Transcription
Hey guys, and welcome back to Young to Live By. Today we're going to be tackling perhaps, maybe, the most mysterious of all the archetypes; perhaps. And to, and to do so, I've brought Steve and Pauline Richards on to discuss it with me. And, of course, the topic today is on the Animus. How are you two doing today?
Oh, James, very well, thank you. Nice to see you again, James.
Brilliant. Well, we thought discussing before this that maybe the easiest way to go through this would be to actually bring up our pay video and commentate over the front of it. Because archetypes, you cannot experience them themselves; of course, you can only experience resultant images. And perhaps this could be one of the most interesting resultant images. Of course, it is the, the music video to *Hounds of Love* by Kate Bush. So perhaps give a little bit of background, you two, on the video itself and why you believe it to be so significant.
Kate Bush was inspired by the 1957 iconic film *Night of the Demon*. You know, at the very beginning of the video, references are made; that their alliance from the film, spoken by the male character at the very beginning of the video. And then what kind of taken through almost a dreamlike journey whereby we see the idea of the collective male psyche, the archetype of the animus played out throughout the video. So I think it's just, it's just a very good way of understanding it without necessarily intellectualizing it too much. So if we could just allow ourselves to, to comment over it, to experience it fully, and down, I think we just get a different angle on things.
Absolutely. I like that, the idea of experiencing it rather than, you know, trying to understand it beforehand. Perhaps that's actually a, yeah, a be a pitfall first of all.
So even so, we got this, this beginning, clear heard this, this guy's running down the hallway, psychopomp. So would you say that he's sort of leading, he's leading the into the unconscious, then in their case, the young, the line, the opens with, "It's in the trees, it's coming," is from a medium in the film *Light of the Deme*. And the animus is often portrayed as being a spirit and, of course, as a psychopomp as well. The first you get is this specific figure running down the corridor, looking over his left shoulder back towards the camera, which is obviously indicative of the unconscious, but also his role as psychopomp. And then we see the, the protagonist, the young girl played by Kate Bush, and how she is herself then experiences the Animus. And when you see the papers that she's holding being rustled, and that's a reference to the, the wind or the breath of spirit, which again is the Animus. And behind me you can see the collective, which she turns away from and then faces the approach of the collective male psyche.
Mmm. So that was the part they're talking about there where she turns around and, yeah, they're animation.
Absolutely. Yeah, here comes the animus now as a group, which it's often represented as. And then he's pulled back into the collective male psyche by the group that he enters with and pulls away and takes a ribbon.
Yeah, they continues to pull her away. Yes, continues to pull her away as they literally run through the trees together, through the forest, through the ward, almost as if she's being led into the unconscious. But one of the things that you notice about it too, I think, is it's got a kind of an exhilarating feel. Term, we obviously we've gone to celebrate, are we able to kinda point where he tries to be, yeah, and she shrugs it all back a bit more. Let's see. Oh, so here we go, that's it, and she throws it off.
Yes, yes, she does. She kind of shrugs it off, mmm, almost like maybe shrugging off, you know, individuality, but relate nevertheless. Yeah, she's still with him. And this idea of taking your shoes off and throwing them into the lake and then being two steps on the wall, so that's walking on water. There's animation straight, sorry. Yeah, so if she would have kept the coat on, would that have been a male developed thing or is this her resistance to develop? If I just understand you correctly, it wouldn't have been an equal relationship; he's still, she's still developing, but she's about to enter a house and as a past, he going on in there, so you back incident into the collective's. And as she does, a man will try and pull her man away from her, and she protects him at that point and pushes him away. There it goes. Now, could any of these be considered trickster figures, do you reckon?
I wouldn't go that far; the focus is entirely on only on the young girl. Yeah, I think they're just malevolent aspects of the animus, to be honest with you. I mean, I think we have to assume that this lead male character is a positive figure for her, and the other men in the group, on negative aspects of the animus who were trying to kind of pull her back, destructive forces, if you like. And she makes her selection positively. And a little bit earlier on in the video, you see her handcuffed him to her. I'm sorry, least one the video, so yeah, so as a conjoined, literally and conjoining of the tune, here comes the collective animus again, tries to show you something.
Yeah, spoil things, yeah, which it does just do because she can't have one without the only Akana, the positive animus without constellation, the negative acts on, watch what happens again; he's been reabsorbed by the collective, and he puts his left hand forward towards her.
Oh, conjunction. See how animated she becomes now. Yeah, a little bit further down as they start to dance, it's it starts off quite serious really, and then you gradually see how becoming more animated if it dance together.
Yeah, yeah. There we go, that's Dancing with the Animus. Yes. And you know, the woman can't access the Animus positively within, then she'll turn to other things for animation; an extreme example of that would be addiction of some kind. So rather having the, you know, the animating spirit within, she might turn, for example, to, to drugs or alcohol. Of course, which part would you like to see? So basically, you've got a collective acknowledgement of the relationship here; they're together, and then they lead. Now this time she's leaving. Yes, it was the Animus who led her to the wedding, if you like, and there had to be a second differentiation from the collective for that man; he had to leave the group, and she had to see him being abstracted out from the groove. But when they leave with her leading this time, the guide of the trail will be again, or another aspect of the negative animus tries to follow them, and it's frustrating at the door, and he looks back at the collective, he crowd over his left shoulder very, very briefly. But that's an acknowledgement that society does want people to bond together, does want women and men to come join. So in effect, the negative pole of animus gives up in the face of the collective who have sanctioned the relationship.
