Ransvestia

almost always a group personality, like a committee representing the men who were very influential during their childhood. That's enough about them.

Now, the anima is derived from the man's mother, but is a highly stylized version of her. She "has attributes that appear and re-appear throughout the ages, whenever men are describing the women who are significant to them. In different eras, the image may be slightly changed or modified, but some characteristics seem to remain almost constant; the anima has a timeless quality-she always looks young, though there is often a suggestion of years of experience behind her. Wise, but no formidably so; it is rather that something strangely meaningful-something like secret knowledge or hidden wisdom- clings to her. She is also two-sided, in effect with her own Persona and shadow; on the one hand, the pure good, noble goddess and on the other the prostitute, the seductress, the witch.

At this point I decided that Dr. Jung had been reading my mail, but he apparently had most of this worked out before I even had an address. So let's hear some more while he tells the secrets of our little play-mates: "Sometimes she appears elfin-like in character, and has the power to lure men away from their work or homes . . ." Of course, that could never happen to us, could it? "The anima carries spiritual values, and so her image is projected not only onto pagan goddesses, but onto the Virgin herself; but she is also near to nature and charged with emotion. She is also the Beckoning Fair One luring men on to love and despair, to creative activity and to doom. She is in fact as thoroughly inconsistent as the woman she personifies." So, regardless of what brand of gas you buy, you DO have a tigress in your tank! When aroused, "she disturbs the attempt to concentrate by whispering absurd notions in his ear, spoils the day with a vague, unpleasant sensation of something wrong, or haunts his sleep with seductive visions."

So, Doctor, what do we do about this feminine time-bomb? Anyone, he says, who learns something of her will have gained both knowledge of himself and of the forces which activate other human beings. Only a certain number of people can do this, and even so, something of her "remains shrouded in mystery in the dark realm of the collective unconscious. A man, by accepting and learning to know his anima, may develop his intuition or his feeling, but he cannot possess himself of those qualities which are projected onto goddesses. They may be present but they cannot be called up just