Persona and Shadow: Destructive to Themselves and Others

Anna Karenina, the novel by Tolstoy that illustrates the seduction of the Sexual 3, also serves as a powerful literary example of the shadow, with its destructive force, which inflicts pain and separation upon this character. As the story unfolds, Anna, initially portrayed as a feminine goddess of wisdom and compassion, gradually reveals herself to be a cruel, obsessed, vengeful, and destructive woman. Increasingly volatile and unstable, she oscillates between one emotional state and another, like a small boat tossed in an Atlantic storm. Ensnared in a web of delusions and self-deceptions that fuel her rage, her destructive tendencies intensify over time, until she sees no other option but to end her own life in a suicide she believes will bring her the ultimate triumph: the love of her lover and revenge at the same time.

The novel begins with Anna’s arrival in Moscow to save her brother’s marriage. It’s the mission of a woman with a generous heart who values family: persuading her sister-in-law to forgive her unfaithful husband for the greater good of all. Her style of dress is one of noble elegance, subtle, feminine, and modest—never flashy. The same could be said of her

presence: gentle, compassionate, maternal, and tender. "She could read sympathy and the sincerest affection in Anna’s face," is how Dolly, her sister-in-law, beautifully describes her. The impression Anna makes on Kitty, Dolly’s sister, gives us an idea of her charm and the affinity she inspires in others, a testament to the success of her mask:

[Kitty], on her part, immediately fell under the charm of Anna’s gracious manner, as young girls do when brought into relations with women older than themselves. Besides, there was nothing about Anna that suggested a society woman or the mother of an eight-year-old son; but to see her graceful form, her fresh and animated face, one would have guessed that she was a young lady of twenty, had not a serious and sometimes almost melancholy expression, which struck and attracted Kitty, come into her eyes.

Kitty felt that she was perfectly natural and sincere, but she did not deny that there was something about her that suggested a whole world of complicated and poetic interest far beyond her comprehension.

Kitty continues to idealize Anna, sensing something enigmatic in her. However, she soon grasps her unexpected insensitivity to Kitty’s pain—Anna is openly bewitching the man Kitty desires and whom she anticipates will ask for her hand at the ball, turning her back on her and dismissing Kitty’s discomfort in order to carry on with her role as a charmer:

She was charming in her simple black velvet; charming were her round arms, clasped by bracelets; charming her exquisite neck, encircled with pearls; charming her dark, curly locks breaking from restraint; charming the slow and graceful movements of her feet and hands; charming her lovely face, full of animation; but in all this charm, there was something terrible and cruel. (Part 1/Ch. XXIII)

It appears that this cruelty refers to the disconnect between the idealized and externally projected image of a goddess of beauty and wisdom, and the profound inner emptiness that makes Anna unable to empathize with the experiences of others:

As she approached, Kitty gazed at her in dismay. Anna looked at her with drooping eyelids, and smiled, pressing her hand. But, noticing that Kitty only responded to her smile with a look of despair and amazement, she turned away from her and began gaily talking to the other lady. "Yes, yes," said Kitty, "there is something strange, beautiful and, at the same time, diabolical about her." (1/XXIII)

This is the first time Tolstoy lets us glimpse the shadow of Anna Karenina, reminding us that replicating an idealized image of divinity is both an illusion born of our ignorance and a

rejection of human nature and its intrinsic light. The exact nature of this dark side is not yet clear, but the author is already preparing us to witness something unexpected, which will gradually manifest itself in Anna’s behavior, causing much suffering to her and those close to her. This "diabolical" element carries great destructive potential due to the repression of Eros, the prohibition against connecting with her own pleasure and expressing it freely. Throughout the novel, Anna’s struggle to live up to an idealized, vain self-image and her desire to punish herself for not achieving it will escalate, culminating in tragedy.

In the Sexual 3, this self-destructive potential becomes catastrophic when suicide seems like the only solution, a frequent idea and action among desperate Sexual 3s. As one person with this character recounts:

In moments of chronic frustration, in the most desperate times when I felt unloved by my husband, it seemed to me the most logical option; it was either my own death or his. I had to free myself from this dead-end situation where I lacked the strength to break free from my gilded cage.

