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Quote by Marie-Louise von Franz

“The animus awakens passion in a woman. His plans, purposes and whims stir up self-doubt within her and caused her to drag her feminine, passive nature out into the world and to expose herself to the resistance of the outer world. Then, when a woman has been successful in a man's world, it means acute suffering to narrow down the scope of her activities, or to give them up altogether, in order to become more feminine again.”

Quote by Marie-Louise von Franz

Book:The Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Revised Edition
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Work

The Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Revised Edition

This book is a revised edition of a classic study that delves into the origins, themes, and meanings of fairy tales, offering insights into their impact on culture and individual psychology. more

Author

Marie-Louise von Franz
Marie-Louise von Franz

Marie-Louise von Franz was a Swiss psychologist born on January 4, 1915, and died on February 17, 1998. She was a colleague and close friend of the famous psychologist Carl Jung, known for her contributions to Jungian psychology. more

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“This lowly activity is also a kind of compensation to persuade the woman to become feminine again. The effect of animus pressure can lead a woman to deeper femininity, providing she accepts the fact that she is animus-possessed and does something to bring her animus into reality. If she gives him a field of action- that is, if she takes up some special study or does some masculine work- this can occupy the animus, and at the same time her feeling will be vivified and she will come back to feminine activities. The worst condition comes about when a woman has a powerful animus, and does not even live it; then she is straightjacketed by animus opinions, and while she may avoid any sort of work that seems in the least masculine, she is much less feminine.”

FemininityAnimusJungian Psychology
Book:The Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Revised Edition
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“In the clutches of the animus, no woman is able to give up whatever power she may have, or her conviction that it is right and necessary and valuable. The convictions a woman has lived by spring from inferior masculine thinking; the less she herself is able to evaluate them, the more passionately she clings to them. This is a reason for the persistence of the animus possession. Unfortunately such a woman never thinks that anything could be wrong with herself and is convinced that the fault lies with others.”

AnimusJungian Psychology
Book:The Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Revised Edition
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“Is it possible my lover is not the man I thought him to be? Does he see me at all? Am I projecting my own inner man onto him? Am I forcing him to take responsibility for my undeveloped talents? Am I treating my body as my mother treated hers? Am I thinking like my father? Where am I blindly reacting as they did? Where am I still reacting childishly? Is my anger coming from my gut or from my head? Is it feminine anger or animus anger? (Feminine anger cleanses; animus anger leaves me tense.) Guided by the response of the unconscious as revealed in dreams, we differentiate grain from grain, question after question, until one day we find our own authentic voice. ~Marion Woodman,The Pregnant Virgin, Page”

WomanFeminineVirginCarl JungAnimus
Book:The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation
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“The modifications of the family structure by this state of affairs is important. The couple feels isolated, surrounded by children who cost them a great deal in many ways. Sometimes they live in harassing conditions. Work in the factory which increases nervous tension has replaced the more natural work in the fields which was perhaps more tiring physically and less remunerative. In seeking a means to reduce financial insecurity, the couple has created moral and affective insecurity. The woman is constantly in constantly in contact with other man and thus less dependent on her husband. She is in a situation where she can become deeply attached to another. The husband's insecurity can incite him to become jealous and aggressive, and the wife feeling this developing possessiveness may in turn become aggressive. The couple becomes a little universe of growing tension and latent hostility. The spirit of this new family is no longer conservative; the pater familias no longer exists, even the ties between parents and children are totally different. There is either a complete abdication of all authority and even of responsibility, or relations within the family may often take on a more fraternal, supple manner.”

MarriageGender RolesEconomic SecurityFinancial SecurityModern FamilyThe Family
Book:Eruption to Hope
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“The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos. Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end. In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the other in the Greek class. They, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms – the world, in fact, was not their home, at least the world as I knew it – and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent as I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, and it is eminently possible to study it all one's life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvelous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek – quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times, I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious 'Hello,' and may I never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end.”

LanguageAncient Greek
Book:The Secret History
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