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Red Pill Logic: Anima, Animus and Jung

Black Label Logic
June 8, 2017

A while back I wrote a post on how our society is engaged in the mass-production of Beta males and female narcissists, in essence creating men weak of will and women with dogged determination. This translates into men that act more female than male, often being submissive, lacking decisiveness and rejecting the very notion that there is such a thing as “male behavior”. Likewise, the women reject the notion that there is such a thing as “unfeminine” behavior, which often manifests in behaviors such as being argumentative, decisive and insistent. This has often been pointed out in the manosphere as a case of attempting to make a sexually dimorphic species into an androgynous one, with which I agree.

In the present social climate I would argue that a misinterpretation of Jung is at fault for the concept of “Get in touch with your feminine side”, where the underlying meaning of the statement is “If you get in touch with your feminine side, you will adopt my perception“. However, this is not the meaning, nor is it the role of the anima and the animus in Jungian psychology. What characterizes and somewhat sets Jung apart is a writing style based on imagery and his use of dichotomies. For those familiar with psychological types, the dichotomous pairs of “Thinking and “Feeling” and “Sensing” and “Intuition” will be familiar, and this is something that characterizes most of his psychological work in “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious” as well. (If you are interested in learning more about Jung’s psychological types, The Artful Man has a blog dedicated to it that is linked in my sidebar.)

The man is the bearer of logos, represented by rationality, logic and a preference for empiricism, whereas the female represents the concept of eros, the emotional, instinctive and relationship oriented. Thus, this dichotomy in some regard mirrors Jung’s thinking and feeling functions, the former which is more prevalent in men, the latter which is more prevalent in women statistically speaking [7]. However, as explained by many MBTI writers, attempting to turn a thinker into a feeler or vice versa is not a very good idea. Likewise, attempting to turn women into men and men into women, does not create a race of androgynous superhumans, finally free from oppressive social norms and expectations, it creates one group of left-handed people attempting to write with their right hand, and another group of right-handed people attempting to write with their left hand.

Anima and the Red Pill

I view Jung’s psychology as very complimentary to the Red Pill in quite a few regards. The Anima represents the Eros in men, those emotions, instincts and relationship oriented aspects of a man that is frequently secondary to his logos. The role of the Eros in men is to function as weight to balance a man’s logos, so that his reason does not completely dominate his life, and he is able to communicate and form relationships. This is also a central aspect in a red pill transformation, in that many men must learn to understand the female methods of communication.

Men, driven by logos have a strong preference for content over context, for deductive, problem-solving and clear speech, with little attention being paid to things like body language and tone of voice, normally within red pill circles this is referred to as men having a preference for overt communication. Overt communication being those things that are communicated clearly via language, as opposed to those things that are communicated covertly, through body language, voice tone, word choice, and other means that are not directly and openly stated.

This does not mean that a man must adopt the female means of communication, however that he needs to understand them in order to be successful in his relationships with women. The anima in men results from a female imprint on a man, starting with a man’s relationship with his mother, as she is the first representative of eros that he encounters. A significant milestone in a man’s life is the divorce from his mother’s eros imprint of which Jung writes:

He seeks, as it were, the protecting, nourishing, charmed circle of the mother, the condition of the infant released from every care, in which the outside world bends over him and even forces happiness upon him. No wonder the real world vanishes from sight! [3]

Jung rightly points out that if a situation arises where the mother works to hinder the son from becoming a man, in effect constructing a relationship with him that is both that of mother and son, and of husband and wife (not literally speaking). An example of such a relationship can be seen on “The Big Bang Theory” between Howard Walowitz and his mother. Another example would be those sons of single mothers who fill both the role of child and adult for their mothers, and often react with either hyper-masculinity or becoming complete mama’s boys.

The Animus and the Red Pill

As the Anima represents the eros in men, the animus represents the logos in women. This logos is a paternal one and stems from the woman’s father who is the first man that she has a relationship with in childhood. If a woman has a poor animus image, this is frequently referred to as “daddy issues” in common parlance. As the woman’s psyche is more characterized by what Jung describes as “The connective quality of the Eros”, her animus will tend to embody the qualities normally associated with male behavior, such as reason, ambition and decisiveness. Of the female animus Jung writes:

In women, on the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while their Logos is often only a regrettable accident. It gives rise to misunderstandings and annoying interpretations in the family circle and among friends. This is because it consists of opinions instead of reflections, and by opinions I mean a priori assumptions that lay claim to absolute truth. Such assumptions, as everyone knows, can be extremely irritating. [3] 

Thus, the many qualities that the Red Pill accurately points out as being nurtured in modern women, are those of a woman’s animus, and many of the red pill techniques are methodologies that disarm the female animus and thus returns her from a state where she is motivated by gaining power, a result of her animus to one where she is motivated by her natural eros. However, the misinterpretation of Jung’s writing is what has lead us down an unfortunate path, his writing is in fact a blueprint for avoiding the very situation that Rollo accurately points out in his post:

Whether or not there’s merit to Jung’s ideas, there’s little doubt of the impact they had on fem-centrism. Early feminists saw Jung’s theory as the perfect springboard to further a pretense of ‘gender equality’; thus making individual gender balance (i.e. androgyny) a new idealized goal state. Men simply needed to be perfected by exploring their ‘feared’ feminine natures, and women needed to be allowed the opportunity and freedom to masculinize themselves in order to perfect that androgynous balance. [2] 

A central point to much of Jung’s philosophy is that if you neglect aspects of yourself, you become ruled by them. Naomi Quenk wrote a book on psychological types related to inferior function outburst related to Jung’s psychological types where this is a central point. Jung’s own writing reflects this, especially those on the concept of the shadow, and the need to integrate the shadow personality into the self in order to avoid being possessed by it.

