Man and his symbols

This was an enlightening read, and offered valuable insights about symbolism, dream interpretation, and dreaming as man's natural generation of symbols. Delving into the characteristics of the unconscious mind helped me understand shadow-work a lot more.

My only criticism of the book is on the explanation of the anima and animus. The tone when explaining these concepts was a bit sexist and heteronormative. A product of the time period it was written in, yes, but still worth critiquing.

Also, these terms are basically the "scientific" words to describe what indigenous spiritualities have known since the beginning: we all have both masculine and feminine aspects. Beatrice in Paradiso, and Isis of Egyptian mythology are feminine archetypes, and that's all we need to say. Why the need to introduce completely new words like "anima" and make rules for them that don't even apply to everyone?

Finally, who is to say that when a male figure shows up in a dream, he can't take on a role that represents femininity? Like a male nurse, for example.