Gotcha. And that's its, that's its archetypal narrative. So in effect, what you have here is an archetype, because an archetype is none of the characters; it's all the characters embedded in the neurosis situation, sweetie.
Yeah, I think like Steve said, she can see that she takes an executive role; her aegyo decides that she'll take him with her, and that's how the relationship should be between the Animus and the AYGO. It shouldn't be one of anonymous possessions.
So what's the, the main takeaway from that then? I guess I want two guys. I guess assert something, a question. The Animus is an inner relationship, so it's not as if it is a man on the outside world, but it seems to be, from my understanding, it's mirrored by a relationship, or can be mirrored by a relationship in the outside world. So you say there was sort of two ways of looking at that video; it's the inner journey of her as a woman, as an individual, but it's also could also be seen as her literally joining with a man who needs to be pulled away from the collective, essentially.
Yeah, well, one, one I guess reinforces the other, but it's um, it's a collective for women; it's the collective experience of men summed up in that situation, which, you know, women are all, women are probably familiar with, even if they don't really understand why, moved by it, or you know, they can, they can relate to us without necessarily knowing what it is that's happening to them. So I guess again, for individuation purposes, it's that conscious relationship that needs to be developed.
Mmm, gotcha. Okay, so on the journey of a woman who wants to integrate her animus, if we're taking it like, like the video as the archetype, as the whole situation, then what would be the first time do you reckon a woman encounter something like this? Would it be in school when suddenly a guy looks at her in kind of like a cute way, and then his friends don't really want her to hear him, to come away from the surroundings, if I'm understanding the situation correctly? Do you reckon?
Well, it's similar to the situation with the animal really, unless it's in that's in the archetypal form; its innate, it's present at birth. And there is also, of course, the Animus complex as well, which develops in relationship to real men, principally for a girl, for a daughter with the father and any other significant man in her life, or she, you know, she grows up and she develops. So it's that inner and outer combination, one feeding the other, one reinforcing the other, that, that you know, it falls over the course of a woman's life.
Okay. Well, we've, Steve and I, of course, we've done our video on the anima about a week, two weeks ago, something like that, so I think it might be a good idea to sort of build that. If you guys haven't seen that video, I'd recommend that you go check it out, of course. But sort of presuming you have a general understanding of the anima, the idea between these, these two archetypes is there are genetic structures primed primarily that are imprinted on; we don't know how, necessarily, presumed by, we know some mechanisms, but like an epigenetic mechanism though, if they're imprinted on by, for a date, for the anima, it would be the mother and your first love, for example, a female first love to a man, before the animus, they would therefore be the father and male first loves. But in terms of differences between the two, maybe that would be the most interesting way to tackle this, because we can take the anima theory, and we could then just swap the genders, which is a crude way of doing it, but then it's like, well, what's the point of tackling the animus, right? You can't quite make the switch. I mean, it's probably, when we say that the they're both relating functions, they are, but that's probably where the similarity ends, to be honest with, because the, the animus is really a very different creature, and it's got a kind of otherworldly feel to it. It's, I thought, I think it's a more difficult concept to come to terms with in many ways.
Yeah, we have it easier, yeah, as men, because our Kirk, if they're our primary caregiver being our mother, is of the opposite gender, the opposite biological sex, and it's also at the same time our genetic target because she's family. Yep. With women, it's different; their primary caregiver is female, and men then seem very, very strange and peculiar to them because they're more objective, more distant, and therefore more alien. And that creates a fascination and a fear at the same time, which is why the animus often appears in the way that it does, as a spirit. And that's what young men, my spirits instead of soul, it's because of that very strange otherworldliness. Whereas for a young man, to relay, a young boy, a child, to relate to his mother as an occurring and nurturing figure in his life, if that's successful, of course, then it feels, difference is qualitatively different. But for the young girl, it's the same gender, and the father or male caregiver in her life is at some distance and represents Authority, power, control, and the collective. And that's why the Animus often appears as a collective image rather than the differentiated individual image, whereas the anima is usually an individual image because of the prime imprinting on to the mother.
I've got you. So it has those, those differences. And if, as men, we don't understand that, we have no idea how we're impacting on women, not at all.
Well, let's, let's change that then. If someone's coming to this, let's, let's try and change that and see if we can help people relate better, either men or women, relate better to the Animus. Where do you think would be the best place to start with something like that? What do you think is the most crucial piece of information someone should know about the Animus from a woman's perspective or a man's, James? Lies either to be honest. I think it'd be fine, yeah. And well, I think to sort of follow on from what Steve said, this idea of it being an inner power and an inner Authority on things is, is hugely significant because obviously, like I say, a woman's unconsciousness is characterized by low goes by that masculine principle. And if it's working positively for, and I like that, that's, that's great; lots of really good things can flow from that. A woman then tends to relate to her word and her work and her own ideation and a thoughts in a very positive way. But where it's at work in a negative way, then it can be immensely destructive for the reasons that Steve said earlier, because it's so much associated with, with power and authority, and it can take the form, Jung himself says this, of and in a sacred conviction about something. And when it has that kind of power in a woman's life, it can be, you know, immensely overwhelming. Though I think that's probably a good place to start, yeah, to me. So the obvious, you've mentioned before, when we have the Animus, then we have the Animus complex. You've got this differentiation thing between them where, presumably, similar to the anima, you have the animus as an archetype which is unknowable itself, and then the Animus complex forms in relation to those relationships you make.
