Анна Шиман
Draft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
Anima and Animus are archetypes of gender identity.
Why is exploring them so important?
Ancestral life scripts passed down to us from our forebears play a very important role in our lives. Their main field of influence is the social side of life. And that is exactly why our ancestral heritage shows itself first of all in the ways we build a family, choose a partner and choose a model of relationship, since relationships with the opposite sex take up one of the most important parts of our lives. Ancestral heritage pushes a person to adapt to the demands of the social group they live in — to follow certain norms and rules. Against this, the Anima and Animus Archetypes move a person to fulfil their authentic desires.
Archetypes are what, since ancient times, has moved us to rise above society.
The best-known archetype is the Hero archetype and its reverse side, the Outcast archetype. The “Hero” is not tied to a gender: it can be a man or a woman. Since ancient times, archetypes have shown themselves in people as extraordinary abilities and urges that drove them to defend their own unique values against the collective group consciousness. At the cost of incredible effort, the Hero managed to bring in completely new and unique patterns of destiny.
An archetype moves a person to overcome themselves and to become something more than they are.
The Anima and Animus Archetypes were the first Archetypes to be explored in depth psychology. They are a dyad at work in every person’s soul, moving them towards depth, vividness and richness in their relationship with a partner — and first of all, this is about love.
Love is the fundamental, most precious and most resourceful state of the human soul. It is present at every level of ontogenesis — the life of each individual person — and even of phylogenesis — the history of humankind as a whole.
The relationship of Anima and Animus plays out first of all in the context of drives such as Libido and Algios — the drive towards pleasure and the drive towards pain. The depth of meanings and feelings, and their transforming effect, are present in every person’s soul in the form of the Anima-Animus dyad.
This is a deep transforming energy that very often becomes decisive in many vital and fateful situations.
The Anima-Animus dyad is that deep force of our soul which radically affects every area of our lives, and above all the area of love relationships!
To explore the Anima and Animus Archetypes, to bring out the hidden resources of femininity and masculinity and to overcome barriers in every kind of relationship with the opposite sex, the “MARS + VENUS” developmental programme was created!
More about the programme: “Mars+Venus” developmental programme
Author and facilitator: Oleksandr Sahaidak — PhD in psychology, head of the Odesa Psychological and Philosophical Society of the UAS, Jungian analyst, hypnologist, lecturer in psychology, anthropology and sociology, practising psychologist, head of the “Teurung” Association of Depth Psychology. More than 19 years of psychological practice.
