[2] In Carl Jung's thought, the individuation process was marked by a sequence of archetypes, each acquiring predominance at successive stages, and so reflecting what he termed an ascending psychic scale or "hierarchy of the unconscious".
"[5] As Marie-Louise von Franz put it:[6] If an individual has wrestled seriously and long enough with the anima (or animus) problem, so that he, or she, is no longer partially identified with it, the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form representing the Self, the innermost nucleus of the personality.
In the dreams of a woman this centre is usually personified as a superior female figure – a priestess, sorceress, earth mother, or goddess of nature or love.
"[3]: 184–5 Consequently, for the Jungian, "the making conscious of those contents which constitute the archetype of the mana personality signifies therefore "for the man the second and true liberation from the father, for the woman that from the mother, and therewith the first perception of their own unique individuality'.
"[11]: 235 However, judgement of such collective archetypes must not be hasty: "Just as all archetypes have a positive, favourable, bright side that points upwards, so also they have one that points downwards, partly negative and unfavourable, partly chthonic"—so that, for example, "the sky-woman is the positive, the bear the negative aspect of the 'supraordinate personality', which extends the conscious human being upwards into the celestial and downwards into the animal regions.