ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses how the brain uses animals to symbolize emotions, intuitions, environmental patterns, or vague sensations and ineffable feelings, and some of these behave with personalities and are virtually indistinguishable from so-called “physical” beings. It represents vague concepts of “femininity” as men come to understand it through their development into adulthood; nature provides men with a way of recognizing and understanding “feminine beings” through the anima, and she symbolizes all sorts of entanglements and heartaches, but also the promise of bliss and redemption. “Anima” images are depicted along with animal symbols, such as the swan-woman (Celtic and German myth), the goat-woman (Hispanic folklore), the lion-goddess Sekhmet (Egyptian myth), or the lamia (Talmudic myth), just to name a few. A source domain that consists of any unconscious circuits that for whatever reason are ignored by the very information-limited conscious processing system will provide the neurobiological basis that symbolizes the desired unknown as an anima character.