After a year of secret liaison, when the sexual encounter between Anna and Vronsky finally takes place, we are struck by its dramatic charge:

That which for Vronsky had been almost a whole year the one absorbing desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that which for Anna had been an impossible, terrible, and even for that reason more entrancing dream of bliss, that desire had been fulfilled. He stood before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering, and besought her to be calm, not knowing how or why. "Anna! Anna!" he said with a choking voice, "Anna, for pity’s sake! . . ." But the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and gay, now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa where she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her. "My God! Forgive me!" she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her bosom. She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left for her but to humiliate herself and beg forgiveness.

Shame makes it impossible for Anna to enjoy the long-awaited love encounter. The guilt she feels, the fruit of internal accusations, poisons the intimacy with her lover, which could have been a moment of deep connection and pleasure.

And as now there was no one in her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she could say nothing more.

Trapped by her shame, Anna feels exposed before her beloved. Her humiliation has been triggered by the vain demands of "I must be…" and "I am not," which are now becoming apparent. The person before her has witnessed her "I am not," the unwanted image she has denied and hidden inside.

The experience of humiliation in childhood serves as a form of social control and a source of power, creating existential stress in children and undermining their spontaneous and effervescent living impulses. The Sexual 3 has lost touch with this vitality. As this character represses the strength of their genuine emotions, they lose access to the vital energy necessary to pursue their desires. They begin to seek this lost strength externally, leading to the need to manipulate others while wearing a mask of compliance, like a child who learned to seduce by flattering the parents with a smile to get privileges or be protected.

Anna’s self-accusation places pressure on her, and her conscience compels her to plead for forgiveness for what she perceives to be a humiliating act. In the eyes of her inner judge, she believes she deserves severe punishment and, therefore, desperately seeks Vronsky’s forgiveness. This request for forgiveness appears not as a genuine admission of guilt but rather an extreme attempt to rebuild her image as "good" in the eyes of her lover. By playing the victim, she manipulates Vronsky’s reaction.

He felt what a murderer must feel when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, and must use what he has gained by his murder.

And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand and did not stir. "Yes, these kisses—that is what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will always be mine—the hand of my accomplice." She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face, but she hid it and said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more pitiful for that. "All is over," she said; "I have nothing but you. Remember that." "I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this happiness . . ." "Happiness!" she said with horror and loathing, and her horror unconsciously infected him. "For pity’s sake, not a word, not a word more." She rose quickly and moved away from him. "Not a word more," she repeated, and with a look of chill despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that moment she could not put into words the sense of

shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. (2/XI)

We might expect happiness and joy after such a longed-for love encounter, but Anna appears as a shattered woman who has just received dreadful news.

What we witness is her intrapsychic conflict: she hasn’t granted herself permission to seek erotic pleasure; her vanity doesn’t allow her to give herself over, and now, having done so, she feels she has failed. She has failed to uphold her self-image as an impeccable woman for she has—literally—stripped herself naked. Perfect women, according to the dictates of a patriarchal society, do not sin. With her surrender, the mask she presented to her beloved also falls. By revealing her innermost desires and baring her "spiritual nakedness," she seems to depend on Vronsky’s forgiveness for this "sin" (which implies severe self-judgment), and gradually begins to resent him, fueled by an unconscious belief that he can no longer love her after seeing her ugly side. She departs with a cold expression: the humiliation she experiences triggers her unconscious rejection of him. Or perhaps, she is projecting onto him the guilt for leading her to such despicable conduct. Her vanity prevents her from expressing her own confusion, fear, and shame, and Anna once again reaffirms the prohibition to live in joy. A common feature among Sexual 3s is the denial of all unwanted feelings, especially anger, envy, sadness, disagreement, and, especially, shame. This denial stems from the neurotic belief that feelings might endanger the desired loving union, making it necessary to falsify oneself and transform into a self-assured, charming persona.

But later, too, and the next day and the third day, she still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul.

A Sexual 3 lives in a state of darkness, fully disconnected from their soul. They genuinely believe in the complacent, cheerful, and beautiful mask they have created to face the world, and they become so preoccupied with pleasing others that they lose touch with their deepest emotions and the myriad facets of their inner world. It could be said that a being so estranged from their soul is akin to a “corpse,” or a robot that plasticizes life to construct a sterile image.

It’s interesting to observe how Anna deals with her inner turmoil. She can’t share it with her partner, as she cannot find the words for fear of saying the wrong thing. This is what a Sexual 3 typically does: they allow themselves to display the “right” emotions and conceal the “wrong” ones, as if emotions or feelings can be labeled right or wrong.

