The Dual Anima Dreams

The "Dual Anima" Dreams

Introduction:

The dual anima dreams were the first pattern I recognized when I began my dream journal at the age of 17. Like many adolescents, I was prone to ambivalence. I did not know whether I was a child or an adult, whether I was shy or outgoing, or whether I was destined to greatness or obscurity. Sometimes I would have frightening mood swings. The dual anima dreams spelled out this problem with the aid of a Jungian archetype, the anima. As described in the forward, the anima is a personification of the unconscious, one that appears in a form that is the dreamer’s opposite. Most obviously, the anima (or animus, if the dreamer is female) is the opposite sex. On another level, however, the anima seems to change character to reflect the opposite of the dreamer’s state of mind. Since my state of mind fluctuated wildly as a result of my adolescent ambivalence, the anima was prone to do so as well. Basically, the anima would appear in two forms, reflecting either my introverted or extraverted states of mind.

The Pattern:

In this series of dreams I would encounter two females, one with blonde hair, one with black. They would rarely appear at the same time; usually, one would yield to another. Each of the two had their own special characteristics that held true, for the most part, throughout the series. These characteristics were spelled out in a pair of dreams from my adolescence in which the two animas appeared separately. The first of these dreams is as follows:

I was in a hotel room with a beautiful young strawberry-blonde girl wearing a nightgown. After we consummated our relationship ( an act which was portrayed symbolically and was more spiritual than sexual), my sister, a nurse, examined her and said she was pregnant. We returned to our school, and I looked on proudly as her friends congratulated her on her pregnancy. Later, I was returning from a business trip and stopped at a diner before going home. An old man there was telling about a pretty young girl in an abandoned house nearby who was in the grip of some invisible torment. The others laughed at him, dismissing him as senile, but I recognized who he was talking about. Filled with a sense of dread, I approached the abandoned house in question. Had something gone wrong with the pregnancy?

The blonde girl, who I came to refer to as Anima 1, usually adheres to the common societal standards of beauty (for this reason I often referred to her as the “extraverted anima”). She is the type of girl that would greatly intimidate me in waking life. However, she often appears subdued, as if she has endured some sort of calamity. The child she carried in the dream is, in fact, myself as a child. The pain of unresolved childhood issues has become “split off” and is carried by this anima figure (see the “Wounded Child” dreams). For this reason, she often appears in pain, under a magic spell, or morally corrupt. In any case, there is a sense that something has gone wrong with her. Nevertheless, she seems to carry a strong desire to procreate. As in this dream, her blonde hair is tinted red, the color of strong emotion. There always appears to be something powerfully passionate about her, but it seems to be muted or hidden.

The second anima appeared in a later dream:

I was at a school gathering when I decided to go to the restroom. With a shock, I discovered there a pretty girl with long, black hair, playing with a deck of cards. We began to talk, and we discovered that we had much in common. Other people came and went while we talked, but we ignored them. Then, suddenly, she was gone. The other people who had been there previously re-entered, and I realized with great disappointment that she was only an illusion.

The brunette, who I called Anima 2 or the introverted anima, is more talkative and friendly, but somewhat “tomboyish” (in waking life, it would be impossible for me to have such a casual conversation with a girl). She is my confidante, always taking my side and empathizing with my problems. As in this dream, she would often appear in private, enclosed places. Although I find her pretty, she did not necessarily reflect a societal ideal of beauty. Unlike Anima 1, who serves as the surrogate mother to my inner child, Anima 2 is a surrogate mother to my present, adult self. She seems to have an aversion to procreation. Generally, Anima 2 is a “safe” anima-imago, carrying traits I am comfortable with.

As I collected examples of these dreams, I began to recognize that Anima 1 would appear when I had become withdrawn and isolated. Her function was to draw me out of my isolation and bring me back in touch with the outside world. Anima 2, on the other hand would appear when my social involvement had gotten out of hand, to the point that I was in danger of losing myself. Her job was to calm me down and help me find my center once again. The following dreams, which are more or less in chronological order, will illustrate how these two anima imagoes appeared in my dreams to reflect the oscillation which was an important key to understanding my waking life.

