Infatuate (v.) : from Latin infatuare, “to make a fool of.”
Kai (they/them) didn’t think much of Avery (she/her) at their first writers group, to be sure. Avery was just another suburban dweller, a little too conservative in politic and fashion for Kai’s taste. But once the coffee orders had arrived and the group sat down to go over their manuscripts, Kai found themselves being charmed by Avery’s wealth of experience, and her gentle feedback was both supportive and insightful. She had a way of keeping the group moving that Kai admired.
When Avery reached over to Kai’s paper to point out a typo, Kai’s body surprised them: goosebumps.
Later that evening, as Kai and their partners were choosing a Netflix show to watch together, Kai found themselves drawn to a cop procedural … because the main character reminded them of Avery. Kai’s partners stared at them in confusion; one pointed to the police abolition poster hanging on the wall of their apartment, directly above the TV.
ID: The image is of a brightly colored mural on a building covered in graffiti with messages such as "ABOLISH THE POLICE," "JUSTICE. BLM," "LOVE." There are neon rainbow colors at the top and bottom of the mural. Credit: Renoir Faither on Flickr. *(See note at bottom on images.)
ID: The image is a pencil sketch of the character Dr. Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds with his hand on his chin. The delicacy of his facial features is emphasized. Credit: whiteshax on Deviant Art.
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As Kai wrestled with these unexpected feelings over the next few weeks, they found themselves going through a wide range of emotions that may be familiar to many of us. Fascination, confusion, and obsession. They wished they didn’t have these feelings, yet they didn’t want them to end. It felt like a chemical reaction has been started within them, and they had very little conscious control of the process.
What Is Happening?
Infatuation and other intense "falling in love" feelings: as several of my clients have noticed, they feel both wonderful and terrifying. They can be some of the biggest and most transformative experiences of our lives. And in the eyes of many, they are some of the most extreme ways for us to experience the soul’s growth and transformation.
This is an experience of what Dr. James Perrin calls the animum, named after C.G. Jung’s more binary “anima/animus” figures. (Note: The links will give you a quick sense of how many Jungians relate to this history and these terms; they don’t necessarily reflect my own feelings or experiences.)
Some other terms for the gender-expansive animating figure within each of us might be the transima or transimus. (Those were terms I developed after trans men and trans women appeared in my dreams.)
I'm writing this blog post at the request of my clients, many of them queer, to help flesh out our understanding of the animum and other animating figures from a queer lens and with respect for the transformational intensity of the experience.
The animum represents parts of ourselves that may be tucked away in our subconscious minds, emerging into consciousness as we evolve, grow, and relate to our world. Let’s explore what we mean by that.
ID: The image is a olive-toned diagram depicting concepts related to the Jungian concept of the psyche. The concepts include the parts of us that face out to the physical world, society, such as consciousness, the ego, and the persona. Further down, as if under water, it includes parts of us that live within the inner psychic world, such as the shadow, personal unconscious, cultural unconscious, collective unconscious, anima, animus, and archetypes. At the lower center is a core circular shape labeled the Self, Jung’s concept of the wholeness and divinity that lives in each person, never to be fully realized but always guiding growth. Credit unknown, posted by structural learning. “Vintage” filter applied by me for color.
Since more people are familiar with Jung’s concept of the shadow, we can start with a quick comparison of the shadow to the animum. The shadow is the part of ourselves that hold traits rejected or unknown by ourselves and others. When we explore and integrate our shadow (known as “doing shadow work”), we put aside our judgments of those parts. We work to accept those traits and characteristics that have been buried away from the sight of others and ourselves. These traits may survive in us like neglected children, unfed and shut away in dark rooms, screaming for attention whenever we open the door a crack, acting out so others can hear them (as much as we try to pretend they don’t exist).
ID: The image shows shadows of 4 differently sized people cast on a brick surface. It is a black and white photo taken outdoors, likely on a street. The silhouettes of the individuals can be seen in the image as they make striking poses with arms and legs raised. Credit: rawpixel.
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Perhaps in shame we have hidden away our complicated feelings about our caregivers, or our tears, our temper, our silly side, our need to be comforted. We have rejected these parts of ourselves often because they had been rejected by those important to us, such as our caregivers. We notice how much it bothers us when we see those traits in others: that’s our hint that our own shadow is present and we are projecting.