Anna cannot talk about her feelings because it would mean exposing her inner self. Her idealized self-image serves as an internal censor, controlling her through shame and judgment, preventing her from speaking candidly about herself. She’s unable to convey her innermost self, and as she navigates her tragic fate, she will find herself increasingly incapable of doing so. Vanity inhibits her from removing her mask of charm and beauty and allowing herself to become a real woman with fears, conflicts, frustrations, anger... What she is really avoiding is the intimate connection with her lover, and an insurmountable wall of separation begins to rise between them

Tolstoy makes it clear that the Sexual 3 goes all-in on the relationship. They inundate it with fantasies, as if it’s the sole means to recover the lost existential connection. The illusion of love necessitates idealizing both oneself and the partner, while ignoring any signals that might threaten this perception. In the neurotic pursuit of romantic love, this character excludes their children, family, and friends... The cruel abandonment of those to whom they promised love has dire consequences – abandonment of themselves and immense soulful pain. Anna becomes pregnant by Vronsky, and when she shares the news with him, he urges her to leave her husband. However, she is frightened of losing the child from her marriage.

Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which she could not or would not face, as though directly when she began to speak of it, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him.

This is a recurring theme in the book: Anna has an inner force that clouds her true self. She appears divided, and her superficial approach to handling conflicts hints at a deep self-denial and deceit in projecting herself as empathetic and loving.

In whatever position she might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her husband might put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky might grow cold to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him again with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son. She had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this relation to her son, so that he might not be taken from her. […]

She was weeping that her dream of her position being made clear and definite had been annihilated forever. She knew beforehand that everything would go on in the old way, and far worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that the position in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of so little consequence in the morning, was precious to her, and that she would not have the strength to exchange it for the shameful position of

a woman who has abandoned her husband and child to join her lover; that however much she might struggle, she could not be stronger than herself.

This is the first time that Anna realizes the consequences of her forbidden relationship with Vronsky, which threatens to cost her her elevated position in society. It’s a moment of contacting reality: “She would never know freedom in love, but would remain forever a guilty wife, with the menace of detection hanging over her at every instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a shameful connection with a man living apart and away from her, whose life she could never share.”

This sentence is significant. “She would never know freedom in love” means that she does not give herself permission to live fully; it expresses her inability to give herself over to her own life.

She has not yet spoken to Vronsky to tell him that her husband already knows about the affair. She begins to imagine his rejection, which only deepens her distrust and anxiety. Underlying her distress, stemming from her inability to be free to love, is her neurotic desire to uphold her social standing and a fear of tarnishing her good self-image. Finally, she shows Vronsky the letter, in which her husband threatens to take her son away. She leaves her fate in the hands of her lover, once again relinquishing responsibility for her decisions:

But this interview was still of the utmost gravity for her. She hoped that this interview would transform her position and save her.

If, on hearing this news, he were to say to her resolutely, passionately, without an instant’s wavering: “Throw up everything and come with me!” she would give up her son and go away with him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in him; he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.

Anna is looking for signs on Vronsky’s face, and all she can see are affirmations of her own belief that she cannot be desired. This is what all Sexual 3s have in common, and what is, for them, a constant source of uneasiness: the irrational idea that they carry something so ugly inside them that it’s better to lock it away at the bottom of their souls to avoid the potential pain of rejection, which could shatter their fantasy of finally finding the longed-for symbiosis. In Anna’s eyes, it’s already a foregone conclusion that Vronsky does not love her as she’d like him to, because her interpretation of his reaction is influenced by such a distorted self-perception.

There are so many external antennas that Sexual 3s have honed to read every signal from others, to maintain control, and to respond to imagined demands, and so few, unfortunately, for their own inner world.

In a subsequent scene, Anna continues to hide the shameful truth, instead emphasizing her facade of self-assurance and apparent control, while feeling the opposite inside:

“But, for God’s sake, which is better?—leave your child, or keep up this degrading position?” “To whom is it degrading?” “To all, and most of all to you.” “You say degrading . . . don’t say that. Those words have no meaning for me,” she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left but his love, and she wanted to love him. “Don’t you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me, there is one thing, and one thing only—your love. If that’s mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position because . . . proud of being . . . proud . . .” She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed.

