Art by Masaaki Sasamoto.

Note: This article follows the previous one (The Psyche Lost in Matter).

In the previous article, a distinction was made between the two forms that the incestual drive can take: the outer form, which is pathological and destructive, and the inner form, which is a major goal of self-realization.

These two incestual unions are really two distinct unions of opposites, two distinct coniunctios, that have been differentiated by Edward Edinger in his Anatomy of the Psyche.

“In attempting to understand the rich and complex symbolism of the coniunctio it is advisable to distinguish two phases: a lesser coniunctio and a greater. The lesser coniunctio is a union or fusion of substances that are not yet thoroughly separated or discriminated. It is always followed by death or mortificatio. The greater coniunctio, on the other hand, is the goal of the opus, the supreme accomplishment. In actual reality these two aspects are combined with each other. The experience of the coniunctio is almost always a mixture of the lesser and the greater aspects. However, for descriptive purposes it is helpful to distinguish the two.” (Edward Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche, Coniunctio)

The lesser coniunctio, also known as the death coniuctio, is outer incest and it is best symbolized by the Oedipus complex for men (or the Electra complex for women). If the opposites have not been sufficiently separated, their imperfect union brings about a great destruction—that is until the libido is transformed or withdrawn, which usually comes at the price of psychological death.

“You remember in talking about the death coniunctio a few weeks ago I brought up the example of Goethe’s romantic novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. The Vision of Arisleus is another death coniunctio. In other words, it’s unconscious incest. Goethe’s Werther was an example of the same thing: Werther’s yearning for his beloved Lotti was an unconscious incestuous longing for containment in the mother. The living out of unconscious incest tendencies is always followed by a catastrophe. But when incest occurs consciously it refers to the union of the ego with its origin, psychologically and subjectively; when that happens consciously—when one knows what one’s doing—then out of that union is born the Philosophers’ Stone.” (Edward Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures, p.85)

As explained in the previous article, falling in love with a woman is not the ego trying to become more intimate with the woman as such, rather it’s the ego attempting to reestablish a relationship with the projected anima. This is a premature attempt of the ego to reunite with the unconscious which will lead inevitably to disastrous consequences, even if it is not consumed as exemplified by the suicide of Goethe’s Werther.

In distinction to the lesser coniunctio, the greater coniunctio is inner or royal incest. The opposites have finally been sufficiently separated so that they can be reunited without losing their autonomy towards each other.

Initially reserved to the gods (for instance, the siblings Zeus and Hera had three children together), this rite has historically been transferred to royal dynasties. Indeed, royal inbreeding has taken place since the times of the ancient Pharaohs despite the cross-cultural taboo on incest. Jung gives the following explanation for this phenomenon.

“The conscious personality with its one-track (exogamous) tendency comes up against an invisible (endogamous) opponent, and because this is unconscious it is felt to be a stranger and therefore manifests itself in projected form. At first it makes its appearance in human figures who have the power to do what others may not do—kings and princes, for example. This is probably the reason for the royal incest prerogative, as in ancient Egypt. To the extent that the magical power of royalty was derived increasingly from the gods, the incest prerogative shifted to the latter and so gave rise to the incestuous hierosgamos. But when the numinous aura surrounding the person of the king is taken over by the gods, it has been transferred to a spiritual authority, which results in the projection of an autonomous psychic complex—in other words, psychic existence becomes reality. Thus Layard logically derives the anima from the numen of the goddess. In the shape of the goddess the anima is manifestly projected, but in her proper (psychological) shape she is introjected; she is, as Layard says, the “anima within.” She is the natural sponsa, man’s mother or sister or daughter or wife from the beginning, the companion whom the endogamous tendency vainly seeks to win in the form of mother and sister. She represents that longing which has always had to be sacrificed since the grey dawn of history. Layard therefore speaks very rightly of “internalization through sacrifice.”” (Carl Jung, The Psychology of the Transference, CW 16, par 438)

As the closest approximation of godlike powers on earth, the numinous aura of kings and queens constellated the archetype within. Seized by the now active autonomous complex, royal dynasties acted out the psychic drive towards royal incest. Similarly, we find in alchemy the same sacred but incestuous marriage illustrated by the marriage of Sol and Luna (Sun and Moon) or Rex and Regina (King and Queen).

In both cases, the psychic content came into reality through the mechanism of projection. This can only be prevented by avoiding identification with the archetype and/or retrieving projections, an almost impossible task given how deeply hidden and commanding these unconscious phenomena are.

