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Usually classified as the most obvious archetype — although it belongs largely to the conscious — is the persona. This was the Roman actor's word for the mask he wore to indicate his assumed character, and Jung uses it in much the same sense: the face which each individual presents to his surroundings. It involves a certain amount of necessary and healthy play acting, easing the relations between a man's inner world and the world around him. The persona is injurious only when it dominates the true personality beneath.
One danger then is that the persona will blind a man to the existence of his own shadow. This shadow, part of the personal unconscious, is the Mr. Hyde in every Dr. Jekyll, the inferior or evil element that wants to do what the conscious or the conscience forbids. It is necessary to control the shadow, but there is danger: the more firmly it is stamped upon, the greater the force with which it will eventually erupt.
Anima, Earth-Mother & Self. Deeper in the collective unconscious, Jung sees the anima, an embodiment of the "female principle" in man. By this Jung means all the traits in man conventionally considered female, e.g., gentleness and ap preciation of the finer things, but also pettiness and rage. More importantly, the anima also enables man to "apprehend the nature of women" — it is the unconscious image of what a woman ought to be. This may range from Helen of Troy to Rider Haggard's She to the 20-year-old red-haired actress with whom an elderly university professor runs off. The anima, explains a Jung disciple, "has at tributes that appear and reappear through the ages . . . She always looks young, though there is often a suggestion of years of experience . . . She is wise, but not formidably so; it is rather that 'something strangely meaningful — something like secret knowledge . . . clings to her.' " When this image is projected on a flesh-and-blood woman, a man falls in love, but trouble arises when she fails to fit his unconscious prefab design.
Corresponding to the anima in the female is the animus, the embodiment of all male characteristics in a woman, and her collective, inherited image of man.
Next most important among the archetypes are the old wise man and the earth-mother. The old wise man may appear in dreams or fantasies as a king or hero, medicine man, magician or savior (to Dr. Jung's patients, he often appears as Dr. Jung). A little of this, Jung holds, is good: every man has in him the seeds of greatness; and it is well for him to be aware of it. But a man abnormally receptive to the idea may turn into the leader of a wild-eyed revivalist sect, with messianic delusions, or a Hitler, or simply a madhouse Napoleon.
The corresponding feminine archetype is the earth-mother—the very source of life. But if a woman becomes "inflated" with the idea, and sees herself endowed with an unmatched capacity for understanding the problems of others, she may become a super-do-gooder, or tighten her circle of mothering influence until it strangles the