This is the strategy of the Sexual 3: they actively deny their inner experience, concealing it behind closed doors to hide from the “cruel and ugly” truth. Instead, they adamantly profess the opposite to avoid any appearance of being “insignificant,” while their yearning for passionate love promises blissful elevation.

Anna, trapped in an unsatisfying and frustrating marriage, remains in a state of paralysis, awaiting Vronsky to set her free. This is a common trait among sexual Threes, who tend to wait for their partners to make decisions for them and seek answers from others who will fix their lives: therapists, psychics, friends... not from themselves, as they lack an internal reference or guide. Not feeling sufficiently desired by Vronsky, Anna chooses not to leave her husband, unconsciously intensifying her resentment toward her lover, despite already becoming dependent on his love and approval. She lives in her own romantic fairy tale, and her fanciful refusal to see him as an ordinary man is another manifestation of the Sexual 3’s madness:

She laid her two hands on his shoulders and looked at him for a long time with a profound, passionate, yet searching gaze. She was studying Vronsky’s face, looking for any changes that might have occurred during their time apart. In all her encounters with Vronsky, she confused her imaginary impression of him (incomparably superior, too good to be true) with the real one.

Tolstoy captured in these few words how Anna deludes herself by projecting an idealized self-image onto her partner, painting him as the perfect man and placing him on an unattainable pedestal, to the point where he cannot be a real human being. The vain person cannot open their eyes to the reality of others or empathize, because they can’t truly see themselves. They cannot love, no matter how much they would like to. This is reminiscent

of the tragedy of Narcissus, who falls in love with his own reflection in the water. That’s all he sees, and, lacking self-awareness, he remains inert and dies from disconnection with his own soul, starved of authentic love.

Since Vronsky represents everything Anna longs for and idealizes, becoming a shield against her inner emptiness, she begins to feel jealousy and a destructive passion that will ultimately push him away:

These fits of jealousy, which had been more and more frequent of late, horrified him, and no matter how much he tried to disguise it, made him feel cold toward her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her love for him.

Now he felt that the best happiness had already been left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically, she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face, when speaking of the actress, there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has picked, with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he had gathered and ruined it.

She slowly allows her obsession to consume her: “I have driven away the fiend. (The fiend was the name they had given her jealousy.)” It’s during this very encounter that her longing to die becomes evident for the first time, seen as the only way out of a situation that fills her with frustration and anger:

“It won’t come as we suppose. I didn’t mean to say this to you, but you’ve made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all, all be at peace and suffer no more.” “I don’t understand,” he said, understanding her. “You asked when? Soon. And I shan’t live through it. Don’t interrupt me!” she hurried to speak. “I know it; I know for certain. I shall die; and I’m very glad I shall die and set us both free.”

Anna had a dream in which an old woman tells her she will die during childbirth. It doesn’t appear to be a prophetic dream but rather a projection of her shadow, already unbridled, which, coupled with the accumulation of uncomfortable and uncontrollable emotions and the repression of her own desires (Eros), suggests that death will be her only way out. This emotional instability, the discrepancy between her internal and external experiences, and her inability to express herself lead her into a kind of depression that results in dependence on drugs and barbiturates—something common in extreme cases of Sexual 3s, who, unable to connect with the aggressive energy they suppress, lack the strength to break free from their stagnation and fight for their lives.

The more Anna’s jealousy, anger, and suspicion accumulate, intensifying her desperation from her perceived lack of love and her persistent efforts to attain it, the less she trusts Vronsky and his commitment.

She eventually gives birth to a baby girl, nearly dying in the postpartum period. Her husband forgives her when he finds her suddenly so open and affectionate, believing that her death is imminent:

He still struggled with his emotions, glancing at her only occasionally. Each time he did, he saw her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as he had never seen before. “Wait a minute, you don’t know… stay a little, stay!...” She stopped, as though collecting her thoughts. “Yes,” she began; “yes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don’t be surprised by me. I’m still the same... But there is another woman in me, I’m afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her that used to be. I’m not that woman. Now I’m my real self, all myself. I’m dying now, I know I shall die. [...] Only one thing I want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I’m terrible… […] No, you can’t forgive me! I know, it can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you’re too good!” (4/XVII)

She feels divided, the “two women” inside her representing her unresolved inner struggle. The woman who has loved Vronsky, the one who wants to live, to feel, is endangered because the inhibited wife, the one who is not allowed to desire, who conforms to society’s expectations and denies herself, is considered the good woman. The latter is the one who condemns the erotic desires of the former and the one who begs for forgiveness, projecting her own goodness onto her husband.