Yeah, sweet. It's interesting, I think, just to introduce at this point, we should develop this between those, the three of us, of course, in future podcasts, that the Animists, like the anima, is not a thing; it's not a singular thing; it's, it's a group of related things which relate, if you like, to the core function of relating. For the lads watching, if we go back to the, the alum of being a relating function, the mother archetype can be associated to the anima but is not the anima itself, but it can become passive, the anima function, an anima picture. So in some respects, archetypes form systems rather than are activated individually. Mmm, depends upon the situation that the person is in. So for a young child, the anima develops off the mother archetype on the basis of a virtual but empty of experience template which is hardwired, and that's, that's made up of anticipations of the right kind of experiences to have. So when, when as men, as lads, boyos, I feel like we talked about the anima, we're not talking about one differentiated thing, and it's the same of the animus, but it's slightly worse because you, you go, it seems as a woman from outside of the individual sphere immediately to the collective because of that alien quality. And you know, it has hypnotic, even for me as a man working with women who have issues with the animus or of developing the animus, it pulls you in very, very quickly, and you start to feel that it's like a gravitational pull; you almost start to become the thing that they're working against. It's completely involuntary, and it has to do with this long, long history, this timeline that this archetype has formed.
Mm-hmm. So just, just when you're a guest gets to flesh that out, if so, if you're working with a woman, in what way will it pull you in in a hypnotic way? Is it the words that she speaks, or is it like a feeling of resonance that you get with?
It's if it's a field phenomenon, I think is the way that I explain it to myself, because I couldn't reduce it down to two words. It's, it's a feeling certainly, and that's why I say it's a field phenomenon; it's an energetic thing; it's the axis between the two of you in a therapy situation along which projections and transferences work, yeah, and also anticipations of the future. Okay, if the negative pole comes out, you and those, if you're working in that tiny length of time, well, usually that's why someone comes to see you, isn't it? Yes. And then it gets projected; you have to watch your negative anima doesn't come up, because as Jung says it, so it's an automatic trigger; it is, you know, when wall appears, the ever appeared, and you have to be very, very aware of it. But I'm only really saying this just to help the lads, if you like, so they that I can build a bridge for them, of course, at the same time to say it is so strange and so different that your experience at the anima will not prepare you for the Alamos. You have to work with women; you have to communicate with women and listen to them in order to understand what will be projected onto you and what you will trigger in them in terms of their life span developments; they will, women will appear to be an incredible mystery to you on the inside, they're inside, when you try and relate to them if you do not know what this is. So it's very, very important that you got a handle on it, and the only people who can really teach you are women.
Mmm, make sense to me, of course. So I guess, Pauline, what's just the negative and the positive poles of the anima feel like as just as like a lived experience type of thing? So in other words, like how would you, how would you know? Because I imagine with myself, if I can say, shadow project against somebody, and I can recognize it now, when I mean, I spontaneously doesn't happen so much anymore; it's more when I was in my teen years, I guess, more insecure, I'd see people spontaneously dislike them for seemingly no reason, and I can identify that shadow projection. What does the animus feel like, as I will never actually feel it? I'm interested, the animals Jones, yes, and animus, that's very difficult to describe. I'm just, I'm thinking about really what stated about the therapy situation where, you know, from a man's perspective, if you were to see it in action, shall we say, so that men know what to recognize if women, because maybe that's even more instructive than simply talking about how the woman themselves experiences it. Okay, say, for example, an animus-possessed woman comes for therapy and she cease to be, you know, see Steve or see somebody like Steve, and then you can probably expect to see a number of things; you would psychologically, you'd only see a kind of a pseudo-man really, in a way, someone who is maybe having difficulty with their own ideation, with their own thoughts; they might be opinionated in a way that's very, very difficult to therefore relate to that person or to interact with that person because it's, it's going back to that idea again of having that, that in a conviction about something. Yes. And so, you know, you might see a woman who, no matter what you do to try and be logical and rational with her, insists on chasing a kind of a logic around a head; it might be that you see somebody who is, is very destructive towards themselves, who, you know, it's very self-deprecating, who doesn't really see any way out of the situation that they're in. So you might get a kind of a nihilistic thing coming through; well, nothing has any God, everything is useless, and you know, there'll be that kind of generalization of effect, and it's very, and it's very difficult not only for women to kind of deal with; they're probably particularly difficult for men because there'll be a strong resistance to the positive poem in the positive poster she transferred onto the therapist in the hope that somehow, you know, they will make sense of all of this and they'll solve the riddle for, for that particular. So whatever confusion exists in the wall, and then I guess they will then look to the man to assist them with a better understanding of the masculine off themselves, so that they can then will he use them as an introductory, as as a man having received Animus projections, and they what appears to be positive often is negative.
Mm-hmm. And that's part of the riddle of the Animus; they will set you up intellectually, yes, in order to undermine you. Yes, they may use an erotic-toned transference in order to undermine you, but at first, if you're not careful, you may feel, for example, that this, this woman is admiring my intellect or whatever it is, and the null actually
They're trying to tolerate you, to undermine you, in order to stay stuck in the situation that they're in. That's the negative animus. And it says, if it's whispering on the inside, "See what they're all like; they all want to control you, no matter what you say. He has a better idea or a deeper understanding than you." That's not about the positive animus, which is also acting negatively in this situation that I'm describing. We also say, "He has this great insight; he can see into people's souls; he's wonderful; he's great," and then they try to destroy you and destroy themselves by losing all sorts of reality. You all must get a massive evaluation of you, which then means that if they're married or in a relationship, the relationship suffers, and they use that to attack their relationship. Yeah, you know, it can get really unpleasant.
