The Man With the Child in His Eyes - an unconscious expression of the Animus

I've been listening to Kate's first two albums a lot lately and thought I'd comment on one of my favorite songs as this observation hit me the first time I heard it and continues to pack a wallop on every listen.

"The Man with the Child in His Eyes" is clearly Kate singing about her animus, albeit unconsciously. When you're 13, you're not thinking in Jungian or even psychological terms, you're just singing and expressing something in your unconscious in ways that your current level of consciousness (i.e. that of a young girl) can understand. Everything about the song shouts "animus" at me. The reason the man has a child in his eyes is because Kate herself is the child. For those unfamiliar with Jungian psychology, the animus is an expression of the "other" part of a woman's unconscious that is connected with the collective unconscious and is typically male (for men, it is of course the anima). Scores of books have been written about the anima/animus figure as it connects with creative expressions in all of the arts.

Anyway, I thought this was a fairly obvious observation but thought I'd put it out there all the same. My sense with Kate's work, particularly her earlier work, is that there's a strong connection between the animus figure and her creative expression that feels numinous (or mystical, if you like) in nature. It's one of the reasons her stuff affects people so profoundly.