The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

part of him—will tend to become repressed and sink into the
unconscious.
The girl may have an adventurous spirit and may incorporate the
willpower and determination of her father into her own personality.
But as she gets older, she will most likely feel pressure to conform to
certain cultural norms and to forge her identity around what is
considered feminine. Girls are supposed to be nice, sweet, and
deferential. They are supposed to put the interests of others before
their own. They are supposed to tame any wild streaks, to look pretty

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and to be objects of desire. For the individual girl, these expectations
turn into voices she hears in her head, continually judging her and
making her doubt her self-worth. These pressures may be subtler in
our day and age, but they still exert a powerful influence. The more
exploratory, aggressive, and darker sides of her character—both
naturally occurring and absorbed from the father—will tend to become
repressed and sink into the unconscious, if she adopts a more
traditionally feminine role.
The unconscious feminine part of the boy and the man is what Jung
calls the anima. The unconscious masculine part of the girl and
woman are the animus. Because they are parts of ourselves that are
deeply buried, we are never really aware of them in our daily life. But
once we become fascinated with a person of the opposite sex, the
anima and animus stir to life. The attraction we feel toward another
might be purely physical, but more often the person who draws our
attention unconsciously bears some resemblance—physical or
psychological—to our mother or father. Remember that this primal
relationship is full of charged energy, excitement, and obsessions that
are repressed but yearning to come out. A person who triggers these
associations in us will be a magnet for our attention, even though we
are not aware of the source of our attraction.
If the relationship to the mother or father was mostly positive, we
will tend to project onto the other person the desirable qualities that
our parent had, in the hope of reexperiencing that early paradise. Take,
for instance, a young man whose mother nurtured and adored him. He
may have been a sweet, loving little boy, devoted to his mother and
reflecting her nurturing energy, but he repressed these traits in himself
as he grew into an independent man with a masculine image to uphold.
In the woman who triggers an association with his mother he will see
the capacity to adore him that he secretly craves. This feeling of getting
what he wants will intensify his excitement and physical attraction.
She will supply him the qualities he never developed in himself. He is
falling in love with his own anima, in the form of the desired woman.
If the feelings toward the mother or father were mostly ambivalent
(their attention inconsistent), we will often try to fix the original
relationship by falling in love with someone who reminds us of our
imperfect parent figure, in the hope that we can subtract their negative
qualities and get what we never quite got in our earliest years. If the
relationship was mostly negative, we may go in search of someone with

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the opposite qualities to that parent, often of a dark, shadowy nature.
For instance, a girl who had a father who was too strict, distant, and
critical perhaps had the secret desire to rebel but didn’t dare to. As a
young woman she might be drawn to a rebellious, unconventional
young man who represents the wild side she was never able to express,
and is the polar opposite of her father. The rebel is her animus, now
externalized in the form of the young man.
In any case, whether the association is positive, negative, or
ambivalent, powerful emotions are triggered, and feeling ourselves
transported to the primal relationship in our childhood, we act in ways
that are often contrary to the persona we present. We become
hysterical, needy, obsessive, controlling. The anima and animus have
their own personalities, and so when they come to life we act like
person B. Because we are not really relating to women and men as they
are, but rather to our projections, we will eventually feel disappointed
in them, as if they are to blame for not being what we had imagined.
The relationship will often tend to fall apart from the misreading and
miscommunications on both sides, and not aware of the source of this,
we will go through precisely the same cycle with the next person.
There are infinite variations on these patterns, because everyone
has very particular circumstances and mixes of the masculine and
feminine. For instance, there are men who are more psychologically
feminine than women and women who are more psychologically
masculine than men. If they are heterosexual, the man will be drawn to
masculine women who have the qualities he never developed in
himself. He has more of an animus than an anima. The woman will be
drawn to feminine men. There are many such contrasexual couples,
some more overt than others, and they can be successful if both sides
get what they want—a famous historical example would be the
composer Frédéric Chopin and the writer George Sand, Sand being
more like the husband and Chopin like the wife. If they are
homosexual, the man or woman will still be in search of the
contrasexual qualities undeveloped from within. In general, people are
imbalanced, overidentifying with the masculine or feminine and drawn
to the polar opposite.
Your task as a student of human nature is threefold: First you must
try to observe the anima and the animus as they manifest themselves
in others, particularly in their intimate relationships. By paying
attention to their behavior and patterns in these situations, you will