Which is why, when we suspected that was happening—happening with certain couples—we would suggest that they bring the partner in. We were bringing, calling in, and there would be two couples, and it's a completely different process. But I've had some very weird experiences in that regard with women who literally cry floods of tears, saying, "I want to know what you know. You have some strange mystical secrets because you're so different from anybody they've ever met." And they're trying to access their animus and develop it. They can only do that in relationship to someone who can go with them that far. Yeah, it creates a very, very strange atmosphere. At the same time, the negative pole is trying to destroy you—trying to destroy you as in the person who's trying to help, a therapeutic relationship—or destroy you as an object. And you'll also find that the negative anima will do exactly the same. It's a female therapist when it comes out from a man.
This is a deep level; we have to go there in steps, yeah, because this is why, you know, we've been working on complexes and things first. But when you get down to the psychology of the transference and our chemical sense, it's on another level, and we have to approach that. Yeah, actually, yeah, very, very strange situation to have these archetypes come out and suddenly be there—yes, energetic presence, which I think answers your question, though it's been around about. No, yeah, it does; it does definitely feel it is real, and it's almost like a possession. Stays, yeah. And sometimes what appears to be positive is secretly destructive. Yeah, that's why I asked. I guess in terms of them destroying you as the therapist, and in the situation when you were describing, it almost sounded like the animus in that situation was trying to self-sabotage her.
Yeah, and I think just to follow a little bit from what Steve was saying is with respect to the transference, and if it's a, you know, it's a woman on the panel, man, they don't want you to be a real person. That's the last thing that they want you to do; that we want you to be able to carry, you know, that projection for them, on their behalf. You choose them; it's an inherent part of therapy. And at some point, the transference—transference—needs to be discussed, and you know the patient, but the resistance to doing that will be huge. Yeah, they know they will; they will act almost like a succubus, and I don't mean in the literal sense, except that they will take you and your energy if they can. They want to get every idea that you could possibly possess or anything you've ever learned, yeah, and appropriate that without doing it, yeah, see anything. I'm hating you for it. Yes, and that's that's the reaction formation that occurs when the transference is so true. They will it up and then dislike you for that; then that's part of the processes and tries to reinsert it back into themselves. Yes, very strange world; very strange.
There's a lot of talk about ideas and the intellect and things like that. Is that usually the way these things will manifest then? Because, of course, Pauline, you said early that the female psyche is characterized by logos basically, so is it is it ideas and the word, if you like? Is that normally—it absolutely, absolutely, it's very much the power of the word. And if there's some inner voice or whispering going on that tells you, "I want you to believe a particular thing about yourself," it comes with such authority; it's very, very difficult to resist the suggestive power of that. And part of a woman's journey and freeing yourself from that is to develop logos in a positive way and to develop your own ideas and the ability to discriminate between her and it, if you like. So depending on somebody's type, just the way this—the Animus—manifests in this particular manner changes. So say, say if I would propose a woman INTP, then I would have sensing and feeling under my animus if I was less developed, for example, because in contrast, that would say any SFJ, it would be the opposite functions; it'd be intuition and thinking. Well, that changed the way in, say, in a therapeutic scenario; indeed, in an everyday scenario, the Animus will manifest in a negative sense, then replace its past. It's a difficult one really, because I think you still see it even in the absence of typology; see it behaving pretty much in the same way, regardless of the typology of the man concerned, although obviously, as we've discussed in previous podcasts, that women by and large tend to be feeling types. That's not to say they are, so it's a difficult one because if you if you can muddy the water by starting to think in that way, so it's probably cleaner to simply think of it in as being that way really, probably in all women, regardless. If it's of any use at all in a situation like that, just helps you to understand the surface office. Yes, if we were to say for you as an INTP that your anima is necessarily ESFJ, it's only a theoretical abstraction to be quite frank, because in the context of you as a living person, so many of the things are contributing that it's only of help at the beginning. Yeah, yeah, so many things start to differentiate, house, and when you get deep down into archetype, yeah, you're in another world. Yes, and I think one of the problems with a lot of people on YouTube, to be quite frank, is that they don't have the experience of archetypes at all in a real-world sense. They've got all the theory, and then they don't really know what they're having to deal with at all. Go for the pudding; it's always in the experience of eating. Yeah, of course, archetypes are complete situations, stories to understand something; it's a very deep level. So you get this awful, don't you, in psychology where what people can name, but they're really just the players; they're just a character. Yes, if you abstract them out of that drama, they are meaningless; then you're nothing. If the drama is the situation, which is anticipated biologically and prepared for to be triggered and released through lifespan development, so as soon as we reduces to reification—z—which is what they are treating your characters as if they were living human beings, as soon as you do that, you lose the message. And that's something which I think we would very much like to help to get across. Of course, you only really know that when you're working with someone in depth, and there gets very, very weird. Think of an ISTJ woman; you'll know who this is. [Music] She's extremely concrete on the outside; inside that woman is a boiling cauldron of symbols and of passions and of projections and transferences. If you just take this hi Paula G and then even take the psychological theory to extend that, you'll just miss what's really there. So you have to do away with typology once you once you work in depth, yeah, because when you get to our key