The alchemical union of Rex and Regina, usually brother and sister or mother and son.

It bears repeating that the ego’s longing toward its origin is an almost invincible drive.

If the regressive needs towards the mother are projected on matter outside oneself, one falls prey to the lesser coniunctio and tragedy will inevitably ensue. And yet if the mother is searched within, there is almost no guarantee that one’s ego is strong enough to be able to work with the unconscious without falling prey to a fatal inflation that symbolically leads to dismemberment.

“Freud was the discoverer of the incest archetype. He called it the Oedipus complex and interpreted it personalistically and concretely. Jung took that motif and understood it both subjectively and transpersonally. From the subjective standpoint, incest refers to the ego’s having intimate connections with its own origin—its psychological mother—the unconscious: Incest is such a violently forbidden issue because in the psychological evolutionary process it took immense efforts for the human ego to separate itself from the unconscious—its mother—in order to stand as a more or less conscious entity, responsible and separate. The backward pull to regress to one’s origins, to lose that hard-won position, must have been very powerful in the past and therefore had to be countered by a very strict incest taboo. I’m speaking now of psychological incest which means one is forbidden to have dealings with the unconscious.” (Edward Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures, p. 38)

The Death of Pentheus, torn limb from limb by the crazed Maenads of the god Dionysus in The Bacchae.
Dismemberment is the fate of the immature ego that attempts to deal with the unconscious.

Caught in this difficult position where the incestual drive cannot be stopped and yet cannot be acted out, an alternative must be put in place to both fulfill the incestual drive while driving the immature ego away from matter. This is where religion comes into play.

“The natural course of life demands that the young person should sacrifice his childhood and his childish dependence on the physical parents, lest he remain caught body and soul in the bonds of unconscious incest. This regressive tendency has been consistently opposed from the most primitive times by the great psychotherapeutic systems which we know as the religions. They seek to create an autonomous consciousness by weaning mankind away from the sleep of childhood.” (Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, par 553)

The regressive tendencies of the psyche are so strong that intricate systems must be put in place to divert them. Without such a redirection of the libido, there can be no culture, no society, and ultimately no development of consciousness.

“Here religion is a great help because, by the bridge of the symbol, it leads his libido away from the infantile objects (parents) towards the symbolic representatives of the past, i.e., the gods, thus facilitating the transition from the infantile world to the adult world. In this way the libido is set free for social purposes.” (Carl Jung, Freud and Psychoanalysis, CW 4, par 350)

As discussed previously, the material world is too easily contaminated by psychological needs that seek immediate gratification. On the other hand, dealing with the unconscious requires levels of integrity and self-discipline that few people can manage on their own. Thus religions fill the gap between these two domains, providing a symbolic alternative that promotes the development of ego-consciousness.

One could make the accusation that I am treating religions carelessly by reducing them to a symbolic system, which is something I wish to clear up.

When Jung claims that religions are psychotherapeutic systems, it means that religions are primarily concerned with the illnesses and suffering that strike the human soul (see for instance Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, CW 18, par 370).

Chief among these ills is man’s relationship to the transcendental. Man cannot live well without a window on the transcendent and yet there is nothing benign to being exposed to matters that stretch so far beyond one’s personal existence. “Fear Not” remains the usual injunction when the deity is near.

Therefore religions have the task to regulate the connection between the sacred and the collective, to make it understandable or approachable. This laborious work comes mainly in two ways: rituals and dogma.

Through its rites and rituals, religions teach first and foremost the religious attitude, meaning the attitude required to manage the disorientation that comes with the proximity to the numen. This practical dimension is all about the proper way to come into (and out of!) a sacred space without unnecessary disturbances. If it is easy to replicate the disorientation created by proximity to the numinous (any big dream or psychedelic will do), the problem of returning to a normal life remains to be solved. Integrating the lesson of an irrational experience is much more difficult than people give credit to. In this regard, the ritualistic and ceremonial aspects of a religion are concerned with offering a safe container in which one can experience the mystery without being overwhelmed.

On the other hand, dogma is the “condensation or distillation of the sacred history, of the myth of the divine being and his deeds” (Carl Jung, Aion, CW 9ii, par 278) that was achieved at great costs by our civilization. We are being handed the “divine drama” (Carl Jung, Answer to Job, CW 11, par 560) as it stretched through the Ages and as it befell our ancestors. Just like them, we’ve landed in the middle of a story that far exceeds our capacity for rational understanding and yet that we must carry forward for the next generations.

