anima

Noun

anima (plural animas)

1. The soul or animating principle of a living thing, especially as contrasted with the animus.
   • [W]e cannot chuse but admire the exceeding vividness of the governing faculty or Anima of the Insect, which is able to dispose and regulate so the motive faculties, as to cause every peculiar organ, not onely to move or act so quick, but to do it also so regularly.1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, section XXXVIII
2. (Jungian psychology) The inner self (not the external persona) of a person that is in touch with the unconscious as opposed to the persona.
   • In the Jungian model of the psyche, the male has an internalized female counterpart, the anima; while the female has an internalized masculine counterpart, the animus.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 31
   • Dorothy is bodiless and sexless in Tintern Abbey because she is Wordsworth's Jungian anima, an internal aspect of self momentarily projected.1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae
3. (Jungian psychology) The unconscious feminine aspect of a person.
   • The projection-making factor is the anima, or rather the unconscious as represented by the anima.