C.G.

jUNG'S PHILANDERING NECESSITIES

by Bernard X Bovasso (excerpted from his book, *Animus Rising,http://www.authorh
ouse.com/Bookstore/BookStoreSearchResults.aspx?SearchType=smpl&SearchTerm=Animus
%20rising

In view of much recent biographical exploration of the life and views of famed
Swiss psychologist, Dr. C.G. Jung, most provocative was his agape relation to wo
men for whom he represented a supraordinate animus pulling at a most critical in
ner and unconscious male image of the feminine psychology. The man and the animu
s were thus not separate in such a circumstance and resulted in his many extra-m
arital affairs. As collectively common as such traffic is it does not in Jung's
case, quite measure up to his creatively brilliant stature as one of the leading
psychologists of the 20th Century, more so because his forté was his preoccupa
tion with theological and religious subjects. Jung acclaimed or derided as "myst
ical" and measured with his collective and ordinary masculine necessities does n
ot, from the standpoint of the old fashioned Freudian super-ego, meet with a tra
ditional moral propriety however promiscuous exceses were adopted as the less me
ntionable norm for the collective male life style.
In this respect he lived as an ordinary collective male, no better or no
worse, insofar as the male of Western society exists in the thrall of the femin
ine projection of the animus. This by no means reflects a moral judgement on my
part but a phenomenological approach to collective maleness and its relation to
Animus Rising. It, of course, by necessity of the subject, would include myself
and account for my own occasional intrusions of autobiographical details in the
following work.
It must, however, be noted at the outset, that in my private views I ful
ly appreciate most of Jung's metapsychological notions as well as his Analytical
Psychology and its therapeutical effectiveness. Since, however, I am a practici
ng Painter and Poet my private relation to the figure of Jung is perhaps from hi
s bottom side where for much of his life he secretely practiced painting and scu
lpture. But more to complicate matters I am also indulged of an interest in phil
osophy, something gained after studying Pre-Socratic philosophy with Prof. Hans
Jonas. Thus my approach to both Art and Psychology includes existential and ontl
ogical concerns and includes a philosophical measure of Animus Rising.
The subject of Animus Rising was originally conceived during 1986. It co
ncerned the anticipation of a quickening of a gynocentric trend in the U.S.A. Th
e premise was based on Jung's notion of the animus as the largely latent contra-
sexual function of feminine psychology, i.e., the "inner" or unconscious malenes
s of the feminine psyche.
Such inner maleness of the American woman was apparently rising on a vas
t collective scale. The animus serving in a culture trend extends Jung's concept
of the animus to the Spirit, Zeitgeist or Animus Mundi. Jung, however, original
ly coined the term animus to indicate a particular aspect of the individual femi
nine psychology. The concept provided itself as an aid to his therapeutical prac
tice as an analyst. Directed, however, to a collective expression of the animus
and its cultural effect it represented a â rising upâ of consciousness for the entire
and collective estate of The Feminine. In turn, it also manifested and reflecte
d an alteration in the traditional expression of maleness. In this sense the cul
ture expression of the animus as Spirit, directed it to critical mass as the col
lective ideal of the persona now divested as it is of the traditionally prevail
ed personal psychological venue. It was thus no longer limited to the psychology
of the feminine personality and also included the epiphenomenal psychological r
eadjustment of the actual male to his present collective circumstance. It Indica
ted a further intensification and amplification of the "matri-retentive male" an
d its various shades of expression ranging from such radical compensatory effect
s as gynophobia and the varieties of pathological male rage directed at women. O
n the softer side was a total rejection of the feminine presence and a mood reve
rsal of gender indicating the growing appearance and acceptance of same sex love
. The unexplored question, however, is whether the object of such trends is the
feminine presence itself and its individual or collective projection of the anim
us. Insofar as such manifestations were historically always active, compounded i
n the question is the simple fact that a mother is common to all and the materna
l image includes an expression of the animus. The difficulty here is that such a
n image in its archetypal and imperative form is never a singularity but overtly
ambivalent as the bonded image of mother and daughter. A provocative animus is
thus evoked that services both images simultaneously.
Apparently the "rising up" phenomenon, its social and cultural value, at
first drew attention because of its consistent evidence in pre-patristic and
matricentric societies. By the time of its climatic contemporary emergence, the
function of the animus as a psychogenic predisposition more resembles the tradit
ional understanding of the Spirit. It stood, as such, in distinction to the soul
(psyche, or anima). This allowed it as extra-psychically at large "out there" i
n the world as a collective seminal or spermatic conveyer of the elements of an
evolving culture. The animus as Spirit was apparently transforming itself as ess
entially trans-psychic and as the continued instrument of seculaem in the passin
g of epochs and ages. From ancient Greece to the present the animus specialised
if not concealed itelf in the expressions of Nous, or mind, and its singular mod
e of expression as thinking. Apparently, the traditional philosophical understan
ding included the idea of mythos and logos in complementary relationship. "Think
ing," however, served to subordinate mythos and along with it psyche or soul lit
erally as is handmaiden. This bifurcation is as alive today for philosophy as it
was in antquity and where thinking served as the sword of the cut. Obviously, m
ythos, eros, psyche and the feminine aspect was put aside from the root time of
philosophical thinking to the present, e.g., Heidegger & co. This would place "T
hinking" as the animus mode of the suppressed feminine or the feminine as lethe,
the concealed. It soon became apparent to thinkers that the bottom side of the
philosopical tradition was unmentionable and as such giving rise to psychology w
here lethe was better observed as the unconscious.
Its root and source, however, retained its feminine origin in what Jung
came to refer to as the "maternal unconscious". This was certainly a more discr
ete term than "collective unconscious," and more descriptive than what Jung alt
ernately referred to as the "objective psyche". The alteration of reference, how
ever, genderized the unconscious not only as "mother" but moved it closer to cla
ssical philosophical concepts of matter although by which Mater remained as leth
e (concealed)#