In this respect, religious stories, not unlike myths and fairy tales, describe the patterns that are most relevant for the proper orientation of human existence. In psychological language, one would say that they are ongoing events of the collective unconscious (i.e., ongoing unconscious processes that are of a collective nature). By being retold, edited, and crafted throughout generations, myths and stories are being selected by a kind of Darwinian process where only the stories that stick will propagate. The end result of this selection process is what will constitute the dogma of a religion, the mythology of a society, or the folklore of a people.

Given this selection process, the dogmatic elements of a religion must be understood as the expression of the “operative principles of the […] collective unconscious” (Aion, par 271). They are the closest descriptions of inner experiences that one can get without having to go through them firsthand.

Despite the negative connotations that the word has attracted, dogma remains the overarching factor that directs the development of consciousness. Without dogma, the spirit is freed of its containment, a welcome temporary release and yet a freedom that is often too overwhelming to bear.

In conclusion, restoring psychic and spiritual health goes hand in hand with renewing the cooperation between the individual and a symbolic system that best suits its current psychological needs. For instance, the difference between going to confession and going to therapy comes down to the needs of a given individual at a given time, something that is decided by irrational factors far beyond anyone’s comprehension.

Finally, one might argue that any system is by definition a limitation over the reality of the phenomenon. And this is correct. The great riddle of life is always on offer everywhere, for anyone, at any time. But who can thrive in its grasp?

Note: I have not been able to find the origin of this quote.

With the advent of the second half of Pisces (see Carl Jung’s Aion), the collective drive towards spirituality has been displaced into an unrelenting search for truth in matter. The Church’s message of spiritual redemption has found itself in competition with science and political ideologies, both promising Heaven on Earth.

It would be wrong to say that the decline of interest in religions is proof that people have outgrown them. Rather it seems that the vitality of religions has been steadily declining because the God-image has shifted away from the Abrahamic religions (see my Grieving the Father). The collective consciousness is bound to evolve with the trajectory of the ecliptic, or so it seems.

In any case, the decline of religions must necessarily be accompanied by a return of the repressed. All that was kept in check by dogma is now coming back with a vengeance. Figures like Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, etc. all attempted to reclaim aspects of consciousness that were cast out with the devil in the Christian Worldview. Whether it is the biological imperative, the material, the will, or sexuality, these facets are seeking reintegration into a worldview that refused them or judged them too dangerous.

In such a conflicted situation, the old answers will not work anymore. In fact, they are the source of what created the repression in the first place and are at the risk of furthering this dangerous polarization.

With the genie now out of the bottle, the question remains: What should individuals turn to?

Some creative geniuses will move towards the arts and culture in order to revitalize a dying civilization. Some will turn to tradition to attempt to reenchant what worked so well in the past. Others will attempt some more-or-less novel form of community or spirituality.

But what will happen to the majority of the people? What system would be large enough to compete with the loss of religion while satisfying the psychological needs that cannot be suppressed any longer?

The answer is obviously the digital world and the internet.

The digital world is first and foremost a replacement for normal life. What the libido cannot achieve in its proximal surroundings is sought in the offers of the digital simulacrum. One can experience the Hero’s Journey through video games, explore all the arts and recorded history, engage with inspiring people in real-time, etc. Far from me to criticize it, I recognize that the digital world is endlessly compelling.

But it is also the case that one is always two clicks away from the darker corners of human existence. Everything that was incompatible with religious life has become unavoidable online: violence and sexuality prosper on the internet, digital interactions have far fewer filters than social relationships and can quickly turn abusive, etc. Ironically, it’s this great freedom that makes the digital playground a highly wounding and toxic environment.

By being less restrictive and punitive, the digital word is a container, a digital matrix, a web spun by something unfamiliarly close to the Great Mother. It functions as such anyway. It attracts the immature libido, the “crude sulphur” and its hellish desires, and promotes its expressions at negligible costs.

The totality of these expressions is a form of black market of psychic contents. What is offered online is not the experiences as such—it can never be that—but symbolic representations of the longing of the libido.

While not all diverted libido is negative (e.g., learning and seeking advice), a great deal of what is channeled by the internet is unrepressed, unintegrated libido. In theological terms, what we are dealing with is the concupiscentia, the frenzied and lustful desire towards sin.