archetypes, you get to that much is the same. Yes, that's what you were saying. Yes, yeah, and this is important. I, typology is for beginners, and it is for the beginning of the process. So if you're over on typology and make that everything, you're not gonna have much explanatory power for real people in depth, and you have to explain lifespan development processes. Mmm, I presume from her from a biological perspective, if you have the four different cognitive functions that exist to say discrete circuits, the Animus is a separate thing anyway, so it will have its own things unto itself. Absolutely, it's got the potential for everything in it, but nevertheless, it has baseline default factory settings, which your independence of any psychology, yeah, and to say was the armor. Yeah, so—can you just gonna say because you talked a lot about—oh, two questions, I guess we'll go with the therapeutic one first. You spoken, you know, in in a therapeutic scenario, you sit there, and the Animus can come out, but you would be, because you are speaking in depth; it's the depth of the relationship, I would presume, but these things come out all the time anyway, don't they? Say, for example, in a in a relationship, independent of—yes, so it's it's the way that it's triggered, most will say, or the way in which the Animus, whatever it's waiting for, they say it's biological imprint, things that will imprint on it and cause things to activate and emerge. Is it exclusively words, or can it, say, for example, be appearance, or could it be something that, say, the father once did or something like that? Is it purely just logos-related stuff? Well, once you get to thinking about the Animus as a complex, and obviously the complex and the archetype are related, and the actual, like I said, the interaction between the two will produce the specific outcome for that person, so you need both; you need to understand both. You need, if it's a woman, say, coming for therapy, you need to understand the animus in the context of that woman's life and her experience of man personally, and then, you know, like I say, you need to look at the collective as well and how those two—those two things—interact with one another for that specific individual. Hmm. Well, we've come to the 40-minute mark at the moment. I think a nice way to close this off would be to go over the Bluebeard myth, which is, of course, the—the pike excellence example in literature of the animus. There could be nice if we did a bit of story time, maybe if poorly knew earth to tell the lads the story of Bluebeard, and perhaps then afterwards, maybe what it might mean, all the different pieces within these—and well, there are various versions of it, as you might imagine, and essentially it's to do with a character called Bluebeard, who in the story is that in terms of his physical appearance as a giant of a man with an indigo blue beard, and so, you know, he has a strong presence, physically commanding presence, she might say, physically, but, and he's involved with three sisters and their mother in courting the three sisters, but also, I guess, in bringing the mother in by getting her on side, if you like, it allows them to have more influence over the three. He caught the younger sister in particular because she's probably the most naive and and the least experienced of the experienced of the sisters, and so in that sense, more likely to fall for his charms. Eventually, to cut a long story short, they marry, and they go—go away, live in a castle in a ward together. There comes a point in time where Bluebeard decides to leave and to leave her in charge of things for a while, and he says to his wife on leaving that she can, you know, family and more than welcome to come around the sisters and the mother, and they could do whatever they like, and they could just enjoy, you know, all—all the pleasures of the castle and all the finery and the riches and so on, and and he also leaves so with a bunch of keys which are the keys to the rooms in the castle, of which there are many—swimming like over 300—and he says part of his instruction as he leaves is that she can use all the keys and go to any of the rooms so long as she doesn't use the smallest key, which is a very intensive description, very ornate piece, what stands out, if you like, from the rest of the keys. So he goes away for a time, and during that time, as you might imagine, the sisters get curious, and they start to wander around the castle looking in the various rooms. They come upon this small door in the passel and me, it kind of here, it closed behind them, and it's probably the one room that they haven't, you know, bothered to to try to go in; they've been in the, you know, the other store rooms where the money—our money is—and the food stores are, or all the wonderful thing. We haven't been in this—this little room, which is kind of hidden away in the castle. They start to think, well, you know, should we—shouldn't we? And all the doubts about doing it start to creep in, but they kind of the curiosity, if you like, overcomes fast, and it's obvious that there's going to be the smallest key that opens the door to this, you know, to the smallest door in the smallest room in the castle. Despite the fact that he's told them not to go in there, they, you know, override his warning; they open the door, and they're greeted by a very, very unpleasant sight; that basically, greeted by the decaying corpses of Bluebeard's previous wives, and they're obviously horrified by that and try to sort of close the door as quickly as they can. There's a problem then of what we do about—about, okay, the fact that they've, you know, smallest key to open the door, and as they take the key from the gut, starts to bleed, and no matter what they do, they can't stop the key from bleeding. The wife tries to hide it in a wardrobe, but no matter what she does, no matter how much she hides it away, the blood starts to trickle through the wardrobe, through the doors, down onto the floor. As this is all happening, Bluebeard is basically—he's finished his time away, and he's on his way back to the castle, and all this sort of pandemonium ensues to stay, you know, how they're gonna explain to him that they've done the thing that they're forbidden to do, which is to go and look in this—this smallest room. You know, his wife is thinking about what she'd get—what she going to say; she's gonna have to lie to him; she's gonna have to say she's lost the key and so on, but 'cause the key keeps bleeding, it's very difficult, obviously, to to hide the fact that we've gone against his wishes. He threatens her with death, and she begs for his mercy and asks that she be allowed to have some time—small amount of time—to herself before, you know, that happens, and she goes out onto the—the—the balcony of the castle and is playing for time where he's trying to buy time, and