Shadow work can be difficult to do because we have to face our history of hurt, rejection, and shame.
The Thrill of the Animum
Animum work, on the other hand, can have a different problem.
It can feel great.
An experience with the animum can induce us to blow up our life, our principles, and our self-worth, all for a person we desire … only to find out they are, somehow, just a person, often problematic, not always as tender toward us as we need, and sometimes self-absorbed.
Jungian thought says that this disappointment comes from this: when we feel that fascination, that infatuation, we are actually projecting the animum who lives within us onto the other person.
Imagine that about 25% of our infatuation is actually about the other person. Meaning that 75% is a projection of the animum figure within us.
ID: This is a portrait of a Black person posing in red lighting with projections of kanji characters covering their face and their hand, which is raised to cover half their face. Credit: Photo by Sherman Trotz
As with all unconscious figures that live within us, the animum is mysterious and shows itself only in glimpses: in our dreams, our fascinations, and our infatuations. Like the shadow, it holds something that is “other” for us, something numinous, but instead of evoking feelings of rejection like the shadow does, the animum evokes feelings of attraction, desire, longing, and power.
We work very differently with the animum than we do with the shadow.
The Binary And Beyond
To talk about the animum, we’ll start with Jung’s theories about the anima and animus as binary archetypes, terms he coined in the 1920s.
Jung says the animus, the “masculine” spirit, a complementary unconscious figure in a woman, brings:
consciousness
knowing
the active mind
“projects and worries” (anxiety, racing thoughts)
discernment, separation
spirit
And he says the anima, the “feminine” spirit, generated by the unconscious in a man, compensates for his “rational” nature with:
the well from which consciousness arises
“unknown-ness”
the imaginal: dreams, fantasies
“craziness” (emotionality, mental illness)
cultivation, nurturing, inclusiveness
soul
Later Jungians amplified on this binary even more, and some of the writings are quite repressive. They’ll say things like, When a woman falls into her animus unconsciously, she becomes quarrelsome, loses her natural feminine warmth, and becomes unattractive. Or, When a man is acting out of his anima in her lower expressions, he becomes overly emotional, needy, and moody.
Yikes. You can see more examples of this kind of categorizing in the anima/animus link, if you scroll down to the “Displaced” titles.
This feels like a binary supremacy that Jung and Jungians have been replicating, a strict enforcement of roles that is very different from the exploration of the bigger Self that Jung’s theories were meant to encourage. As Jody Bower writes, “One has to wonder if the idea of the animus came about not just because Jung thought that if men had an anima, women had to have a similar psychic construct, but also because he needed to explain how annoying he found some women to be—particularly women who intruded on the formerly masculine province of professional life.” [Emphasis mine.]
If you ask my stance, and the stance of many other Jungians, queer and otherwise? Men are allowed to be moody and emotional just because emotions are real (and men are socialized not to express them). Woman are allowed to be precise, intellectual, and to quarrel to make a point (and it is the oppressive patriarchy that tells them to be submissive and pleasant).
And people are allowed to be neither man nor woman.
Fortunately, Jung’s ideas are being evolved by folks like Dr. Perrin. (Note: all interpretations and any errors in representing Perrin’s theories are my own.** See the note at the bottom of the article.)
Three Parts of the Animum Generator
Perrin’s theory** of the animum has the capacity to be more queer- and trans-friendly, and it encourages us to think historically and cross-culturally. Perrin proposes that the animum is generated from three modes of being as they interact in the psyche:
The body: This is about physical characteristics. The first mode of being in our animum generator includes but is not limited to our chromosomal makeup and our primary and secondary sex characteristics, in whatever form is true for you. This includes trans folks, intersex folks, eunuchs, hirja, and more, and does not exist on a binary. Our bodies and our relationship to them change over time, of course, with aging, hormonal changes, surgery, disability changes, body-size changes, activity, and more.
Our gender: Perrin says this second factor is about expression and social interaction. Whether cis, trans, agender, non-binary, genderfluid, and/or genderqueer, this is our experience of gender (or non-gender) within ourselves and with others. Our gender may come out in the social roles we inhabit, emotional patterns, and what demeanors, behaviors, and presentations feel expressive of who we are. Gender-affirming health care, “Own Your Gender” support groups, haircuts, and queer/trans clothing swaps are some of the many tools we can use to discover the fitting expression and roles for each of us.
