A psychological reading of the dominant archetypal images reveals a continuous series of psychological transformations, depicting the autonomous life of archetypes behind the scenes of consciousness.
Source - C.G. Jung, Jung and Religious Belief. CW 18: The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings, par. 1686.
I became more aware of how I had neglected the anima and had lived most predominantly out of my masculine side. Before, if I noticed her at all, it was to see her merely as an amusement, stimulating my sexual desire, being charming and provocative. Now she seems ready to come into her maturity, to carry the soul function, guiding me and inspiring me toward union with the divine. The transformation she was about to undergo seemed to me to be one that would orient her more strongly to the Self, thinking of the Self as the center of the psyche, the place of immense power where the ego and the unconscious, the sacred and the profane, meet and unite.
Source - Albert Kreinheder, Body and Soul: The Other Side of Illness (Inner City Books 1991), p. 22.
Through the relation to the anima one obtains the chance of greater consciousness. It leads to a realization of the self as the totality of the conscious and the unconscious functions. This realization brings with it a recognition of the inherited plus the new units that go to make up the self.
Source - C.G. Jung, Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925 by C.G. Jung (Princeton University Press 2012), p. 153.
Art: Laura Lee Zanghetti