her sisters join her, and she's saying to the sisters, you know, can't—can you hear our brothers coming? Can you—are brothers coming? And they say, no, no, we can't—you hear our brothers coming? And then eventually they see like a cloud of dust in the distance, and the sisters say, oh, well, you know, there's something on the horizon; we could see you swells—maybe our brothers are coming. And then eventually, fortunately for them, they do arrive; the brothers tackle Bluebeard collectively and kill him—basically, you know, dismemberment, aching apart—and then leave his body for the buzzards. Like I say, this is an inner drama that goes on in the psyche of all women, and if it can be understood as such, then thought of meaning to be derived from that. Of course, the moral of the story is don't marry men with big blue beards. It's probably a good start, yeah, probably fairly strange individuals anyway, but yeah, so—so I guess to sort of walk through that general story, what's the—actually what's the—what's the key? In this very, very small key, and everything starts to bleed; that's the part of the story that sort of leaps out to me as being like, what does this mean? What's going on here, you know? Yes, yeah, well, though the key is essentially a question, and it's the idea that particularly for women, and when they lose touch with their instincts, with their intuition, with their—with their inner knowing, and they stop asking questions, in other words, they're cut adrift from the—the need to be conscious and to be aware of these things, but on the inside and the outside that they're likely to run into difficulty, and obviously, you know, in the Bluebeard story, so that is a, you know, the—the threat of death, the threat of complete, you know, dissociation and nullification is ever-present, and so the key is the key of knowing; the key is that thing that will, if you allow your natural curiosity to come through, not frightened of it, then it will—it's a kind of initiation really into the unconscious and into that of the world that will provide you with the answers that you need to that question—to a particular question—but it's in order to get to that, then you have to understand those—those—those deep destructive dark forces on the inside that will try and prevent you from doing so, and so with all the corpses of all the dead wives, then be almost precognitive of what would happen if you didn't take the right path, or would they be other parts within her own psyche that have already been taken out, perhaps? I don't know; it'd be more precognitive in that case. I think it can be both. Mmm, absolutely be both, you know. I think most women will know of or will have been in relationships, maybe on the outside with men who weren't always what they—or didn't turn out to be what they seemed at first, and also equally on the inside. And for women who are unaware that those dark forces exist on the inside, then essentially they—they become victim to them. Yes, yes. Okay. And it's a really consciousness enough asking the right questions that will free you from that. Yes, essentially the message always. Yes. And that's probably a good place to close up, I think, it read with it with a general idea that of course the Animus is a very, very mysterious, potentially destructive thing, but at the same time, going from that Kate Bush video at the very, very beginning, and potentially very positive or animating—hence animus—type—the type force. And I guess it'd be a good idea for us three to reconvene again fairly soon and do part two to this—part three, four, five—arouse and and expand this thing out properly—not for women of course primarily, but then, you know, best for men as well to understand these things so that they can relate properly. Yes, I did—to minimize the amount of negative animus in the world as possible and bring ya animus. Yes, without a doubt. I mean, you see these things functioning like a sailor in an everyday sense, if even the kind of comments that men and women make to one another, that very ordinary level work, you know, the husband might say about the wife, "Well, she was pants," or she's just, you know, she's just so opinionated, or she is aggressive rather than assertive, or whatever. There are lots of everyday examples really of it at work, so you know, you can—you can look at it at that level—to raise superficial level of analysis—and then, you know, write the way down to it as a, you know, psychopomp and and a deep, deep well, but right down to the archetype to something which is deep and mysterious and maybe difficult to understand. I think you need to try and understand it really at all levels you possibly can. Yes, I can see here—I'd talk to you all day, to be completely honest, but probably for the—for the respect of the people who are watching, she probably slows up and of course let them get on with their—with their day. But thank you everybody for watching. Appreciate you as always. Give a quick message when the previous video that we released was the shadow integration manual video; it's two hours long; it's—it's very, very intense, but it, of course, it is very, very good. If you would like a free copy of the shadow manual, you can click the link in the description down below, and you'll get your free copy, no strings attached, and indeed if you'd like to ask myself, Steve, or poorly, a question or come join our Discord server or have a chat with one of us, there's a link to our Patreon down below where you can find all of those nice bonuses down there too, so that we can go on our journey together. Thank you everybody; thank you Steve; Thank You Pauline; it's been a pleasure. Talk to you again real soon. Experiencing the negatively—yes, overwhelming in a destructive sense—it's difficult to say. I concerta…
Can feel that the paralysis move, but I think the animus is more obvious because it's outside. Did you? Yeah, you know, in a relationship with a person, I'm taking principally therapeutically, because, as you're saying, James, in everyday life you just react in a normal way to protect yourself as far as you can from this kind of thing. But when you're in an artificial situation like therapy, you can't do that; you're actually there, and you have to feel it.
Yeah, it's--it appears to be very, very contraband in, but it's not; it's actually a part of a woman's psychology, and it's what she's been prepared to experience, in some respects negatively, from men. And you kind of have that as a man married back to you, but from a woman, and it's very strange. We were talking in the day in terms of, you know, seeing it in action about the Kathy Newman interview is for Julia Peterson, for example, where it's like she just wants an argument for the sake of having an argument with him, so no matter how rational he is with her, she just keeps coming back and tries to undermine him and his arguments.