Art by Masaaki Sasamoto.

As Freud observed, the return of the repressed is primarily concerned with aggression and sexuality. From a psychological standpoint, there is nothing wrong with the capacity for self-defense and procreation. The concern rests solely on dealing with the numinosity of aggression and the numinosity of sexuality.

The problem of the numinosity of aggression must be delegated in this article. It belongs to the phenomenology of the shadow, as nothing compels us to repeated violence like shadow projections and shadow transferences. Harnessing one’s capacity for violence without misusing it, being able to respond proportionally to provocations and danger, keeping one’s sword sheathed at all times, not succumbing to the power drive, etc. are all essential integrative skills that must be left to the wisdom of the reader.

The rest of this article will be focused on the numinosity of sexuality. It is worth repeating that this is not about normal sexuality, which is a sensual, tender, respectful, and consensual experience. Rather I am focusing on its frenzied and unbounded expression that is usually ascribed to the consumption of pornographic material.

Before moving on in this article, I need to share that I have struggled with an addiction to pornography for more than a decade. I have tried everything I can to figure out what is behind this uncontrollable and excessive compulsion of mine. In my attempt to diabolize this drive (what can possibly be good about masturbating to pornography anyway?), nothing has worked.

The most bewildering insight that I’ve had since I have started working on it is that, now that I am happily married and have a healthy sex life, this compulsion has not reduced in its intensity. At the risk of making this too personal, I must claim without evidence that good intimate sex does not get rid of the addiction to pornography, something that hardly makes any sense.

Since then, I have been struck by the fact that neither intimate sex, nor the consumption of pornography can satisfy this addiction. In both cases, the phenomenon of repetition-compulsion indicates that something else is at play.

To the best of my ability at self-observation, what is at play is an uncontrollable instinctual seeking. When I load up a pornographic website, I automatically dismiss 95-99% of the material, selecting only the few ones that could be of potential interest. With these few tabs open, I go through them one by one: I look at the woman, I look at the scene, I look at the act and something must click. If it doesn’t, I move on to the next tab until the seeking instinct finds itself satisfied by what’s on screen, as if a silent “That one will do” was being acknowledged. After the act, I usually feel a mix of relief, emptiness, and disgust at what’s on screen which I close immediately.

If this is anything close to your experience, a few things must be emphasized.

First, this is not about pornography as such but the temporary satisfaction of an unknown desire that can only be fulfilled around sexual imagery. This seeking instinct, for all intents and purposes, is autonomous. The ego is in its grip and it knows what it wants better than us.

Second, a kind of idealization is taking place. This longing cannot be fulfilled with just any material. It needs the right scene or the desire will still be frustrated.

Third, this repetition-compulsion does not work. One might go to great lengths to try to convince oneself of the opposite, but something is not working. At best, one can make the case that, like all addictions, this is a form of self-medication that is temporarily acceptable because it covers something much more difficult to face.

Fourth, because no one else is involved but the user and digitally reconstructed pixels on a screen, one must conclude that this longing originates from the psyche of the individual, something that can only be satisfied through the presence of sexual imagery.

As a conclusion, what the longing is seeking is not merely visual but symbolic, i.e., a desire composed of symbols. Distinct from the sexual instinct of procreation, this symbolic desire autonomous from the ego seeks resolution in the sexual domain because no other symbolic domain can adequately express its needs. This pairing of symbolic needs and sexuality is at the root of the numinosity of pornography, which appears to be the only container for this compulsive phenomenon.

In short, we are in the presence of an archetype.

If we define pornography as numinous sexuality, what psychic factor turns the 100-volt expression of sexuality into its frenzied 10,000-volt form? What is powering the idealization of pornographic material despite the shame and disgust that one feels after the act? What is giving pornography its numinous quality and compelling the ego to give in?

Behind this nearly invincible dark drive might just be our strongest desire, namely the incestual drive of wanting to reunite with one’s own feminine background, something forbidden since time immemorial.

Once again, I am not talking about outer incest but of the longing for intimate containment in the mother or, in more general terms, the union with one’s own being. If this desire is unable to be satisfied outside or recollected within, it will invariably end up being diverted and projected on various sexual acts.

In fact, sexuality is a more than appropriate domain for the symbolic expression for the union of opposites. Thus it is not a mistake to see all kinds of psychic projections around it, ranging from somewhat understandable to quite grotesque.

