The New Adam “Mansplains” the Feminine Within
Prelude: This imagined, one-way conversation is archetypal, therefore timeless, universal and eternal occurring in any sacred space where the New Adam, born again to his inner life, his anima dreams and those psychic whispers, finds himself. Now his task is to discover the feminine within himself, that anima pool direct from the unconscious, and to relay his rich insights to the beautiful women who are staring into his eyes from across a crowded room, a bar or that precarious dream space. But this is new territory for him so he will have to practice until the words coming from his mouth sound very much like his own invention.
The man has been working on his technique for years, buffing his butt, tinting his hair and memorizing snippets from Yeats: “Man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick;” that is, until he finds soul, finds her and finds the anima within. This last thought he found in “Men’s Health” magazine in an article about how men can add bits of poetry to their muscular entreaties, as a way to disarm the beautiful lady, making him all the more irresistible.
Along the way the man on a mission stumbled across the name Carl Jung and first thought he was related to his Pilates instructor who bore the same name. The man soon realized that this Jung was a psychologist born more than a hundred years ago in Switzerland. Those two facts gave Jung pedigree worthy of CliffsNotes attention.
The man, a New Adam in the making, read that Jung had parted ways with Freud because Freud thought all human behavior was tied to the sex act. For a moment the man realized he was a Freudian. The only thing the man remembered from Shakespeare class was the quote, “making the beast with two backs.” He now realized that Freud and Shakespeare were talking about the same thing but felt a little uncomfortable with Freud’s idea that parents, grandparents and the rest of the entourage were always present in the room when he was making love. He immediately shifted his allegiance to the guy named Jung. He was beginning to feel like a disciple.
The New Adam in training read that Jung was big on dreams, so he tried his best to conjure up a few. He had little success, mainly dreaming of dogs that were becoming wolves trying to find with their teeth his second and third chins. On a more pleasant note, after a few weeks he dreamed of a conversation with a couple who seemed to speak endlessly about owls in the attic. He spoke about brewing coffee and they replied “owls in the attic.” Only after a series of winks, nods and blushes did he understand that the couple was really talking about having sex. That’s it, he thought on waking; just like in literature class, you have to look for the hidden meaning. The man was suddenly all in for Jung, wink, wink.
The man, fully committed to his task, backed off a little when he realized Jung’s writings were almost impenetrable, like reading Beowulf in Old English. He quickly recovered when he realized Wikipedia published all he needed to know about Jungian psychology. The man loved the idea of the collective unconscious because he had heard so many politicians talk about “draining the swamp.” The swamp in question was filled with corrupt politicians, broken chairs, used condoms and car batteries. Jung’s collective unconscious seemed to be full of old stuff too, such as the Wise Old Man, the Old Crone, the Nosey Neighbor, and the New Adam who was aging before his eyes. Jung called these archetypes and our wanderer was beginning to feel like one. The man felt blessed that his search was taking him back and down into an ancient, perhaps dangerous, territory. He thought: this Jung guy really knows how to lay out a road map.
The New Adam in the making was looking for hints he could write on the back of his hand to help attract women in some dim lit bar in NYC’s Upper East Side. He readily embraces Jung’s idea of the “anima” because the man felt he was animated and had already been invited to that party. He began to understand that the anima was one of those archetype thingies that lived in the collective unconscious and often popped up in dreams like the one about owls in the attic. Wikipedia told him that the anima represents the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses. Wow, he thought, have I been sitting on this gold mine all along without appreciating the treasure?
He knew that the men in his generation were now coloring their hair, using face creams and even wearing girdles to the office to tuck in the belly a belt could not hold. He had seen the ads about men showing their feminine sides but had never known that down there somewhere in the collective unconscious, with all the Greek gods Homer had stuffed into the “Iliad,” were archetypes of the feminine that could serve him well in the competitive social marketplace where his height, dress and skin condition left him at a decided disadvantage.
The man read that Jung thought anima development had four distinct levels and named them Eve, Helen, Mary and Sophia. He also read that these stages of development are really about men opening up spiritually and emotionally and creating a new kind of consciousness that might include creativity, imagination and increased sensitivity. The hopeful New Adam felt that whatever he was getting into might be even deeper than the collective unconscious. Already he seemed to be of at least two minds.
But he was pleased that he had met Jung’s women before in literature class, in church and in his fantasies. He could readily imagine Eve leaving the Garden of Eden, oak leaf covering her vital parts and a touch of shame on her face. At this point, Jung tells him that this represents the emergence of man’s object of desire. He reflected: been there, done that.
Helen of Greek mythology represents worldly success, intelligence, and external talents often associated with men, but she lacks some internal qualities such as faith or imagination. The man feels he is very familiar with this woman.
The Mary of Christian tradition represents virtue in the perceiving man, who likely is influenced by dogma and patriarchy. This lady rested untouched on his mother’s mantle for forty years.
The man is glad to move on to Sophia, who at least seems modern and rarely raises eyebrows in the marketplace. He reads that Sophia, representing wisdom, can possess both positive and negative qualities and is therefore mature and fully developed.
The New Adam in waiting feels confident that he can recognize these anima archetypes within. He considers these archetypes a positive development, new tools for living and language that will unlock the mystery of the feminine. He is beginning to feel reborn, consistent with the archetypal forces.
Nonetheless, he has a weird sense that his dead mother is around, reminding him that these women he had nicely compartmentalized and placed in some archetypal closet could turn on him as quickly as she could say “Bob’s your uncle.” He hated that expression but never doubted his mother’s nose. She could smell a coming storm or perhaps even an anima attack well in advance of the event. Wikipedia did say that the anima could surrounded herself with all sorts of negative stuff, such an losers, the badly dressed, the tempestuous, and an army of inferior people. The warning was very clear: if you are not careful, that lady can take and possess you. The ground beneath him had shifted again. Did he really have to throw away his favorite Elizabethan shirt? Was that little episode in the very trendy Bar-None pub in Lower Manhattan really a hissy-fit, as one of his friends joked? Was the anima archetype coming back to bite him in the ass?
That night he dreams of a large parchment made of thick bonded paper containing words that seemed to be Latin or Italian, perhaps written by a monk’s hand as if they are lace at the end of a wedding dress. The book seems to have a religious feel, a holy sense, because the old language resides at the edges as if from a distant land while in the center of the page are short, English words like heart, soul and passion that seem to come alive as a man circles and underlines them with broad strokes. It is as if he is taking his art to the margins while declaring that it is she, his wife, the feminine who gave birth to this loving syntax. The man adds end notes and emphasis, careful to let psyche join the old and the new language in another birth, another blessed transformation.