After her recovery, she transforms this same affection for her husband, along with her idealization of him being too good for her, into hatred and a desire to die:

“I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,” Anna began suddenly, “but I hate him for his virtues. I can’t live with him. Do you understand? The sight of him has a physical effect on me, it drives me mad. I can’t, I can’t live with him. What am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think one couldn’t be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am going through now, I could never have conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he’s a good man, a splendid man, that I don’t even deserve to kiss the ground he walks on, still I hate him. I hate him for his generosity. And there’s nothing left for me but…” She would have said death, but her brother wouldn’t let her finish. (4/XXI)

Her idealization of her husband increases her internal pressure, heightening her guilt and self-loathing, which, in turn, fuels her projected hatred toward him. This culminates in her embracing death as a form of liberation.

Vronsky, for his part, attempts suicide when he believes he has lost her. Anna eventually recovers, and her husband offers her a divorce, relinquishing custody of their child. In a reunion with Vronsky, the two decide to travel to Italy together, and Anna does something she never thought possible: she leaves her son with his father.

Although her husband has forgiven her and offers her a divorce that would free her from societal pressure, she doesn’t accept it because, deep down, she is convinced that she deserves punishment rather than forgiveness. She cannot easily let go of her self-image as a proper woman and can only commit to her new life at the cost of not fully enjoying it:

There was one consolation which somewhat appeased her conscience whenever she thought of the past. She expressed it to herself at the very first moment of her departure: “I have done my husband an irrevocable injury, but at least I get no advantage from his misfortune. I also suffer and shall suffer. I give up all that was dearest to me; I give up my good name and my son. I have sinned, and therefore I do not desire happiness or a divorce, and I accept my shame and the separation from my son.”

But however sincere Anna was when she reasoned thus, she had not suffered. She had felt no shame. [...]

The joy of living caused by her convalescence was so keen, the conditions of her existence were so new and delightful, that Anna felt extraordinarily happy.

It appears that the love Anna is experiencing continues to infuse her with life. It connects her, for a while, with the happiness of fully embracing life and the joy of yielding to her own desires. With each passing moment, Anna becomes more human, more herself.

Her adoration of her beloved alarmed her indeed; she sought and could not find in him anything but goodness. She dared not show him her sense of her own insignificance beside him. It seemed to her that, knowing this, he might cease to love her sooner, and she dreaded nothing now so much as losing his love, though she had no grounds for fearing it.

Tolstoy reminds us that Anna’s fears are merely a product of her imagination and her inability to love wholeheartedly. False beliefs act within her like a slow-acting poison, shaping her destiny drop by drop.

She feels happy, but her mask of a virtuous woman prevents her from accepting the role of “the bad one” and taking responsibility for her choice to separate from her husband and child. This is a mentality typical of the Sexual 3, as another woman bears witness:

If I indulge in “sin,” the world will realize that I really am a bad person, and they’ll reject me and despise me for being immoral. But if I suffer for my decisions and give up happiness,

the world will recognize that I’m paying for my choices with pain, and so they won’t judge me as harshly. They’ll see me as a victim, offering compassion and love.

It’s an unconscious attempt to manipulate others’ opinions about oneself. And this is what Anna does, falling more and more into victimhood. Deep down, she feels undeserving of happiness, and by rejecting forgiveness and divorce from her husband, she reinforces this belief.

After enjoying a honeymoon in Europe, she returns to St. Petersburg with Vronsky and starts to miss her son. While away, she sometimes didn’t even think about him.

The Sexual 3 generally feels a strong affection for their children, who, as Tolstoy points out, give meaning to their life through secure love. But when their existence jeopardizes the romantic bond with the partner, they may physically or psychologically neglect them. This is precisely what happens with Anna and her trip to Italy:

“Seryozha?” she thought. “I thought, too, that I loved him, and used to be touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived without him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regret the exchange till that love was satisfied.” (7/XXX)

As hers was an arranged marriage (by her aunt), Anna never loved her husband, and directed “all the love that had never found satisfaction” toward the child she had by him. In contrast, she doesn’t feel the same love for the child born from the relationship with her lover, which seemingly threatens her wish to be the “only one” for him.

