Carl Jung’s theory of the Anima and Animus has been a running interest (or perhaps obsession) over the past five years. Here are a few of the essays I’ve penned on the subject.
- Anima and Animus. This is my most comprehensive essay on the subject and the one I feel most comfortable sharing without qualifiers. Note: it is very long.
- More on Anima and Animus. This piece is a decent overview of issues that I was dealing with while writing much of my anima series in 2020. The latter parts hint at a new direction for my thinking focused on embracing the animus figure, but these views should be considered contingent and open to revision or rejection.
- Anima and Shadow. While I wrote quite a bit about anima and animus in 2020, none of it adds anything significant to the long piece I provided above. This essay, which covers Jung's other major concept – the shadow – seems to hold up best among the essays of that series.
- Marie de Gournay, Muse or Protege? One of the great literary mysteries concerns Montaigne’s literary executor Marie de Gournay. Many have speculated that she and Montaigne had a personal relationship and that she was something of a muse for his work. The evidence, however, does not back this up and her role as a valuable contributor to Montaigne’s later work is backed by significant scholarship.
- Sabrina Spielrein, Bits and Pieces and Destruction. Carl Jung did not create the anima/animus construct on his own, it was the result of a collaboration with the brilliant early 20th century psychologist Sabrina Spielrein. Her contributions cast significant light on the theory and help frame it with a Montaignean framework.