To close out my examination of the anima/animus concept within Montaigne’s framework, I need to point out that I’m even more out of my depth discussing Sabina Spielrein’s psychoanalytic theories than I am Carl Jung’s. At least in the case of Jung I have read the original material. Spielrein’s writings have mostly been translated by now, but are still priced for psychology students, not the general reading public, so I have not delved into them.
But I think she’s really the only way to close out this discussion, because Montaigne to Jung is far too much an apples to oranges comparison. While Montaigne liked to consider every personality to be unique, with several to spare for each person based on how those bits and pieces of personality lined up with mood and circumstance, Jung was a personality reductionist who saw all people fitting to classical archetypes. Matters of persona were even more simple for Jung—he basically believed we had a public and private side, nothing more was necessary. It was through this singular outward facing persona that the other elements of Jungian psychology rise—the shadow personality that includes all of the traits abandoned to create a consistent persona, and the anima or animus, the male or female personality side that is long suppressed but then emerges when brought into contact with the right triggering other.
Contrary to Jung, Montaigne believed that a multitude of forces and stimuli could give rise to different personalities. Inconsistency is our birthright. So it’s hard to see the emergence of an anima or animus as being important in his personality system, because nothing and everything is important.
Sabina Spielrein, however, had a slightly different conception of the theory she clearly co-authored with Jung, both through their experiences together and via writing. To Spielrein, love was not something that elicited a different part of the personality, rather it annihilated the personality completely, at least the rational, scheming, ego side of the personality. Freud largely agreed with Spielrein and credited her with helping shape his final theory, the drive toward death and destruction.
So it is possible to apply Spielrein to Montaigne, because her version of the anima or animus would not roll the dice and create a new persona, instead it would annihilate all persona. Spielrein saw love (and particularly sex) as forces driving two into one, merging two people in thought, touch and perspective. All the massive epiphanies that Jung outlined as part of the anima/animus awakening are, to Spielrein, the power of fused personalities.
Fusion power is an apt analogy for Spielrein’s theory. The energy of the sun is created through the collisions and merging of atoms, not splitting or burning them. In her conception, the right alignment of people can create a force greater than the two people alone, which is a poetic description of her relationship with Jung (and is how she described the relationship throughout her all-too-short life.)
I would contend that while Montaigne may have never experienced a sexual relationship that rose to the level of this fusion, his connections to both La Boetie and Gournay were both 1 + 1 =3 experiences. I continue to be skeptical of the way he views romantic relationships, but on a more important level, I understand his perspective. I have never had the good fortune of being in an ego annihilating romantic/sexual relationship. Perhaps my fear of such a bond has held me back from experiencing it.
But like Montaigne, I do believe that I have experienced different forms of this kind of relationship in my life which have enriched me, and I am grateful for those connections.
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