“Everything has a purpose, clocks tell you the time, trains take you to places. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. ”
4 - Anima/Animus
In a dream she showed up as twins. One who was quiet and could play by herself (like her father, Ti) and the other who was very precocious as she hung upside down from a tree (like her mother, Te), reflecting the inherent nature of the Opposing Personality. From the outset of our work her battle seemed to reflect inferiority about not being an extravert.
Fight Club’s accomplishment is to elicit in us the instinctive fear, resistance, and embarrassment we all experience around the domain of our inferior function, whichever function that may be for us. The reward for sticking with the movie until the end is a catharsis that feels as if we have integrated our own inferior function.
I think many of us would be quick to put our inferior and embarrassing Anima on the pyre, and happily satiate our Heroes. But the Hero needs to sacrifice its preeminence and allow the Anima to experiment and thrive if we are to find ourselves truly committed to what we do, not to mention fulfilled by it.