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have access to their unconscious that is normally denied to you. You
will see the parts of themselves they have repressed, and you can use
such knowledge to great effect. Pay special attention to those who are
hypermasculine or hyperfeminine. You can be sure that below the
surface lurks a very feminine anima for the man and a very masculine
animus for the woman. When people go extra far in repressing their
feminine or masculine qualities, these will tend to leak out in a
caricatured form.
The hypermasculine man, for instance, will be secretly obsessed
with clothes and his looks. He will display an unusual interest in
people’s appearances, including other men, and make rather snippy
judgments about them. Richard Nixon desperately tried to project a
macho image to those who worked for him as president, but he was
constantly commenting on and fussing over the color of the suits they
wore and the drapes in his office. The hypermasculine man will
express strong opinions about cars, technology, or politics that are not
based on real knowledge, and when called on this, he will become
rather hysterical in his defense, throw a tantrum, or pout. He is always
trying to contain his emotions, but they can often have a life of their
own. For instance, without wanting to, he will suddenly become quite
sentimental.
The hyperfeminine woman will often be concealing a great deal of
repressed anger and resentment at the role she has been forced to play.
Her seductive, girlish behavior with men is actually a ploy for power, to
tease, entrap, and hurt the target. Her masculine side will leak out in
passive-aggressive behavior, attempts to dominate people in
relationships in underhanded ways. Underneath the sweet, deferential
façade, she can be quite willful and highly judgmental of others. Her
willfulness, always under the surface, will come out in rather irrational
stubbornness in petty matters.
Your second task is to become aware of the projecting mechanism
within yourself. (See the next section for common types of
projections.) Projections have a positive role to play in your life, and
you could not stop them even if you wanted to, because they are so
automatic and unconscious. Without them, you would not find yourself
paying deep attention to a person, becoming fascinated with him or
her, idealizing, and falling in love. But once the relationship develops,
you need to have the power and awareness to withdraw the
projections, so that you can begin to see women and men as they really

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are. In doing so, perhaps you will realize how truly incompatible you
are, or the opposite. Once connected to the real person, you can
continue to idealize him or her, but this will be based on actual positive
qualities he or she possesses. Perhaps you can find his or her faults
charming. You can accomplish all of this by becoming aware of your
own patterns and the types of qualities you tend to project onto others.
This also has relevance to relationships with the opposite sex that
are not intimate. Imagine that in an office situation a colleague
criticizes your work or postpones a meeting you asked for. If that
person happens to be of the opposite sex, all kinds of emotions—
resentments, fears, disappointments, hostility—will be stirred up,
along with various projections, whereas with someone of your own
gender there would be much less of a reaction. Seeing this dynamic in
everyday life, you will be better able to control it and have smoother
relationships with those of the opposite sex.
Your third task is to look inward, to see those feminine or masculine
qualities that are repressed and undeveloped within you. You will catch
glimpses of your anima or animus in your relationships with the
opposite sex. That assertiveness you desire to see in a man, or empathy
in a woman, is something you need to develop within yourself,
bringing out that feminine or masculine undertone. What you are
doing in essence is integrating into your everyday personality the traits
that are within you but are repressed. They will no longer operate
independently and automatically, in the form of possession. They will
become part of your everyday self, and people will be drawn to the
authenticity they sense in you. (For more on this, see the final section
of this chapter.)
—
Finally, when it comes to gender roles, we like to imagine a continual
line of progress leading to perfect equality, and to believe that we are
not far from reaching this ideal. But this is hardly the truth. Although
on one level we can see definite progress, on another level, one that is
deeper, we can see increasing tension and polarization between the
sexes, as if the old patterns of inequality between men and women
exert an unconscious influence upon us.

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This tension can sometimes feel like a war, and it stems from a
growing psychological distance between the genders, in which people
of the opposite sex seem like alien creatures, with habits and patterns
of behavior we cannot begin to fathom. This distance can turn into
hostility among some. Although we can see this in both men and
women, the hostility is stronger among men. Perhaps this is related to
the latent hostility many men feel toward the mother figure, and the
feeling of dependency and weakness she unconsciously triggers. The
male sense of masculinity often has a defensive edge that reveals
underlying insecurities. Such insecurity has only become more acute
with shifting gender roles, and it increases the suspiciousness and
hostility between men and women.
This outer conflict between the genders, however, is merely a
reflection of an unresolved inner conflict. As long as the inner feminine
or masculine is denied, the outer distance will only grow. When we
bridge this distance from within, our attitude toward the opposite sex
changes as well. We feel a deeper connection. We can talk and relate to
them as if relating to parts of ourselves. The polarity between the sexes
still exists and still causes us to be attracted and fall in love, but now it
includes the desire to get closer to the feminine or the masculine. This
is much different from the polarization between the genders, in which
distance and hostility eventually come to the fore in the relationship
and push people further away. The inner connection will vastly
improve the outer connection and should be the ideal we aim for.