Jose Parappully SDB, PhD
sumedhacentre@gmail.com
Podcast Link:
https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-53-Psyche--Soul--113-e13pnch
Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand with another edition of Psyche & Soul.
In this edition, I present another midlife challenge: integration of the masculine and the feminine, or the anima and the animus.
“You were not
like this. What happened to you?” Anita’s husband asked her with some annoyance
in his voice. Anita had been a very self-sacrificing wife and mother, a
compliant and pleasing type of person, always saying “yes” to whatever her
husband and others asked of her. Now she had learned to say “no” and take care
of her own needs. While Anita felt good about the changes in her, others were less
pleased.
Rahul, a midlevel manager at a firm, had been a difficult person to deal
with. He was very demanding on others, used to get easily angry and irritable.
He always wanted things to be the way he thought they should be, and gave
little consideration to other people’s needs and situations.. Now those around
him noticed that he was changing. He was more calm and more considerate and
understanding. He was now less driven by the need to achieve and they found it
easier to relate to him.
What Anita and Rahul
were experiencing and others noticing in them were the kind of changes midlife
can bring about in our personalities.
These changes are
part of the journey toward wholeness that Carl Jung described with the term “individuation.” For us to become more
whole, for individuation to occur, it is necessary to bring about greater
balance between our masculine and feminine qualities.
All of us, men and
women, have both masculine and feminine qualities. In the first half of life
men develop their masculine characteristics. Their feminine characteristics
remain underdeveloped within them and are personified as the anima. In the first half of life women
give priority to development of their feminine characteristics. Their underdeveloped
internal masculine characteristics become personified as their animus. The animus is also known as the “internal masculine” and the anima the “internal feminine.”
The animus represents the human potential for
active modification; assertiveness and abstract (impersonal and objective)
rationality. The anima represents the human potential for receptive
accommodation, contextual (empathic) thinking, and focus on feelings and
relationships.
The terms masculine and feminine derive their meanings from a social
process of gender splitting by
which culture distributes aspects of human personality differently between the
sexes. Within a particular culture, an individual tends to develop qualities
attributed to his or her own sex by that culture and to suppress qualities attributed
to the other sex. Generally in most
cultures, men are encouraged and expected to focus on getting things done (accomplishment). Women, on the contrary,
are to focus on relationships and nurturing others (affiliation).
However, it is to be noted that it is not just cultural expectations that shape the animus and the anima. Biology also plays a significant role.
Masculinity and femininity in men and women
are significantly influenced by hormones. Oestrogen, progesterone and oxytocin
(hormones responsible for nurturing, bonding, care giving) predominate in women
in the first half of life. Testosterone (the hormone responsible for
aggression/assertiveness, sex drive) is dominant in men during the early years.
In midlife there is a noticeable decline in these hormones in both men women,
leading to a lessening of their impact and increasing the influence of the
opposite hormones and helping to bring about greater balance.
These biological dynamics are able to lessen the impact of cultural expectations and allow men and women develop greater androgyny – an energizing blend of the masculine and the feminine. At midlife both men and women naturally begin to manifest their contra-sexual qualities.
As a result men at midlife tend to appropriate the qualities of nurturance and tenderness, traditionally associated with women. Likewise, midlife and post-midlife women adopt the assertive and competitive qualities which the men at this stage are beginning to relinquish. This was the experience of Rahul and Anita.
Greater balance of the masculine and feminine can be further facilitated by a conscious effort as well.
Men’s Midlife Challenge: Moving from Accomplishment to
Affiliation
The challenge for men at midlife is changing their attitude toward work and
emotions. They are invited to move from ambition and aggressiveness on the work
front to warmth and caring in relationships.
As psychologist Daniel Levinson observes in his study of men titled Seasons in a Man’s Life, the masculine pattern is characterised by a concern with doing. Men are expected to “perform, accomplish, produce.” It is work (performance) that gives meaning to their lives. The desire to move ahead in their careers makes them work harder than needed.
