Reflections on Animus and Anima (Part One)

A Look At Emma Jung's Work

I first came across the ideas of the animus and anima around 2016, and at the time, I found them confusing at a very basic level. I couldn’t quite grasp what belonged to what—the inner male, the inner female, who the anima referred to, who the animus referred to. It all felt abstract, almost like a language I didn’t yet understand.

It took time to begin to understand the definitions, let alone where these ideas came from or how they might relate to real life.

For me, this wasn’t just an intellectual difficulty. My own experiences had shaped how I saw both myself and others. Coming from years of childhood CSA, I grew up without a sense of being valued or treated with care. That inevitably distorted how I understood relationships.

As a result, if someone was even slightly kind to me, it could feel overwhelming. It would cause uncertainty as I often felt there may be an ulterior motive. There was also, in matters of the heart, to see some men as something like a “knight in shining armour”—someone who might fix or save me. Looking back, I can see how that created chaos in my life, because what I was responding to wasn’t always the reality of the person, but something much deeper and unresolved within myself.

Something began to shift for me around 2020 in a meeting with an astrologer on my astrology chart. Simon Vorster helped me understand something. He spoke about the feminine as naturally receptive and magnetic, and how, at an unconscious level, there can be a deep need for attention that begins to organise behaviour and perception.

As he puts it:

“The feminine is naturally receptive, and her natural role is magnetic. She is attractive. Subconsciously, we are possessed by the need for attention. The need for attention then can become possessive over self. We may find ourselves seeking attention and then, if we are not being responded to, we can think that somehow we are not worthy or attractive or of someone’s time. This is the dance between the masculine and the feminine.”

What stayed with me was the idea that this need for attention can become possessive/possession of the self. If attention is given, there is a sense of being seen, valued, and even held together. But when it is not given, it can quickly turn into a feeling of not being worthy, not being attractive, not being enough.

Hearing this, I began to recognise something in my own experience. The pattern of being drawn toward men, the intensity of that pull, and the distress when it was not returned started to make more sense. It wasn’t simply about the other person. It was part of a deeper dynamic—a kind of inner movement between what we might call the feminine and masculine.

What brought me back to this work now was not just curiosity, but the wider context we are living in. With current events and the continued exposure of abuse and exploitation in the world, I found myself reflecting more deeply on the nature of relationships and how disorienting they can be.

It led me back to my own life, and to questions I hadn’t fully sat with before. How have my early experiences shaped the way I relate? How have they influenced my expectations of others, and perhaps more importantly, how I treat myself?

I began to consider the role of the animus in this more seriously. Not as an abstract idea, but as something that may have been active in my own patterns—particularly in the tendency to place expectations onto another person, and then feel the weight of disappointment when those expectations are not met.

Looking at it this way, it becomes less about the other person and more about what is happening within. There is a recognition that something may be seeking resolution externally that actually requires attention internally.

Reaching this stage of life, having moved through my second Saturn return, there is perhaps a different kind of clarity. A willingness to question long-held assumptions, and to see more honestly where inner work had been needed but avoided or misunderstood.

Reading Animus and Anima by Emma Jung, first presented in 1931 at the Psychological Club of Zürich, I was struck by how relevant it still feels. These ideas emerged at a time when analytical psychology was still being explored, and yet they speak directly to the present experience.

What strikes me most is the way she describes the animus and anima not as ideas, but as realities within the psyche. She writes of them as “psychic realities,” incommensurable with concrete reality, and yet no less effective for that reason.

It suggests that these inner dynamics are not something we simply think about—they are something we live, often without knowing it. They have, as she describes, a kind of autonomy. A life of their own.

There is also a humility in her writing. She makes it clear that this is not something easily understood or mastered. It is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon, and one that resists complete comprehension. I find that reassuring. It reflects my own experience of trying to understand it over time.

What feels particularly relevant is her insistence that this is not optional. She writes that the masculine principle in women has ripened in consciousness and must find its place within the personality.

Her reference to Eve stayed with me. We are no longer in a state of unconscious innocence, where knowledge can be avoided. The “apple” must be bitten into, whether we want to or not. The idea that we might return to a simpler, more natural, unknowing state is no longer possible.

There is a sense that consciousness itself is demanding participation.

She also warns of what happens if this demand is not met. If the capacity for thought, reflection, and inner development is not taken up consciously, the animus does not disappear. Instead, it becomes autonomous and can act destructively, both within the individual and in relationships with others.

Seen this way, what I have been reading is not just theory, but a description of something that can shape a life. The tendency to project, to expect, to be overtaken by certainty or longing—these begin to look less like personal failings and more like expressions of something deeper that has not yet been made conscious.

Emma had written this paper, and in 1931, she was already pointing to the expansion of consciousness through technology—telegraph, telephone, radio—and how this widening of awareness would inevitably affect the inner life. The “animus problem,” as she calls it, was already emerging then. Reading it now, it does not feel outdated, but more relevant.

There is a sense, throughout, that something is being asked of us that cannot be avoided. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, persistent one. To think. To reflect. To become more conscious of what moves within us.

And perhaps to recognise that what feels external is not always only external. That which we experience in others may, at least in part, belong to us.

What we experience in adult relationships is not only about the other person; it also reflects unconscious inner dynamics that shape how we perceive, expect, and react.

This is my personal reflection on the first fifteen pages of Animus and Anima by Emma Jung.

Penelope Ryder is a Hypnotherapist, astrologer, mentor, and writer completing a book on trauma and survival. She writes about psychology, astrology and the inner life at Substack www.peneloperyder.com