• Health
• Money
• Leisure
• Make a Difference
• Family
• Online Community
• Membership

In dreams, a man's soul often takes the form of a woman...an image psychologists call "the anima." The anima is the "feeling" side of a man's nature...his ability to make a heart connection, to nurture, to empathize, to feel his emotions. Men have both a "light" and a "dark" anima to come to terms with. The dark anima image takes the form of a sultry temptress in his dreams. The light anima may take the form of a beautiful virtuous angel of a woman in his dreams. It is in every man's life work to learn that both his light and dark animas are distortions of his Reality; behind each image is a very ordinary, human need to feel loved and to love. Behind the goddess and the seducer image is the need to feel and be understood. If he can do this, he can find his way to seeing his female relationships as they are--not projecting his light anima upon her and "worshipping” her and not projecting his dark anima upon her and seeing her as simply a sexual object to meet his needs. How a man sees his anima in his dreams says a lot about his relationship with the feminine, his ability to form normal, healthy, heterosexual relationships with women, and his ability to accept and relate to the feminine aspect within his own self.

.

In a healthy relationship with his woman partner, a man has to be able to withdraw his "light" and "dark" projections upon her, see the ordinary human being--the woman as she is--and still love her…let her be who she is…not “look after her” as a pure, defenseless goddess nor exploit her for his sexual or power needs, or seek her to mother him. Few I suspect achieve this level of understanding. We males learn this over a long time period. Here is a story from Africa to illustrate this dilemma every male faces.

.

"An African tale portrays the double anima with startling clarity. The story tells of a father who warns his young son that the heavenly woman will come one night and ask to lie beside the son. The father describes the beauty and seductiveness of this heavenly vision and informs the son that he will be dead in the morning if he agrees to the offer of the heavenly woman. The father grows increasingly worried about this danger to his son (perhaps he knew the heavenly woman earlier in his own life?) and moves to a new village so the heavenly woman may not find the son. But when the parents are away, the heavenly woman comes to the son at night and asks to lie beside him. Though he has been warned, the son is so dazzled by the beauty of the maiden that he agrees to let her lie beside him for the night. In the morning the son is dead and the heavenly woman is horrified, since she had no wish to injure the youth. She goes quickly to an old shaman who lives nearby and asks for help. The old shaman comes and after some time builds a huge fire and tosses a lizard into the hottest part of the fire.

..

He says that anyone who loves the dead youth enough to walk into the fire and retrieve the lizard will return the youth’s life to him. The heavenly woman tries but fails; the youth’s mother tries but fails; his father tries but fails. ‘The fire is too hot. Then, a plain girl from the village who loves the youth but has never let this be known walks into the fire and retrieves the lizard. It is her ordinary human love that has the power to rescue the youth. The boy awakens and we wish that the story might end here in so much happiness. But one more episode remains. The old shaman tells the celebrating village that one more decision remains. He builds the fire again, throws the lizard into the middle of the flames, and informs the boy that he must make a decision. If he retrieves the lizard from the fire (a power he now has), the plain maiden will live and his mother will die. If he leaves the lizard in the fire, the plain maiden will die but his mother will live. The story does not tell us which decision the youth makes but leaves that sacrificial moment for each man to decide in his own life.

.

The story has great power and tells of the double anima in a man with stark clarity. The Heavenly woman is his light anima; the plain girl is his earthy, human capacity for relatedness. The heavenly vision utterly incapacitates a young man for ordinary life, and he can be saved only by the earthen capacity for relationship represented by the plain maiden. Then, all of this reverts to the mother, and he has to choose between his mother and his human anima (the ability to create). If he chooses to save the mother but sacrifices the plain maiden, he will be a possible candidate for shaman for the next generation. If he sacrifices his mother and saves the plain maiden, he gains the capacity for an ordinary human life. To fail to make this choice means the loss of both. Later in his life he will be able to recover whichever one was sacrificed at this earlier point in his life, by building a conscious life that finds the right place and level for all of these elements. All of these choices and experiences come to every young man and present themselves in the particular language of his own unique life.”

..

From Robert A. Johnson's Lying with the Heavenly Woman, book.

.

Did this section bring meaning and understanding to your relationship with husband, wife or partner? Or greater understanding of your self? Men might consider reading Johnson’s book, Lying with the Heavenly Woman: Understanding and Integrating the Feminine Archetypes in Men’s Lives (HarperSanFrancisco: 1994).