Inner-outer couple: anima and animus revisited. New perspectives for a clinical approach in transition.

Abstract

The conflicts of the outer couple (crises, separations, divorces) with a high incidence in the rates of depression, reveal the archetypal dysfunction of the relationship between the inner-couple (in-shadow) and the outer-couple (in-crisis). To understand this in depth, a new animated and integrated model of the masculine (animus) and the feminine (anima) is explored. It is a transformational model, in which Jung's contributions are integrated and understood as knowledge in transition. Masculine and feminine cosmogonic principles are personified in the human psyche as anima-animus archetypes-complexes. Their relationship, mediated by the binding eros (cosmogonic-eros), configures the inner-couple-complex. Masculine and feminine are differentiations of the Self energy, present in both men and women. In the conscious dimension, they structure the ego-anima-animus identity; in the dimension of the personal unconscious, the anima-animus complexes; and at the archetypal level, the deep identity of the primordial feminine/masculine. In this initial restructured model, the anima-animus relationship and the description of the dual quaternity as the dynamics of the inner-outer couple interrelation are especially significant. The breadth and comprehensive richness of the new model is illustrated in the clinical/dream material of a patient under analysis, presenting the dynamics: inner couple in shadow - outer couple in crisis.