According to Jung there are four major archetypes: the Self, the Persona, the Shadow and the Anima/Animus. Robert Johnson offers a worthy description of the relationship of the anima to creativity in the male. “Creativity in a man is directly linked with his inner feminine capacity for growth and creation. Genius in a man is his inner feminine capacity for growth and creation. Genius in a man is his interior feminine capacity [a response] to give birth; it is his masculinity which gives him capacity for putting that creativity into form and structure in the outer world. The worst characteristic of mood possession [a reaction] is that it robs one of all sense of meaning. Suddenly the ‘out there’ is dominant in one’s inner life and the inner meaning of life is lost. One is then at the mercy of the ‘out there’ for one’s sense of value or happiness.”[i]
Replacing a reaction with a response is at the heart of the process of self-transformation. Our psychologically-conditioned behavior patterns possess energy which is expressed in a life-enhancing way (a response) or a self-destructive way (a reaction). Jung called these energies “nucleations.” “For man, or for human consciousness, these nucleations are what Jung called archetypes. They are carriers of a charge endowed with either a negative or positive value, which in the psychologists’ language produce a stimulus or induce reactive patterns, or drives. Seen in terms of man’s larger development, they are condensations of emotional energy whose compulsive power can, however, be overcome and their captive energy released by calling them into consciousness and understanding their nature.”[ii]
________________
Supplemental Reading: Archetypes, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#53 Captive Energy
[i] Johnson, Robert. He: Understanding Masculine Psychology. New York: Harper, 1989, p. 35.
[ii] Young, Arthur. The Reflexive Universe. Cambria, California: Anados Foundation, 1976, p. 143.