Men pay a price
to this dedication to work: starving emotional needs and neglecting relationships.
Psychologist Roger Gould describes some of the more
hazardous price men pay for this focus on achievement: depression after a big
failure; stroke, bleeding ulcers, or sudden crushing pains in the chest; heavy
drinking and/or heavy womanising; disappointment with what they have achieved;
deep sense of personal failure and worthlessness leading to bitterness.
These negatives sometimes lead to some positive
transformation as well: They “lead men to open themselves to deeper recesses of
their being, search their souls for unexpressed areas which they had been
afraid to touch before” (Transformations
in Adult Life, pp. 232).
It is in giving more
importance to emotions and relationships that men cultivate the feminine. In
midlife, men are invited to reclaim the qualities they formerly denied in
themselves and projected onto women, such as tenderness, sensitivity and
vulnerability.
Another way to
develop the feminine is cultivating aesthetic interests. Commitment to art, music, drama and
exploration of nature will release men’s blocked feminine energies.
Women’s Midlife Challenge: Caring for and Developing One’s Own
Self
Women’s challenge at midlife is changing their attitude towards caring
and self-interest They are invited to
move from undue focus on other-care to increased self-care; to meet their own
needs than others’ needs; to be
assertive on behalf of their own interests than being obliging and
compliant toward others.
Most of the
first half of their life, women have neglected their own needs and dreams in
order to care for and help others, especially the men in their lives, by being
loving, giving and self-sacrificing. They gave priority to relationships, to nurturing
others, at the cost of self-nurturing and self-development. Many women, for
example, have given up their own dreams and careers to serve the needs of
others.
At midlife women
feel an inner urge to act on their own behalf and seek their own growth and the
realisation of their own dreams, rather than stick to the stereotypical
wife-mother role. To do this, and gain control over their own destiny women
have to confront whatever inner fears or external controls have interfered with
their achieving a full life for themselves. Once they take back their power and
stop being subservient, they are able expand their personalities and grow in
self-confidence.
In her
bestselling book on the crises of adult life Passages, Gail Sheehy described this challenge as follows:
It is
not through more caregiving that a woman looks for replenishment of purpose in
the second half of her life. It is through cultivating talents, left half
finished, permitting ambitions once piggy-backed, becoming aggressive in the
service of her own convictions rather than a passive-aggressive party to
someone else’s. (p. 426)
For many professional,
as well as religious women, the animus/anima integration challenge is very similar
to that of men: i.e., developing their feminine personality. Many religious
women were thrust into positions of responsibility and of power early in life. Professional
women had to compete hard with men to attain positions of power and influence. In
order to be effective and remain competitive in a male-oriented power structure
both religious and professional women had to suppress their anima qualities
–warmth, compassion, tenderness, vulnerability--and strive to become “more manly than men.” Their midlife and post-midlife challenge then
becomes reclaiming these suppressed and underdeveloped feminine qualities.
Reflection Exercise
·
Are you noticing changes in your
personality? If yes, what kind?
·
Are other people commenting on
changes they notice in you? If they do, what are they saying?
·
What is your challenge in terms of
greater integration of your masculine/animus and feminine/anima qualities?
·
What is it you need to do to
respond to this challenge?
Prayer
In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus speaks of the need for integration as follows: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same…then you will enter the Kingdom.”
Thus, in the Gnostic Christian tradition,
this journey toward wholeness through the redemption of the shadow and the
integration of the animus and the anima are necessary to enter the Kingdom of
God and as such can be considered necessary spiritual exercises.
We could
stay a while with whatever is evoked in us through the ideas expressed in this podcast
and the quote from the Gospel of Thomas and spend some time talking and
listening to God.
Have a
pleasant weekend. Be safe. Be blessed.
Thank you
for listening.
Pictures: Courtesy Google Images
Jose Parappully SDB,
PhD
sumedhacentre@gmail.com
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