Our sexuality: The third variable is about our identity and how desire shows up in our life. This may be how our sexual energy expresses itself, who we’re attracted to, and/or the figures who come up in our fantasies and dreams. It can include sexual orientation and more. For folks on the asexual and aromantic spectrums, this may look like the deep friendships and interests that light us up, and the way we express our excitement.
Perrin frames this triad of sex, gender, and sexuality as neither one joined archetype, nor as three completely distinct archetypes, but a three-in-one. They write, “It is this trinity that I call the Animum. Its unresolvable instability has birthed countless sexes, countless genders, and countless sexualities across history and across cultures, and will continue to do so.”
When I first read Perrin’s theory, I envisioned a kind of inner generator or dynamo with three fluctuating magnetic fields - the biological body, the social gender expression, and the desire of sexuality. These three functions, overlap, grow, and change. The energy that moves through a person’s life journey is the energy that turns the crank and rotates these fields, bringing them into different positions in relation to each other. They interact and power up to spark the animum energy: electric, archetypal, and sometimes high-wattage. The animum in turn fuels the shifting and fluid nature of sex, gender, and identity.
ID: The image is a diagram of my imagined “animum generator” that includes the modes of being on three sides: body, gender, and sexuality. At the bottom is an image of a crank turning, generating in the center the emergent and electric archetype, the animum. The diagram is colored in rainbow colors with electric rays of lightning coming out of the center. Credit: Ames Carpenter, made with Canva.
In a different image, though, Perrin writes,
“The animum is that never-directly-articulable archetype which creates, negates, constructs, deconstructs, and destabilizes sex, gender, and sexuality; it keeps them locked in unresolvable definitional and causative tensions with each other. It is a vast and shifting psychic territory in which no final, stable foundation can last, but which must constantly be explored and navigated.” [Emphasis mine.]
Both images honor and evoke the idea of queerness being something that both transcends and transgresses, and something that’s possible for many people. The animum is different for everyone, because it generates from and drives these three ever-fluctuating modes of being. The animum will create and inhabit these tensions within us, tensions that drive the friction and growth of our lives around desire, identity, and physical form.
Reality Melting
Within Perrin’s framework, then, the animum can bring up, rather than binary-defined traits like Jung laid out, a figure that emerges to draw you into a charged space of difference, a space that challenges you to explore beyond who you believe yourself to be. For queer folks especially, the longings can bring so many questions, doubts, frustrations, and even a dark night of the soul.
For all the identities we've named on the queer spectrum, it's still true that the language we use to talk about ourselves, especially in the vise of the white patriarchal dominant culture, can fall short when describing our inner experience. Sure, Kai can say they are trans non-binary, but what does that actually say about the feelings of falling apart to come back together to fall apart again, and the forbidden joy in that, even as its painful? What does it say about the dreams of tornadoes, of vast briny oceans, of a reality that melts like film in a too-hot projector? What does a three-word term, trans non-binary, denote about the moments that Kai finds themselves, mouth open at the café, in reverie, wondering where the fuck they fit in this world full of cookie-cutter images and ads everywhere they look, each one telling them to be something they're not?
The animum can bring images and felt sensations to follow that defy language.
If you have a very active mind but your feeling life has been oppressed and restricted, the animum may bring up sentimentality, emotionality, and a feeling of renewal and cleansing. Perhaps you daydream about joining someone in a shower or a bath, or about feeling the release of tears together.
If your daily tasks don’t allow much space for reflection or considered thought, your animum experience may bring in fresh ideas, a sense of freedom and excitement, that you feel with your body and respond to with arousal. Perhaps your fantasies are about encounters in the library with the smell of books, or a meditation space that is airy and quiet.
Sometimes the animum draws us, not to an desire for difference or an activation, but an experience that is double-sided, deeper, or completely unknown. Our animum might lead us to our first time in a kink dungeon, or attending a pagan ritual, where we find a level of kinship and community care we had not known before. It may lead us to changing majors in college or changing careers in ways that disappoint our parents, friends, and family. It may lead us to night walks, food obsessions, experimenting with our pain tolerance, living in silence, punk rock, and much much more.
