetypes, the anima and animus are first met in projection. The sudden fascination of falling in love, the feeling of having found someone already known, was for Jung a classic sign that an inner image had been projected onto a real person. The disappointment that often follows, when the real person turns out to be different, is part of the process of withdrawing the projection and meeting the other as they are.
Jung also described what happens when a person is unconsciously identified with this figure. In his terms, a man possessed by the anima becomes moody and touchy, and a woman possessed by the animus holds rigid, borrowed opinions. These descriptions are often quoted, and they are also among the most criticized parts of his work, because they reflect the gender assumptions of his time.
The four stages of the anima and the animus
In “The Psychology of the Transference” (1946) Jung outlined four stages of the anima, named after figures from tradition. Marie-Louise von Franz, his close collaborator, later described four parallel stages of the animus in Man and His Symbols (1964).
- Anima stage 1: Eve
- A purely instinctual, biological image of woman.
- Anima stage 2: Helen
- A romantic and aesthetic image, still largely sexual, as in Helen of Troy.
- Anima stage 3: Mary
- Love raised to spiritual devotion.
- Anima stage 4: Sophia
- Wisdom, the guide to the deepest meaning.
- Animus stages
- According to von Franz: first the embodiment of physical strength, then of initiative and planned action, then of the word and of knowledge, as in a teacher or a clergyman, and finally of spiritual meaning, a guide to inner truth.
The syzygy: a pair of opposites
Jung often spoke of anima and animus together as a syzygy, a pair yoked together, and pointed to the divine couples of many religions and to the sacred marriage of alchemy, the coniunctio, as images of their union. For him the meeting of masculine and feminine in the psyche was a central symbol of wholeness and of the Self.
Criticism and later views
The concept has been criticized for treating early twentieth century gender roles as timeless facts of nature. Revision began early. Emma Jung, in the essays collected as Animus and Anima (1957), offered a more nuanced account from a woman’s perspective.
The archetypal psychologist James Hillman argued in Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion (1985) that the anima belongs to every psyche regardless of sex. Feminist Jungians such as Polly Young-Eisendrath reworked the theory further. Many contemporary analysts now understand anima and animus as images of the unknown other within, not tied to biological sex or to a fixed list of masculine and feminine traits.
Frequently asked questions
What is the anima in simple terms?
In Jung’s theory the anima is the inner feminine figure in a man’s psyche. It appears in dreams and fantasies and is often projected onto women he falls in love with. It connects the conscious mind with the deeper unconscious.
What is the animus?
The animus is the corresponding inner masculine figure in a woman’s psyche, according to Jung. In dreams it may appear as a guide, a stranger, a group of men or a voice of authority.
Do women have an anima and men an animus?
In Jung’s original model, no: the inner figure is of the opposite sex. Many later Jungians, beginning with James Hillman, disagree and hold that every person can have both, or that the figures represent otherness rather than gender.
What does anima possession mean?
It is Jung’s phrase for a state in which a man is unconsciously identified with his anima, so that moods and resentments take over his behavior. The parallel term for women is animus possession. Modern readers often treat these phrases with caution because of their gender stereotypes.
How do the anima and animus appear in dreams?
Often as an unknown figure of the opposite sex who fascinates, guides, frightens or seduces the dreamer. As always in Jungian work, the meaning depends on the dream and the dreamer. See Jung on dreams.
Sources and further reading
- C. G. Jung, Aion, chapter 3 “The Syzygy: Anima and Animus” (1951), Collected Works, Vol. 9ii
- C. G. Jung, “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious” (1928), Collected Works, Vol. 7
- C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (1921), Definitions: “Soul” and “Soul-Image”, Collected Works, Vol. 6
- C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Transference” (1946), Collected Works, Vol. 16
- Emma Jung, Animus and Anima (1957)
- Marie-Louise von Franz, “The Process of Individuation”, in C. G. Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols (1964)
- James Hillman, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion (1985)
Last reviewed November 3, 2026. Written from Jung’s Collected Works and standard scholarship; summaries, not interpretations.
