The Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, postulated that the unconscious of the male contains a female, archetypal (or typical, instinctive) figure called the “Anima”; the correlative male form in the unconscious of the female Jung called the “Animus.” I infer that the entity or whole self of each of us, regardless of our current , individual sexual orientation, contains its own counterbalancing male or female quality, whichever the case maybe. I suspect that an energy gestalt like the entity is much more aware than we can be of its “hidden” opposite-sex form or forms; for there may be many of them.

Ideas about the Anima and the Animus and other-sex qualities or personification within each of us actually represent memories of past lives. (Jung himself thought the questions of reincarnation, and of karma [or, roughly, destiny of fate], to be “obscure”–he couldn’t be sure of the existence of such phenomena.) The Anima and the Animus are highly charged psychically, and also appear in the dream state. They operate as compensations and reminders to prevent us from over-identifying oneself with our present physical body. The reality of the Anima and Animus is far deeper than Jung supposed. Symbolically speaking, the two together represent the whole self with its diverse abilities, desires, and characteristics. Personality as we know it cannot be understood unless the true meaning of the Anima and the Animus is taken into consideration.

The libido is regarded as the sexual urge or instinct-positive, loving, psychic energy that shows itself in changing ways as the individual matures.