Kai remembers a time of sexual exploration in high school, when their feminist mother disapproved of them because she interpreted their behavior as "fawning for the male gaze." (Kai did not dare to tell their mother that not all of their partners were male, and some who identified as male then did not stay that way.) Looking back, Kai realizes there was no language to explain: they were acting in ways that were male ("sowing wild oats" as the cliché goes), female, both, and neither. Their mother was projecting the only frame she knew, a projection that Kai had to choose to carry or shed. There was no language off the binary.
To expand our imagination further, Perrin writes,
“It is easy to see a plurality of genders, or socialities, among us. For some quick examples, I point to athletes, nerds, nuns, rural or urban folks, priests, executives … as representing differences of gender.”
What do we do with the Animum?
Your animum experience often makes you feel attractive, alive, curious, and/or even desperate. They awaken a part of you that may not be expressed in your everyday grind, even if that awakening is painful. Our feelings for our animum projections can be high wattage, extreme, and obsessive - they open a door for us that leads us out of the mundane and into something more. Sometimes that “something more” is mysterious, exquisite, and even divine.
We have an opportunity to meet our more expansive Self in our animum experience, to move toward being our more whole selves. If we can create a soft reflective space for the feelings, we are given entry to a soul journey.
Jungians call this an invitation to active imagination work.
I often encourage clients to write a letter to their animum. That could be writing a letter to their strong feelings, asking dear infatuation, where do you come from? and dear fire in my gut, what do you want me to know? When we ask a question into the unknown, the unknown often responds: we get to record whatever comes up.
Or we can anthropomorphize this animum mystery even more, and write to our animum figure directly. Here it’s important that you separate and name your animum figure something different than the person you’re feeling infatuated with.
In Kai’s case, for example, they wouldn’t write Dear Avery, but would make up a name that fits their own energy. Let’s say Kai did some research (a fun part of the process for a writer), and came up with the name Aspen instead. The lore says that Avery means “ruler of the elves,” and Aspen refers to tree that was a symbol of protection and was often called the “tree of heroes” by the Greeks, since its leaves were used to make crowns. The name Aspen evokes the quiet strength and power that Kai feels when they contemplate Avery, and that gives Kai a way forward.
Dear Aspen, Kai wrote in their first experiment with active imagination, this is a love letter, not to the person I met at writers group, but to the spark in me that went leaping out to that person. That spark could light up cities. It could coax flowers to grow in the cracks between sidewalks, just to make the passers-by smile. Where should we run away together?
Dear Kai, wrote Aspen, through Kai’s hand and in Kai’s journal, I want to shout, you finally noticed me! I had gotten used to hiding in the shadows, lighting up only briefly when you read Audre Lorde’s poems or inhaled the smell of star anise. When I write to you, I can feel the flow of energy, pushing through on the page, steady, forward, solid. I don’t know who I am, but I know I want to be here with you, within you, as you push your body through the world, going to meetings and facing what comes next with your typical fear and anxiety.
ID: The image is a photo of a piece of off white paper with the word "LOVE" stamped in black. A red cut-out of a heart is pasted under the word. The paper lies on a marbled table surface. Credit: Ylanite Koppens on StockSnap
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Kai found themselves in their free moments sketching shapes that resembled the wave in Aspen’s hair, as they imagined it, then filling the shapes with colors and lines that suggested movement. They would look out the window at work and imagine being on a train: the rhythmic clickety-clack of the wheels, the implacable movement forward, the back alleyways and neighborhoods passing by the window.
Recognizing that their fascination with Avery seemed to be tied to this desire for movement and change, Kai spent time reflecting on that. They had felt very content with their life, their home, their partners, and their work, but a change was making itself felt. Though Kai could still feel the longing for this person who was probably not a good fit for them, they recognized their desire to cross into new territories and upset their old understandings of the world.
Kai’s journey had just begun.
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Curious to learn more about the animum? Want to talk about it? Book a free discovery session with me.
*Note: All images shared are done so with a Creative Commons license, with the exception of the image from structural learning, which is a widely used image I don't know the credit for.
**Dr. Perrin and I are in a Queer Jungians online group together, and I was allowed to read their presentation and slides about the animum as part of that group. I do not have permission to share the whole document.