Dream #17: I was sitting in a small white room, waiting. A girl with dark hair was guarding me and we were engaging in light conversation. She wore a wrinkled blue uniform, like a Cub Scout uniform, but with insignias on the arm that had the name of an underground organization at that school... It was a highly respected organization. Presently, a second girl entered the room. Her hair was light blonde, and her uniform was newer but bore the same insignias as that of the first girl. Perhaps she carried a gun. The two girls exchanged a few words...the first girl evidently was once an active member but now held only loose ties. After a while the second girl escorted me away. We went to a white hallway in which all the doors were locked. She left me there alone, locking the hallway door behind her. At one end of the hallway was a sign bearing the name of the...organization. At the other end the doors opened and members of the organization came out...I mingled with them and entered their secret headquarters.

It is helpful in this dream to simply go through and make some observations:

I was sitting in a small room, waiting. A girl with dark hair was guarding me.. This fits the description of Anima 2, who usually has dark hair and appears in an enclosed space.
...we were engaged in light conversation. Anima 2 is typically easy to talk to. Here, this is in spite of the fact that she is supposed to be “guarding” me.
...a second girl entered the room. Her hair was light blonde... This is obviously Anima 1, who is supposed to appear when I am ready to come out of my isolation.
After a while, the second girl escorted me away... This is Anima 1’s normal function. She leads me out of myself and invites me to explore more social avenues.
We went to a white hallway in which all the doors were locked... This reflects my belief that social interaction was something that comes from “out there”. I was not, at that time, able to recognize my own responsibilities as a social being.
...members of the organization came out...I mingled with them and entered their secret headquarters... Normal social interaction was strange and mysterious to me. In this dream, I likened Society to an exclusive fraternal organization with very limited access. What this dream does not reveal is the inevitable return to isolation that tended to follow this extraverted period. The two animas would continue to appear as long as I failed to find a middle ground between isolation and interaction.
Dream #14: I was in China, observing the carnage of a devastated civilization. "The children have suffered the most," said a beautiful Chinese woman who had become my wife. ..Later on, we were at some sort of rally and a plane passed over. My wife said, “It is a Black Death plane. That is the type we have found to carry the atom bomb.” We hurried to her car...I turned to the right and we began driving through mountainous terrain. The car became two bicycles and the Chinese girl became my sister. We were playing as we did when we were children. It occurred to me that we could not possibly escape the radiation, but it did not seem to matter.
This dream demonstrates the pattern of one anima yielding to another. In this dream, Anima 2 appears first. As explained earlier, this anima-imago appeared when my extraverted side threatened to overreach itself. In waking life, this would typically manifest itself as a tendency to throw myself into social situations I lacked the skill to handle. To save me from a potentially devastating humiliation, my unconscious (symbolized in the dream by Anima 2), would try to coax me back to safety. In this dream, the danger takes on the catastrophic aspect of an impending nuclear explosion. As I begin to withdraw from the danger, Anima 2 spontaneously changes to Anima 1. This is an automatic function of the unconscious and its compensation mechanisms. As soon as the immediate danger is gone, it automatically shifts to a new problem. Now that I have withdrawn somewhat, and actually regressed into childhood, there is a danger that I will go too far and disappear into obscurity. Anima 1 appears at this point to coax me out of my shell a bit; to get me in touch with my playful, spontaneous side. The hypervigilence urged earlier is no longer necessary.
Dream #16: A man was walking along on his travels and a girl stopped him. She asked him if he would lead her through an ordeal which she had encountered before. A creature stood beside her; he was the supervisor of the ordeal and he also urged the man. The man refused, saying the ordeal was boring because of its many dangers. Finally, however, he consented. The ordeal was a veer to the right from the traveler’s path and went steeply downward. At the bottom was a mass of rotted lushness; hidden dangers dwelt among the fallen trees. The girl broke away from the man and ran to a second girl--a friend who had come out of the rottenness of a spillway. The second girl’s face was of a drained expression. The traveler’s charge explained that she had been bewitched. The man himself eyed the spillway and thought, “It is here we must go.”