Robert Moore: One of the clearest things in recent psychoanalytic research is that you sexualize everything in terms of genital sexuality when you’re not very highly developed…

Caroline Stevens: …When you’re not as conscious as you hope to become.

Robert Moore, The One and the Two, Part 1, 1h27m19

In this regard, sexualization is a primitive form of establishing intimacy with a part or an aspect of self. In other words, when sexualization happens, it means that the relating function is engaged, which belongs to the phenomenological domain of the anima.

To be clear, this does not mean that every sexualizing attempt should be understood in this light, rather it means that the compulsive ones must be subjected to this level of scrutiny.

Let’s keep following this line of thought: if the sexualization is compulsive, it means that the libido is seeking a hook onto which it will be able to project an unconscious psychic factor. Once the hook has been found, the projection can hold, and the drive will turn frenzy. At this point, the ego will lose control of consciousness over the enormous influx of autonomous instinctual energy.

The implications are staggering: Does this mean that pornography is a domain contaminated by anima projection? Is it the case that pornography is mirroring to us the anima being trapped by primordial desires? Is the concupiscence that has taken over our own consciousness such that the anima is being constantly and aggressively fertilized?

If pornography is an addiction, we are medicating ourselves primarily with symbols and with orgasm second. If this wasn’t the case, one would easily be able to masturbate without symbols. My experience is that, if I don’t have access to pornographic material, I will imagine it. Thus, in the case of an addiction, the orgasm is second to the need for symbols.

Art by Steve Hanks.

When the coniunctio archetype is constellated, the ego will continually be faced with the regressive movement of libidio that is longing for the archetypal mother. That being said, the ego is not the only active complex in consciousness and thus not the only part of the psyche subject to the incestual drive.

In fact, it appears that in the case of addictions and other compulsive behaviors, the ego is at the mercy of other complexes that have their own agenda, ranging from doing their best to protect the psyche to influencing the libido for their own purpose.

This subtle distinction means that it might not just be the ego who is longing for containment in the mother but a personal or an impersonal complex¹ who is appropriating the ego’s longing for a different reason. Thus I am proposing that, in the same way our natural desire for food can be contaminated by self-serving gluttony or attempts at medicating emotional wounds, the root desire of the coniunctio can be contaminated by different drives, meaning contaminated by different complexes.

One can expect that any attempt at recollecting anima projections from fetishistic or pornographic material will lead to a confrontation between the ego and complexes that belong to the personal or the collective unconscious¹. Mature discernment will be required to understand and negotiate with what is hiding behind this mysterious compulsion.

¹ For more on this distinction, see Soul-complex, Spirit-complex, and Active Imagination.

In a psychological reading of the Age of Pisces, Jung warned that the psyche that was projected in Heaven is now descending into Matter, getting ever closer to the interiority of one’s own soul.

Managing the confusion between psyche and matter is no small task. If shadow projections weren’t difficult enough to deal with, psychic needs projected on the sexual domain are on another level of impenetrable confusion.

I am fully aware that the ideas expressed in this article are only in their embryonic forms. With this, I apologize for having trodden uncaringly on serious topics that require levels of nuance that are above what I am able to convey with words.

The bottom line is that I have felt an urge to share this intuitive insight: It’s time to work on recollecting psychic contents that have been projected on sexuality. Pornography is at least a third of internet traffic and, with the advent of AI and prompting, the creation of sexual symbols is going to skyrocket.

As an alternative, this article suggests an integrative and non-pathologizing approach toward this addiction that is plaguing younger and younger men.

To the people who are reading this and dealing with this issue, I know firsthand how demoralizing it is to be unable to put any stop to this addiction. I’ve tried methods relying on willpower and they all have failed. Thus I want to encourage you to consider that the reason why this cannot be stopped is because there is something of the highest value beneath it all, something so precious that it cannot be abandoned. It’s not that the habit itself is of great worth, but that it facilitates the process of becoming conscious and intimate with the psychic partner within.

Jung wrote that “The shadow can be realized only through a relation to a partner, and anima and animus only through a relation to a partner of the opposite sex, because only in such a relation do their projections become operative.” (Carl Jung, Aion, CW 9ii, par 42)

By being bombarded by visual material on the internet, this can give rise to various relationships to digital partners (real, fictional, or AI) formed by unconscious projections. Whether the projection lands on a YouTuber, a fictional character, an anime character, an AI-generated character, a pornstar, or on an incomprehensible fetish, etc. it doesn’t matter. What matters is that one recognizes that some psychological need is being taken care of, which at some point we will have to retrieve.

