Anima projection - Hetero Male example

[nando77]

I’m at a party with lots of women, very nice looking women with whom I would be grateful and delighted if even one showed me the slightest interest. But then SHE walks into the room, and I am struck like a bell. I don’t know her, I’ve never seen her before, but I am struck! She is so luminous that all others pale in comparison. What has happened? She has received an Anima Projection from me. I have projected my Anima upon her. Why her? Good question! Well, maybe it’s a dimple in a specific location or some other physical attribute, a particular hair color or a peculiar pheromone, or a combination of several subtle attributes. Now, don’t think for a moment that I think of her as mother. That’s not how projections work. The Anima is not my mother. It is a very specific notion of the female constructed through my relationship with my mother. But I see HER as that amazing thing out there -- and then I marry her in a mad rush! I don’t really know what I am doing. What I am really doing is joining up with a projection of my own psyche. It’s all a lovely dream, but it doesn’t take long for a fact to break through. I wake up a day, a month, a year later, and suddenly I discover a stranger in my bed. Maybe, it’s the breath, the messy hair, or the face without make-up, but whatever it is, I come face to face with another person and not my Anima Projection!

Reality dawns and I am faced with a choice. You thought you were marrying this and you got that! Now what? Disillusionment! You can say: “Dear, I’m sorry but I made a mistake! I’m taking my Anima back for (re)projection.” Or you can stay and work at transforming Passion into Compassion. This is love. Love is a relationship between two separate people, person to person. If you are only in a relationship with your Anima Projection, then you are just fooling yourself.

-John Dobson