The traveler is an example of what I call the “ego man”, a character that symbolizes the ego when the dreamer is a neutral observer of the dream. (When the dreamer is “in” the dream, of course, he represents the ego himself.) In this day of movies and television it is not surprising that the brain will come up with this method of presenting a psychological point. The dreamer identifies with the “ego man” just as he would the protagonist of a movie. In this dream, there is a feeling of “deja vu”. Both the traveler and the girl he encounters have obviously undergone the ordeal before (the man finds it “boring” despite the fact that there are dangers). This indicates a repeating psychological pattern. As in the previous dream, the ego encounters Anima 2 first. The ordeal seems to represent the relentless “see-sawing” between extraverted and introverted attitudes (as the previous dream showed, my unconscious found this process fraught with peril). Anima 2, however, leads the ego into danger, not away from it as in the previous dream. Here, introspection is seen as perilous because it can lead to the uncovering of repressed emotions. The color green, prominent in this dream as the “rotted lushness”, is mentioned in Jungian literature as a symbol of the feeling function. Rampant plant growth is an excellent symbol for repressed emotions, since it is a “glacial” form of life. It is alive, but it does not move, other than to grow out of control over a long period of time. At the point that this foliage appears, Anima 1 appears as well. Her function here would normally be to take me back towards an extraverted attitude, but something is wrong. The first girl says that she is the victim of a spell. As I mentioned earlier, Anima 1 would often appear to be suffering from some affliction in these dreams. I believe that this is another symbol of repressed emotion; that the extraverted anima is forced to pay the consequences for my repression and can therefore not perform her function properly. This phenomenon is revisited in another dream:
Dream #30: ...Two nuns were trapped on the outside of a tower...The windows only opened a crack, but this seemed enough to recover the two nuns. The motive of the nun on the right was unclear, but it was explained that the nun on the left (who seemed somewhat older) deliberately put herself in jeopardy. “She was saved from the inside of the shaft twice before by the hand of God,” a voice said “But she wanted to renew her faith by putting it to the test a third time.” The woman seemed emotionally drained, but safe. I thought, “The hand of God has saved her again.”
Once again, the concept of repetition is seen here. This time, Anima 1 is portrayed as deliberately putting herself at risk in order to “renew her faith”. This reminds me of a psychological phenomenon known as the “repetition compulsion”. Repetition compulsion is an illness of a person’s will. A person gripped by this compulsion will repeat counterproductive patterns over and over, never seeming to realize the price he is paying for refusing to abandon it. Chemical addiction is an excellent example of this, but there are many, lesser instances that are common to virtually everyone. We all have experienced within ourselves that stubborn streak that clouds our judgment and prevents us from seeing the folly of our ways. The repetition compulsion is at work in these instances, and a great deal of concentration and energy is required to break out of it. This dream reveals the cost of this compulsion--the immobilization of Anima 1, who would otherwise function to draw me out of myself. Essentially, this means that the compulsive, destructive patterns to which I was prone were preventing me from making normal social connections.
The "surrogate mother" aspects of the two animas were explored in a later dream.
Dream #34: A girl was explaining to a doctor the plight of her grandfather. “He’s very weak and is down to a few ounces.” I saw the tiny little man on a table covered with blankets. He looked very old, and his granddaughter left with the doctor. I stayed to keep the old man company, and I noticed that it took only a smile from me to make him happy. Then I noticed a girl with short dark hair sitting on the table. She said, “I know you. I cared for you and rocked you to sleep when you were two years old.” We talked for some time. I remembered a childhood fantasy that I would meet with just such a girl and marry her. I noticed then that the little old man was gone, leaving only a wad of sheets on the table.
Here, the wounded inner child is portrayed as an old man. This is not as nonsensical as it may seem, for my inner child is actually older than my adult self. He does, however, retain childlike aspects. Anima 1 appears as his granddaughter, clearly in a surrogate mother role. As typically happens in these dreams, she gives way to her counterpart, Anima 2. The inner child imago disappears at this point as I am identified as the child--Anima 2 is my (the ego’s) surrogate mother. This gives further insight into what happens when I gravitate between different states of mind. The time of introspection, when Anima 1 appears to draw me out, is the time when I am most likely to make contact with my childhood issues. As I begin to go in the other direction, this connection disappears. My behavior changes to allow for social interaction, and my thoughts become more banal and superficial. It is here that Anima 2 must appear to restore the balance.
As I neared the end of my adolescence and began to enter adulthood, I began to exercise a newfound independence that stretched my capacity to extraversion to its limits. I had found a job for myself and was making decisions about my future that was unprecedented in my life. Such bold excursions were still fairly rare, but when they did occur they did interesting things to my dual anima dreams:
Dream #50: I was sitting in McDonald’s eating lunch, when I noticed a round window to some kind of pressure chamber. It seemed that a lift was coming up behind it, and this girl D. was on it. She seemed pained...She lay on top of a little blonde-haired girl, shielding her. Then the two of them were sitting at a table across from me. The little girl got up and began to run, and since D. seemed quite incapacitated I ran quickly to catch her...She had incredible strength, though, and dragged me several feet...
Here some of the characteristics of the animas seem to be reversed. D. was a co-worker from my job at McDonald’s, and she fit the Anima 2 profile perfectly. However, she seems to bear some of the properties of Anima 1 in this dream. This is probably because my excursions into the outside world had become so extreme that my introverted side had, for the moment, become repressed. As in previous dreams, she appears in an enclosed place. This quickly disappears as the extraverted side begins to assert itself. In previous dreams, Anima 1 would gently coax me out of my shell. Here, she literally drags me! She is out of control, an aspect of my personality that is split-off and operating autonomously. This dream clearly shows that, although my extraverted side is becoming more prominent, I have not mastered it and have little control over it. The following dream showed the price of this excess:
Dream #51: Later, I was on a choir trip. All the girls wore wedding dresses and the men tuxedoes. There would be a mass wedding on the trip, as there was every year. We carried a ladder into the bus, the girls on one side and men on the other. I noticed there was no one across from me. The girl I wanted to marry, a girl with short black hair, had stayed home. Eventually we arrived in Fort Worth and the driver was making his way toward the hotel. The chaperone, a woman with blonde hair, brought us all up to the front and said something very nasty about me. The others began to laugh, while I suppressed my anger, thinking perhaps she had an ulterior motive that was beneficial in the long run. But my friends all began to ostracize me. I went back to my seat..I was isolated.
Since the foray into extraversion was carried to such an extreme, the compensating introversion is just as severe. This dream is permeated with intense loneliness and isolation. Previously, the two animas always appeared as benevolent guides; now, for the first time, one of the anima figures takes on a negative aspect. Instead of Anima 2 leading me gently to the introverted state, Anima 1 now drives me to it with verbal abuse. Anima 2, characterized here as my ideal mate, is nowhere to be found. Her absence is, in fact, just as hostile to me as Anima 1’s verbal attack. The sudden change in temperament is probably a sign that normal compensation mechanisms are kicking in. The unconscious, as I explored it in my dreams, had become too safe, more attractive than the harsh realities of the outside world. Anima 1’s behavior does, in fact, have purpose and meaning in the long run, as I suspected in the dream. By insulting me, she has pushed me into contact with some of my childhood pain. The ostracism I suffered in the dream is reminiscent of the rejection by my peers in childhood. This pain had been split off before, and I had only seen it (at least in dreams) projected onto others, such as Anima 1. Now, I was experiencing that pain firsthand.
Dream #57: ...at an army base, there was a fine youth with curly blonde hair who always wore many sweaters. He had formerly gone with a girl (call her girl #1) on the base but she now had to share his affection with a newcomer (girl #2). Some disaster was approaching so the camp was brought close together and tightly compacted. A ritual was ordained in which a male on the base would have the place of honor at an annual banquet, and he would choose a girl to be at his side. The boy with the many sweaters was considered a likely candidate for some act of heroism on the plain outside, so the two girls had a terrible argument with him to see which would be chosen. Some time later, girl #1 went to the commanding officer and complained that the boy with the sweaters was taking girl #2 to the banquet for the second year in a row. The C. O. was angry at her interruption because he was working on the aforementioned withdrawal of the army base. Girl #1, seeing no action taken, decided to take matters into her own hands.
The tone of this dream was very light and playful. The youth seems to represent my extraverted tendencies, split off and viewed from the outside. The many sweaters in which he habitually clothes himself signify the partially repressed nature of this aspect of my personality. The “consolidation” of the camp, in turn, seems to symbolize the process of introspection, in which one withdraws from the world. The fact that the youth is recognized for a feat of courage “out there” further identifies him as my extraverted side. From this perspective, contact with the dual anima should effect him in this manner: 1) Contact with Anima 1 would enhance his personality and make him more prominent, and 2) contact with Anima 2 would conceal him, perhaps even make him disappear. The fact that he seems to prefer Anima 2 indicates that my extraverted side is being repressed. Anima 1 is clearly not happy about this (i.e., the unconscious in attempting to compensate for excessive introspection), and makes a decision to act in some fashion. The only problem is that she apparently never does act on her decision--the dream does not mention her again. Apparently, I have become “stuck” in an introverted mode. However, because the tone of the dream is so light and cheerful, it is evident that the unconscious is not totally displeased with this arrangement, at least for the time being. Consider a later section of the same dream:
