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Old 06-29-2008, 10:28 AM   #3
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
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Re: Carl Jung and Ænima (an essay)

Pushit is the next major track after jimmy. The version I will be talking about is the one released on the Salival mini-box set; it is slower, has slightly different lyrics, and is in my opinion superior to the original. It describes the singer’s experiences as he confronts the most painful part of his journey - separating himself from his partner, with whom he has a co-dependant and abusive relationship. He begins the song by saying, “Saw that gap again today/While you were begging me to stay”. Though he suffers from the abuse they each receive and inflict on each other, he feels that “What is this but my reflection/Who am I to judge or strike you down?” The music gradually becomes more intense, and finally, despite his best efforts, the singer finds himself “slipping back into the gap again”, and says that “I feel alive when you touch me/I feel alive when you hold me… down”. Afterwards, the singer reflects that “I am somewhere I don’t wanna be… [I] never wanna see that place again”. After a guitar interlude, he eventually finds the strength to reject this person and the abusive relationship they have, saying, “Remember I will always love you/As I claw your fucking throat away”. Though he is “terrified of what may come” he realises that “it will end no other way”.

The intensity and emotion evident in Pushit suggests that this is the most painful part of the individuation process for the singer. Jung believed that the phenomenon of falling in love at first sight is often due to a person seeing his or her anima or animus (respectively) in another person. The singer may have entered into the relationship with his partner by projecting his anima onto her, and given his splintered psyche and the repressed problems he had to face, it is unsurprising that this relationship became abusive. The “gap” that he talks about refers to intimacy between them; he realises that this relationship is unhealthy, and thus pushes his partner away from him, but at the same time he feels irresistibly drawn to it, and so again he “slips” back into it. The turning point in the song comes when he realises that “I am somewhere I don’t wanna be”. This is the point at which he realises that the person he is in love with is not in fact his partner, but rather his projected anima-image. Thus, he is finally able to “Push myself away/And you as well, my dear” – he pushes himself away from the temptation that his partner yields, and he pushes his partner away from himself. He realises that the emotions which he previously thought came only from his relationship actually come from a proper connection with one’s anima, and finding this connection is the only path he can take.

Though it is the title track, the song Ænema does not actually relate much to Jungian concepts. The song represents the singer’s final break from society – he looks at the people of Los Angeles and the lifestyle they represent and says that “the only way to fix it is to flush it all away”. He also separates himself from that society and the parts of himself that are attracted to it. From a Jungian perspective, the most interesting aspect of the song is the water imagery that he uses – “I’m praying for waves/I’m praying for tidal waves”, “Please flush it all away”, and his repeated cry to “Learn to swim”. Water has many archetypal properties; it represents purification, flow, the dissolution of obstructed libido (psychic energy), death, renewal, and many other images. The singer’s desire to “flush it all away” represents his desire to break down unhealthy structures back to their constituent parts. This is the pinnacle of his quest to purge himself of imperfections, to destroy the obstructed libido within himself and achieve personal renewal and purification.

The singer said in an interview that this song “can…be looked at as involving the whole collective environment and how all of us as individuals need to learn how to go into the deep dark waters." In this interpretation, the song serves as a cry to other people to undertake the same journey of self-discovery that the singer has. He sees the city of Los Angeles, and probably the rest of North American society, as suffering from the same problems that he once did, and so he recommends to them the same violent purging of the self that he has experienced.

The last song on the album is the 13-minute long epic, Third Eye. The idea of the “third eye” typically represents enlightenment, knowledge of inner realms, and spaces of higher consciousness; from a Jungian perspective, it refers to the state of full individuation, where one has completely assimilated all parts of their psyche into the Self. Thus, this song represents the culmination of the singer’s journey towards enlightenment and full self-knowledge. Unfortunately, the lyrics for Third Eye are so metaphorical and vague that one could interpret them in almost any way; furthermore, as the song is the culmination of all of the album’s themes, it is difficult to separate the Jungian elements from the other concepts present. Within the scope of this essay, all that one should note is that the singer’s journey has by and large come to an end and he has achieved full individuation.

In this essay, I have attempted to highlight the Jungian themes present in Tool’s album Ænima. The concepts that Jung discovered and outlined in his works – the psyche and the Self, the process of individuation, archetypes, the anima, and the shadow self – are useful in understanding the journey that the singer goes through over the course of the album. From a state of malaise and meaninglessness, the singer becomes aware of his anima for the first time, and gradually explores his personality and purges himself of imperfections to reach a state of full individuation.
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