Elysia
04-23-2005, 01:38 PM
Let me start by saying I am a cross-dresser and I can’t give anything like a definitive answer to this question. However it is interesting—and I think useful—to speculate; after all, Socrates' guiding rule was, ‘know thyself.’ Then again, Socrates was sentenced to death… but I digress. I have wondered about why I cross-dress for as long as I’ve been doing it. I recently took a test, suggested by another member here, and was intrigued by the results. I was categorized as have an androgynous gender personality. This got me thinking about Carl Jung’s concept of the anima.
Let me summarize his theory (I’m not a psychologist; if you are and I’ve misunderstood this theory, please let me know.)
Jung suggested that a person’s unconscious mind consists of two things, a personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious contains the results of experiences collected over a person’s life time. The collective unconscious contains archetypes that are present intact from the beginning of life and are common to us all. He states, “The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego. These are the shadow, the anima, and the animus.” There is much to be said about the shadow but here it is the anima that I think you will find most interesting. The anima is the feminine aspect of a persons soul, the animus is the masculine aspect. Jung claims that these archetypes are there in everyone. Every man is compensated by a feminine element. He says, “…the collective archetype of the anima, [is] incarnated anew in every male child.” He explains, “Whenever she appears, in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on personified form, thus demonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being. She is not an invention of the conscious, but a spontaneous product of the unconscious.”
Well, I thought, Elysia is my anima, working her way out into a conscious personification. Perhaps I am a man with a particularly strong anima. Since we are all different, it stands to reason that the relative balance of psychological forces within us will vary. I’m not experiencing the manifestation of an unnatural force, only the results of a less than common balance of natural forces.
So, is it a problem that I’m conscious of my anima and give her some time at the helm? I believe Jung would think not. He advocates a conscious recognition of all archetypical forces and warns that failure to recognize them as parts of you will lead you to project them onto others, often with unfortunate results. I’d summarize this as “To really know others you must first know thyself.”
Now according to this test I took, I’m an androgynous gender personality. What does that mean? Perhaps that in me anima and animus are near equally balanced. Of course, animus gets his time. Society encourages him and helps him to develop and there is nothing wrong with that. His suppression would be no less a problem for me. And let’s be honesty there are some great advantages to being male. I’m 100% in favor of redressing unfair imbalances in the way society treats men and women and I work hard not to allow or encourage things that unfairly favor a man over a woman but I’d be conveniently ignoring the facts if I were to claim that I’ve not benefited from being male. Point is, he gets his and within reason that’s ok but what about Elysia. Elysia need her time too.
So there it is. A partial answer at least. I cross-dress because Elysia wants some time in the conscious world and I’d be a fool not to let her have some.
However, because my body is male I must be aware of the potential problems I might have if Elysia were introduced to the larger world in her most overt form. Again, Jung has a useful insight.
He warns, “Although there are, in my experience, a fair number of people who can understand without special intellectual or moral difficulties what is meant by anima and animus, one finds very many more who have the greatest trouble in visualizing these empirical concepts as anything concrete. This shows that they fall a little outside the usual range of experience. They are unpopular precisely because they seem unfamiliar. The consequence is that they mobilize prejudice and become taboo like everything else that is unexpected.”
This, keep in mind, is a warning about the reaction many people have to the very idea of anima and animus. We know how much more sharp the reaction is to those men who give their anima more obvious control.
So, I think that’s enough to chew on. What do you souls think?
Let me summarize his theory (I’m not a psychologist; if you are and I’ve misunderstood this theory, please let me know.)
Jung suggested that a person’s unconscious mind consists of two things, a personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious contains the results of experiences collected over a person’s life time. The collective unconscious contains archetypes that are present intact from the beginning of life and are common to us all. He states, “The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego. These are the shadow, the anima, and the animus.” There is much to be said about the shadow but here it is the anima that I think you will find most interesting. The anima is the feminine aspect of a persons soul, the animus is the masculine aspect. Jung claims that these archetypes are there in everyone. Every man is compensated by a feminine element. He says, “…the collective archetype of the anima, [is] incarnated anew in every male child.” He explains, “Whenever she appears, in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on personified form, thus demonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the outstanding characteristics of a feminine being. She is not an invention of the conscious, but a spontaneous product of the unconscious.”
Well, I thought, Elysia is my anima, working her way out into a conscious personification. Perhaps I am a man with a particularly strong anima. Since we are all different, it stands to reason that the relative balance of psychological forces within us will vary. I’m not experiencing the manifestation of an unnatural force, only the results of a less than common balance of natural forces.
So, is it a problem that I’m conscious of my anima and give her some time at the helm? I believe Jung would think not. He advocates a conscious recognition of all archetypical forces and warns that failure to recognize them as parts of you will lead you to project them onto others, often with unfortunate results. I’d summarize this as “To really know others you must first know thyself.”
Now according to this test I took, I’m an androgynous gender personality. What does that mean? Perhaps that in me anima and animus are near equally balanced. Of course, animus gets his time. Society encourages him and helps him to develop and there is nothing wrong with that. His suppression would be no less a problem for me. And let’s be honesty there are some great advantages to being male. I’m 100% in favor of redressing unfair imbalances in the way society treats men and women and I work hard not to allow or encourage things that unfairly favor a man over a woman but I’d be conveniently ignoring the facts if I were to claim that I’ve not benefited from being male. Point is, he gets his and within reason that’s ok but what about Elysia. Elysia need her time too.
So there it is. A partial answer at least. I cross-dress because Elysia wants some time in the conscious world and I’d be a fool not to let her have some.
However, because my body is male I must be aware of the potential problems I might have if Elysia were introduced to the larger world in her most overt form. Again, Jung has a useful insight.
He warns, “Although there are, in my experience, a fair number of people who can understand without special intellectual or moral difficulties what is meant by anima and animus, one finds very many more who have the greatest trouble in visualizing these empirical concepts as anything concrete. This shows that they fall a little outside the usual range of experience. They are unpopular precisely because they seem unfamiliar. The consequence is that they mobilize prejudice and become taboo like everything else that is unexpected.”
This, keep in mind, is a warning about the reaction many people have to the very idea of anima and animus. We know how much more sharp the reaction is to those men who give their anima more obvious control.
So, I think that’s enough to chew on. What do you souls think?