To conclude, I would like to revisit the well-known saying that “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves” (Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 246-247) and propose that “Everything that is sexualized about others can lead to an understanding of ourselves.”

Art by ffo.

Once again, this article has been written from the perspective of a male ego looking for containment in the mother. One might ask what is the equivalent experience of the female ego towards the fatherly animus? Edward Edinger illustrates this as follows,

“[…] Jung describes the alchemists’ relation to their art. He says, in paragraph 543 [of Mysterium Coniunctionis]:
The Queen of Sheba, Wisdom, the royal art, and the “daughter of the philosophers” are all so interfused that the underlying psychologem clearly emerges: the art is queen of the alchemist’s heart, she is at once his mother, his daughter, and his beloved, and in his art and its allegories the drama of his own soul, his individuation process, is played out.
It’s that degree of relation to the psyche, I think, that we should all be striving for, because after all, the alchemists are our forerunners.
One of the texts Jung talks about in paragraph 534 brings up imagery indicating that for the masculine ego, the feminine principle is very often experienced as a surrounding medium, corresponding to the image of the heavens that surround and contain the sun.
For the feminine ego, the related image would be the experience of the masculine principle as a fertilizing, penetrating spirit, symbolized for instance by a ray, a spear, an arrow, a phallus, or something that penetrates or opens up, or injects intoxicating, inseminating matter—as in the mythological story of Danaë inseminated by Zeus via a shower of gold.” (Edward Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures, p. 232)

Danaë and the shower of gold.

Unsurprisingly, we find explicit sexual language when talking about these fundamental matters. Compared to the anima, the animus is a phallic, penetrating, and fertilizing spirit that is more suited to the medium of words (such as erotic stories) rather than visual stimulation.

Four Renaissance paintings about Danaë and the Shower of Gold. Three by Tiziano Vecellio (1485-1576), one by Orazio Lomi Gentileschi (1563–1639).

In the previous article, I mentioned a technique for recollecting projections that can be adapted to projections of a sexual nature.

To do this, start by visualizing a room that is both isolated and yet can be observed safely through a window. Then, imagine the fetish or sexual symbol that has its grasp on you in that room. With this setting achieved, look at the sexual symbol from behind the window while maintaining a detached but curious attitude.

At this point, there should be one or more beings around you who are intensely interested by the symbol in the other room. These are the personal or impersonal complexes one needs to enquire about. Maintain a curious attitude that is friendly and not judgmental. Don’t try to get rid of them or manipulate them, rather try to understand their role and their purpose. If your questions are without ulterior motives, they will answer honestly. If you attempt to gain something out of the exchange, be prepared for unproductive and conflictual exchanges. The quality of your presence (i.e., How do you feel towards these parts?) will determine the quality of the exchange. 

At the time of writing this article, I have used this method a few times with various symbols. Despite multiple attempts, I have managed to recollect only one projection of a sexual nature. This might not sound like much but it led me to a breakthrough, which resulted in the urgency to write this double article by recommendation of my dreams.

Compared to the projections that I have not been able to retrieve, the one projection I have managed to work with was one that I had some initial dislike for. Thus it appears that it’s better to work with projections that one has some detachment to begin with rather than to work with the most compelling ones. This facilitates the interaction between the questioning ego and the parts of the psyche that are enthralled by the symbol.

Working to recollect sexual projection is not a trivial endeavor. I find them much more difficult to contain than shadow projections. Furthermore, engaging with these complexes requires a good handle on active imagination or Internal Family Systems. If you are a beginner in these matters, I would recommend starting with something more basic (such as triggers and emotional wounds) rather than going for sexual projections. The latter is likely going to be too challenging, especially without a therapist.

Additionally, a thorough dreamwork will be necessary. Without it, one cannot know what the unconscious is advising on these matters. I can recall dreams where it was shown that I was not ready for this work or that I should prioritize something else. I can also recall dreams that confirmed that I was starting to approach this topic in the right manner, where further clues were provided. The most striking ones were the dreams where the anima was revealed to be trapped, in a somewhat voluntary manner, by lascivious desires not belonging to the ego.

Art by Masaaki Sasamoto.

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