...I went to a table like a prop table. On it was a book made from bound notebook paper which I had written long ago for the school. Attached to it was a smaller book entitled “Concerning the Anima”, which I had also written. I went back to the first book and observed the cover. There was a drawing of two figures seated at a table. The figure on the right was a man both astonished and angry. Across from him was a creature like Robby the Robot, only made of flesh. He was in the same emotional state. The things on the table were apparently what annoyed them, but it was unclear what they were. I thought this picture too cluttered. I leafed through the book and came across some pictures of Robby the Robot as a servant to the man on the cover. I came upon a very amusing picture in which the robot had evidently just put up a simple still-life of a flower pot, and was, for some unexplainable reason, starting with fear at the sight of it. Then I came upon a picture I couldn’t make head or tail of. Finally, I realized it was a picture of an empty room drawn while I was crouching against the left wall. It was a study in perspective, but the perspective seemed to be off somewhat. Then the picture changed. The shading on the ceiling was masterfully done in pencil, and I thought, “This is a much more sophisticated drawing.” But as I looked at the ceiling in the picture, the point of view began to change, moving backwards along the string of lights on the ceiling, until..it was facing the other direction, down an endless hallway.
This was an extremely creative dream, and it probably was attempting to convey the message that prolonged introspection could, up to a point, yield strong positive results in creative activity. This part of the dream seems to symbolize the creative process. The pictures I leaf through are my own work, yet I do not seem to recognize them. This is because they are being created spontaneously as I turn the pages, even changing as I view them. The last drawing, showing an endless hallway, displays the depths of my creative potential. I list this among the most “fun” dreams I have ever had. This feeling of good will was unlikely to last, however. Such creative activity is of little use unless it can be shared with others.
Dream #68: A girl with blonde hair was up in the tree, singing the opening recitative from Bach’s “Was mir behagt”. She seemed bothered by all the people, though they were obviously enjoying her performance. She finished and a bass came to sing an aria. At this point a girl with black hair came to me and pointed out a large bush to my left, telling me to rustle the leaves. Suspecting mischief, I refused. Then two boys came out with wrist-rockets and shot them into the bush. Blue jays flew out in all directions. If I had rustled the leaves, they would have punctured me with their long, sharp beaks.
Once again we see an anima figure taking on a seemingly malevolent aspect. Did Anima 2 really intend to trick me into injuring myself? In the dream I clearly believed so, but this may be a result of my inherent distrust of other people. In fact, Anima 2 was fulfilling her normal function, pointing me in the direction of introspection. However, it is clear that things have been "shaken up" in my psyche. At this point in my life, I was studying music composition, a discipline that requires both introspection (to create new works) and social interaction (to get the works performed). This dream shows that I was clearly having difficulty finding a balance between the two. Excessive introversion had become painful (represented by the sharp-beaked birds), while my extraverted self was having its usual difficulties (represented by Anima 1's lack of rapport with her audience). This clearly indicates a very difficult time in my life. I felt trapped, "stuck" between two extremes. Although I was no longer bouncing relentlessly between the extremes, I found the alternative to be frustrating and depressing. (This feeling of being "stuck" was portrayed more dramatically in the "Hostage" dreams.)
Dream #107: My sister had a squirrel and brought it into church. Then a girl with dark hair got on the podium and announced that all squirrels were to be left outside, because they would run loose at communion. My sister did not want to walk out with a squirrel in front of everybody after this announcement, so she got my brother to lead him out.
There is an intriguing link between this dream and the previous one: The squirrel in this dream and the blue jays from the previous one were both denizens of our back yard in my childhood home. It is likely that the squirrel in this dream represents my own childhood, my "inner child", which, as I noted before, is usually associated with Anima 1, as it is in this dream. Apparently, there is an attempt here to integrate some of my childlike, exubrant energy (symbolized by the squirrel) into the quiet, austere world of introspection (symbolized by the church). However, the introverted anima will have none of this. Once more, she asserts her dominance in my personality and banishes the poor animal to the unconscious. (It is probably significant that the extraverted anima abandons the squirrel out of embarrassment.)
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