Anima and Animus Possession

The concept of being possessed comes from Jung’s view of a person being a mosaic of sorts of different dichotomous traits, the ego and the shadow, the anima or animus, and various others. This is more expanded than the structure proposed by Freud consisting of the ego, super-ego and ID. I have referred to the idea of a person developing a tendency to either be controlled by his ID or Super-ego, when the ego is not sufficiently developed, and in the same manner, a person who does not familiarize himself with the shadow side of his personality is apt to be possessed by it. This can be observed in people who are otherwise nice, but have a streak of cruelty, in women who are normally submissive and accommodating turning into argumentative battle-axes, or in men who have sudden emotional outbursts. Of this Jung writes:

“Possession caused by the anima or animus presents a different picture. . . . In the state of possession both figures lose their charm and their values; they retain them only when they are turned away from the world, in the introverted state, when they serve as bridges to the unconscious. Turned towards the world, the anima is fickle, capricious, moody, uncontrolled and emotional, sometimes gifted with daemonic intuitions, ruthless, malicious, untruthful, bitchy, double-faced, and mystical. The animus is obstinate, harping on principles, laying down the law, dogmatic, world-reforming, theoretic, word-mongering, argumentative, and domineering. Both alike have bad taste: the anima surrounds herself with inferior people, and the animus lets himself be taken in by second-rate thinking.”[3]

What is this not, if not an apt description of the very situation that we find ourselves in, masculine women and feminized men? What the past 50 years failed to understand, was that if one venerates the anima in men and the animus in women, one is encouraging both to become possessed by their opposite. In imagery if men are black and women white, one can encourage black to become white and white to become black, but the end result will always be grey.

What we have created is a situation in which we encourage woman to become controlled by their animus, thus losing the connection to their eros, and instead becoming argumentative, know-it-alls, obsessed with the material world [4]. Whereas we encourage men to become controlled by their anima, becoming weak, submissive, and unable to take action in the world [5].

Summary and Conclusions

Jung’s central theme in his writings is a balancing act between the various elements that make up consciousness. In “The Archetypes and Collective Unconscious” he encourages us to connect these various archetypes in order that they may not posses us, and thus create unfortunate effects in our lives. An example of a situation where a man needs to have a nurturing quality to him is in fatherhood. This nurturing quality in a man is not the same as the nurturing quality of a woman, but one that enables him to be an effective mentor and leader. Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde are examples by author Robert Louis Stevenson of a man being possessed by his shadow, those elements of his personality that he refuses to accept are part of him.

Furthermore, autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen, the creator of the “Extreme male brain” theory of autism [6], has created two distinct categories for behavior, that he has themed “Systemizing” and “empathizing”. That he defines as follows:

“‘Empathising’is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. Empathising allows you to predict a person’s behaviour, and to care about how others feel.” [6]

“‘Systemising’is the drive to analyse the variables in a system, to derive the underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system. Systemising also refers to the drive to construct systems. Systemising allows you to predict the behaviour of a system, and to control it.” [6]

While I’m well aware that there is a litany of studies that proponents on both sides of the debate on whether there are biological brain differences in men and women can cite to support their opinion, these definitions appear to support the Jungian concepts of the female Eros and male Logos quite well. The two extreme positions being that there are strict dichotomous categories to which every member fits, and the other extreme position that there are no categories appear to be manifestations of this very systemising or empathising dichotomy, where the Eros favors no categories and the logos favor creating overly encompassing and strict categories.

A society that drives its men towards empathising and its woman towards systemising, is inherently driving its men to become possessed by their anima and its women to become possessed by their animus.  This creates men who overly identify with the feminine condition, and women who overly identify with the masculine condition, to their own detriment. In essence, one is driving the right handed to write with their left, and the left handed to write with their right. As with much human knowledge, the flaw is not in the knowledge, but in flawed interpretations and implementations.

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

As always you can buy my book Gendernomics at Amazon.com as both paperback and Kindle

Sources:

[1] https://therationalmale.com/2017/05/17/state-control/

[2] https://therationalmale.com/2012/01/11/the-curse-of-jung/

[3] Archetypes and the Collective Unconcious

[4] https://appliedjung.com/animus-possession/

[5] https://appliedjung.com/anima-possession/

[6] http://cogsci.bme.hu/~ivady/bscs/read/bc.pdf

[7] http://www.statisticbrain.com/myers-briggs-statistics/

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Post Information
Title Red Pill Logic: Anima, Animus and Jung
Author Black Label Logic
Date June 8, 2017 10:31 AM UTC (6 years ago)
Blog Black Label Logic
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/Black-Label-Logic/red-pill-logic-anima-animus-andjung.24216
https://theredarchive.com/blog/24216
Original Link https://blacklabellogic.com/2017/06/08/red-pill-logic-anima-animus-and-jung/
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