So yeah, and I think there was no work then it just like Steve said, although give him his due, in that situation, a woman who was gay, a young woman, and there's no doubt about it she was, but I still got an erotic transference offer.
Mm-hmm. That shows that if this stuff is independent of actual biologically driven sexuality, it's independent of it, and I think that's a very interesting point, because the releasing factor of that deep level feels erotic.
Yes, yes. And that's what she was experiencing rather than her through sexuality, and that's--that's a distinction cemented to me, because lots of people fall into the trap of believing it's real in an erotic sense, but Jung was always warning that, you know, although he made all the mistakes himself and in told us not to do, was never ever really treat us as literal. It's an abnormal relationship; you do not get anywhere outside of two things/in parental relationships and sexual romantic relationships as a combination of them in a magical setting, which is totally unique, and that's the problem of it when it happens.
Yeah, you don't normally get it if you were saying with just complexes or phobias or whatever the routine stuff, but the minute you go deep, it's there. Yeah, you can't--you can't allow it to paralyze you either, because it can do. Yes, it can. I was in like an ordinary everyday situation; it just kicked off business and run its kind of well, that's the way it is. But--but you can't--you can't indulge it, like you can't allow yourself to have that kind of reaction in therapy, and it can be very hard.
Having an issue about the Animus now obviously with a husband, and she'll come in and she's full of the problems to do with him at first, and then suddenly the solution she can test fire on you.
Yes, yes. It goes deeper than that, because she's never been in the basement of their psyche before consciously, and in doing that it consults all sorts of things which can erupt into peculiar, apparently fantasies, some of which are erotic returned and some are differently toned; he may be a cult or whatever, and it's totally alien to her, but suddenly you're the cause of all of this.
Yes, that means that you're attracted to her, or you're a devil, or you're a wizard, or a demon, or a Magus, or some super wise man. You're not these things, but it's been projected, and the same happens with women when men come in and have an issue and the totally unrelated to their unconscious, and then, you know, say palling live it all dumped on her in the reserve how they can get really peculiar.
It can really, really peculiar; that is difficult. Well, it's just my experience with the--with the transference that was--it was recently together with their staff dating the--not a nice boy standard week man type of thing, as I described before, wise one might understand one to be. I come along; I'm helping her relieve her suffering, which is therapy, but over text or whatever, I'm encouraging her; I'm not telling her what to do; I'm giving her invitations and explaining things. Immediately she breaks up with him, which was definitely a good thing. Yeah, she's been very, very, very happy to get rid of a toxic thing in her life; she's shot way up. But obviously was then projected onto me, and then I couldn't--I'm normally really good, let's be frank, I'm normally really good at reading people. I can, yeah, and I can, you know, if someone fancies me, I can tell. I couldn't help; I actually couldn't tell in this case. It took Jane to come along and actually go, "It's bloody obvious what's going on." And then she would be including the intellect thing you were mentioning. It's interesting 'cause she was saying, "I've wanted this whole time to prove myself to you intellectually, for you to pat me on the head and go, 'You're just as smart as me.'" So it was exactly what you were describing; it's the same thing.
Now I guess my--my question with this is like, why couldn't I see it? Is it because of my own pulling into that alchemical part that situation? Because it was pulling up personal stuff in you as well. Yeah, it's like kind of muddies the water if you're person, but if you--if you see it as an abstraction, which I can do, you know, you can--you can--you in a situation where you can pull away from it. Yes, it's gonna say if it was a feelings hype woman, you probably would have seen it's more, but probably because she was in your immediate shadow, hmm, right behind the back of your head. Yeah, if it's so different that's in front of your face, then it's easier, saying that was yes, I'd agree. It's really in his relationship to Emma, absolutely, even in terms of her being educated herself and having her own children together, so she was immensely capable in her own right, but it was as if that wasn't enough, boring, and hence the, you know, the projection onto Tony Wolf, to the man himself, if your likes and shows how even someone like fast can be convicted to these things.
Yeah, yeah. It makes sense. I guess that in the last version of this podcast we did, I asked a question between the distinction between instinct and archetype in this particular scenario, because she's told me--she told me before that the way--way along with them before we started the therapy, she still liked me in the first place; I was--there was the mysterious figure in the corner. Yes, so in which case is like how much of it is transference and how much of it is just she actually secretly really liked me, and then it--then becomes a complete riddle to me, and then I sort of seem to be distracted and miss the actual core of the problem. So I get--would this be the Animus sort of via the animus anima dance with each other that's unconscious as projections need a hawk of sorts of why they don't settle. That's not to say that, you know, when you guess a or receive a tangent or a projection that you have asked for it or deserve it; it just may be some quality, and you may not even be aware of it in you which is drawing it. I mean, she may well have sensed your potential.
Hmm, I thought it was--I'm sorry to be blunt, but no, what you don't sense in yourself of those will.
Yes, yes. Okay, well, the--the thing, it could have been that--it definitely could have been the only interaction we had was to previous time, so I basically told her nicely I was in a bad mood to go away, which no one had really ever done before, like you can imagine the other men in the are also, you know, stand there like scientists, and scientists aren't like businessmen typically at that age; the business guys are more macho, the scientists and like, yeah, and she's like, "Why don't you go into a lab meetings?" I said, "I don't want to," and then apparent it was from that what you started to like me. They say you can kind of see that because you go figure-ground thing, then you've got the background of the man, and then you would have been.
