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In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1967) The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale, a minister in the church of New England, commits adultery with Hester Prynne but hides his sin from the public. He thinks that revealing the secret will mar his name and fame in the society. He is afraid of losing his reputation in his congregation and among his colleagues. From a Jungian lens, Dimmesdale strives to look pious and holy in the eyes of the public that is symbolic of overdeveloped persona. However, overdeveloped persona is achieved at the cost of suppressing the anima. Anima, in Jungian psychoanalysis is ‘the spring of life’. When Dimmesdale loses connection with Anima; the spring of life, his personality becomes lop-sided and his life turns into hell. However, through the process of individuation, connecting to the spring of life leads to wholeness in the personality and happiness in the life of Dimmesdale.
Khan et al. (Wed,) studied this question.