The Animus

Assassin's Creed.

That's right. I bought the game for the first time last week -loving it - I havn't finished it yet though, so no spoilers please.

So anyway, I decided to have a crack at modelling The Animus machine.

I also decided to do a little research into the word 'Animus', and found some interesting info:

The anima and animus, in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, are the unconscious or true inner self of an individual, as opposed to the persona or outer aspect of the personality. In the unconscious of the male, it finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious of the female, it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus.

It can be identified as the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a male possesses; or the masculine ones possessed by the female. Jung stated that the anima/animus archetype was not totally unconscious, calling it "a little bit conscious and unconscious."[1] In the interview, he gave an example of a man who falls head over heels in love, then later in life regrets his blind choice as he finds that he has married his own anima–the unconscious idea of the feminine in his mind, rather than the woman herself. The anima is usually an aggregate of a man's mother but may also incorporate aspects of sisters, aunts, and teachers.

The anima is one of the most significant autonomous complexes of all. It manifests itself by appearing as figures in dreams as well as by influencing a man's interactions with women and his attitudes toward them, and vice versa for females and the animus. Jung said that confronting one's shadow self is an "apprentice-piece", while confronting one's anima is the masterpiece. Jung viewed the anima process as being one of the sources of creative ability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus


So why is the machine named after the female's masculine unconciousness? Then again Anima wouldn't fit 100% either. Meh