Yes, yes. Holds out his hand. Yes, in fantasy. Sure. Yes, yes. That's what Kate Bush is perfectly illustrated. Yes, a she's evaluating and weighing up and she's on certain and then she's coy and--and she's beguile them.
Hmm, yeah, that may comes to mind immediately is that girl, of course, massively into feminism in the SJW staff and everything else, and the previous men she would go for, including the men she would actually find attractive, she was telling me would have been the proper nerd types, you know, I've talked to about other men for free something like more Hollywood type. She's like, "Now, now, now, they all had like a strong intellectual quality and weren't physically attractive sort of once whatsoever." This is the kind you do androgyny going on is seeing her own femininity being mirrored back to her.
Yes, yes. And she was unconscious of her own femininity, and once--once then once the man went, she started putting dresses on. Yeah, in the world of work, it's better for women to be like women than to try and emulate men.
Mhm. Yeah, which is something you don't get in a science environment either, because all the professors are all men, and then they've got to sit there and act and be good boys basically and hang out with the boys. It's not--it's not good. But once--once that was gone, it was the transformation was spontaneous; I didn't tell her to do anything; it just came out. So I've just bought a pink dress today, and I'm listening to music, and I've--I bought of ours.
Alright, okay, that's lovely. Like a priesthood, those men, so a priest 's' is out of sync with the priesthood, but if she tries to become a priest and not a priest 's', she's gonna function as well. Yeah, look at ancient Greece; most of the Oracles, it was women around the Oracles.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's their proper role is to communicate the deep unconscious to the whole of the culture, yeah, and thereby guide the men to do what men should be doing. Yes, and that was the role of the anima, but it--but it's also paradoxically a good role for a woman within a culture without, you know, reducing them so anything other than just fulfilling what they should be innately in themselves. Yeah, so one piece say I know it is, but you know when you deal with people who have gone sadly wrong in the sense that they've become unwell, he's just seen in a raw sense. I mean, you do--I mean, if it could give them really ordinary everyday example, and we sometimes have a bit of a joke about it, and you see young women maybe getting into a big 4x4 vehicle of some kind, you've got this tiny woman behind the wheel, this is this big vehicle, and--and we--we call them jokingly animus chariots just sometimes. I just said, "Well, Hunt's how has that one come about, the vehicle in the first place? If she--she earned it through her own work, through her own, you know, ability in any way, or is it just something that's been provided?" Then it allows her to go out there and be maybe aggressive, wrong, and assertive and that like a pseudo-man rather than, you know, a woman who is a strong woman nonetheless. And again, it's just--just one of those that Aaronic don't--all sings that you see in everyday life; there are other examples as well. Yeah, it's just illustrative kind of mindset that women get into, almost a sense of entitlement that we don't have to bother to do any inner work because the man will just provide it; he'll just carry that for them, so they don't need to do anything for themselves. Nothing controls a man more than a feminine woman, because men will instinctively fall into line with that. Yeah, but if you get a woman who is--is trying to compete, hmm, with a man as a man, yes, they will generally get rejected, neglected.
Yes. Yeah, a woman who is strong in a feminine sense and knows what her power is, that's a powerful woman. Yes, and the last recruit or release with my experience with--with science, you're right, they don't compete, and they are rejected, or they end up like this girl settling for very weak men. Yes, not a good thing, you know, and just still, yeah, the recovered femininity going on. It's not just in that environment or a similar one, but you also get with some women the projection of the self archetype onto a man who is paradoxically masculine but feminized. You can attempt to differentiate men through a relationship, either the man out in him, and thereby he will lose his femininity, which will then duck into her, so there's all sorts going on with that kind of thing.
Yeah, maybe what's going on is his own consciousness, well, this part of me whether the--the PC stuff gives people an excuse to remain unconscious. My explanation anyway, because as soon as that was removed in this particular scenario, it was like being--they may emerge like the particular lotus flower, but--and it remains sort of taboo, but the people--this is almost seemed unconscious of their own pain at the same time there are conscious of their own maladaptation, and then, you know, that they'll go home, they won't be happy, and they won't be sad; it would just be autopilot. It seems to be the kinda new normal, isn't it? Yeah, it's just to describe it really, but it's--it's um, I guess so long as it works in a kind of a functional sense and people just get on with it, they don't realize they're cheating themselves so much by living that way.
Yes, yeah, yeah. The PC stuff has robbed people of a lot, which is why I'm not afraid to speak openly about that kind of thing on this channel. It's disenfranchised a lot of women for sure.
Oh yeah, he's stolen the feminine part. Nothing to assist donut.
Yeah, yeah. There's nothing that's more demonized and a feminine woman, actually, to be honest. There's this whole toxic masculinity thing, but a woman who comes out as feminine, it's like what was the word they use? Internalized--internalized misogyny, it's the word that's thrown around. They say, "Okay, thank you're really, really smart using that." No, but then that's when the more um, perhaps the whole being a [ __ ] come on, planing against them, isn't it? That's just the Animus on the inside turning against them.
Yes, yeah, yeah. It makes sense. I mean, this--this is a problem, you know, there's a dichotomy between consent and then also being able to sleep with whoever you want. Do you think in this context then the desire to go and sleep with big, strong men in the club, despite the fact that--or toxically masculine, is sort of the Animus orchestrating that in a way to be like, "Wake up, wake up."