Definition
Anima and animus are terms drawn from Carl Jung and used by Robert Greene to describe the suppressed contra-gendered traits inside each person — the unconscious feminine qualities in a man (the anima) and the unconscious masculine qualities in a woman (the animus).
Greene treats these not as literal opposites but as the parts of a fuller self that a person disowns in order to fit a narrow gender role. What is disowned does not disappear; it operates from the unconscious, often surfacing as moodiness, projection, or attraction.
Why it matters
How it works
Greene argues that early socialization rewards a narrow set of gendered behaviors and penalizes the rest. The penalized traits are split off but remain active, leaking out as irrational reactions or being projected onto others — a person becomes fascinated or repelled by exactly the quality they have buried in themselves. The remedy is integration: deliberately developing the disowned side until tenderness and assertion, intuition and analysis, become a fluid repertoire rather than a forbidden zone.