Four Stages of Anima

In The Practice of Psychotherapy (CW 16, 1954) carl-jung codifies the developmental sequence of the anima in four classical figures, drawn from the late-ancient erotic literature and re-instanced in Goethe’s Faust: “Hawwah (Eve), Helen (of Troy), the Virgin Mary, and Sophia. The series is repeated in Goethe’s Faust: in the figures of Gretchen as the personification of a purely instinctual relationship (Eve); Helen as an anima figure; Mary as the personification of the ‘heavenly,’ i.e., Christian or religious, relationship; and the ‘eternal feminine’ as an expression of the alchemical Sapientia” (Jung 1954).

The four stages are not chronological phases through which every man must pass; they are levels of differentiation at which the anima operates and by which her presence in a man’s life can be recognized.

Eve: the biological level. “Woman is equated with the mother and only represents something to be fertilized” (Jung 1954). The anima appears as flesh, as appetite, as the ground of life.

Helen: the aesthetic and romantic level. The anima as object of desire, beauty, and romantic pursuit; “dominated by the sexual Eros, but on an aesthetic and romantic level where woman has already [acquired some distinct value]” (Jung 1954).

Mary: the spiritualized level. The anima as devotional object, pure feminine, mediatrix of grace; the feminine as bearer of religious significance.

Sophia: the level of wisdom. The anima as Sapientia, the alchemical wisdom-figure, guide to gnosis. At this level she is no longer the object of Eros but the teacher of it.

The schema encodes the whole eros-history of the Western soul — from the biological Eve of Genesis to the Sophia of Gnosticism and alchemy — as stations on a single developmental axis.

Relationships

• anima
• eros-as-daimon
• individuation
• sapientia-dei
• coniunctio

Primary sources

• The Practice of Psychotherapy (Jung 1954, CW 16)