But at the sight of this child, it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had for her could not be called love in comparison with what she felt for Seryozha. Everything in this baby was charming, but for some reason, all this did not go deep into her heart. Her first child, though the child of an unloved father, had concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction. Her baby girl had been born under the most painful circumstances and had not had a hundredth part of the care and thought that had been concentrated on her first child.

Besides, in the little girl, everything was still in the future, while Seryozha was already almost a person; and a person dearly loved. In him, there was a conflict of thought and feeling; he understood her, he loved her, he judged her, she thought, recalling his words and his eyes. (5/XXXI)

Her son has already become, yes, a man who can love her and receive her love. The masculine aspect—is it loved and idealized because it promises love and protection? Whereas the feminine aspect, the inner child represented by her daughter—can it not be loved because it’s vulnerable? Or perhaps because it’s the fruit of a sin? Be that as it may, in Anna’s relationship with her lover, there is no place for children:

“Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either to be with child, that is a useless, sick woman, or to be the friend and companion of my husband—practically my husband,” Anna said in a tone intentionally superficial and frivolous. “I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And how am I to keep his love? Not like this!” She moved her white arms in a curve before her waist. (6/XXIII)

Her only desire, her ultimate goal in life, is to secure her lover’s affection through her beauty and usefulness. The prospect of a new pregnancy, another child, is a threat to this goal—a mere hindrance. And Vronsky’s desire to have more children with her is, through her vanity, interpreted as evidence of his lack of love.

The question of having children had long been a subject of dispute and irritation for her. She saw his desire for children as proof that he did not value her beauty, which would naturally diminish or disappear with a new pregnancy and childbirth. (7/XXV)

Convinced that she is loved for her beauty, she cannot accept any other form of affection and cannot imagine living as a woman who has something more to offer than a pretty face. She is beauty. She exists through her flawless physical appearance. Not being appreciated for her looks is equivalent to denying her very existence. It’s a deep wound that Vronsky is inflicting on her! In her pain and despair, Anna finds herself unable to open up. By hiding her true feelings and thoughts, she builds an increasingly impenetrable wall of silence and separation between two vain individuals who, at their core, never really knew each other.

Her suffering is all the more poignant because she has to bear it alone. She cannot, and will not, share it with Vronsky. She knows that, to him, although he is the primary cause of her distress, the question of her son’s well-being would seem of little importance. She knows he will never fully grasp the depth of her suffering, and that his cool tone when any allusion to it is made would drive her to hate him. And she dreads that more than anything in the world, so she hides everything related to her son from him.

This act of concealment, this denial of her experiences, only amplifies her animosity toward herself—and him. Each unspoken, unpleasant emotion feeds the growing resentment that lurks in the shadows, and the idea of revenge gains strength in her mind.

“But where is he? How is it that he leaves me alone in my misery?” she thought, filled with reproach, forgetting that she had kept everything about her son from him. She sent a messenger to ask him to come immediately. With a pounding heart, she awaited him, rehearsing the words in which she would tell him everything, and the loving expressions with which he would console her. The messenger returned with an answer that he had a visitor but would come immediately and asked whether she would allow him to bring

Prince Yashvin, who had just arrived in Petersburg. “He’s not coming alone, and since dinner yesterday, he hasn’t seen me,” she thought. “He’s not coming to let me tell him everything but to bring Yashvin.” And then, suddenly, a disturbing thought crossed her mind: What if he has stopped loving her?

Reviewing the events of the last few days, it seemed to her that everything confirmed this terrible thought. He hadn’t dined at home yesterday. He had insisted on their taking separate rooms in Petersburg. Even now, he wasn’t coming alone, as if he were trying to avoid facing her directly. “But he should tell me! I need to know if it’s true. If I knew it, then I would know what to do,” she thought, utterly unable to imagine what she would do if she were convinced of Vronsky’s indifference toward her.

Terrified of rejection, she seeks evidence to confirm her worst fear: that he no longer loves her. This obsession is akin to self-destruction. The Sexual 3 becomes dependent on their partner’s presence to alleviate inner anxiety, and the yearning to be together transforms into a covert imposition on the other that verges on abuse, masquerading as a demand for love.

Concerned about her erratic behavior, Vronsky tries to talk to her, but Anna’s mask—her refusal to let him see beneath the surface—makes genuine connection impossible:

He decided he absolutely must speak openly with her. So, he waited for her in her drawing room. But Anna did not return alone; she brought with her her old unmarried aunt, Princess Oblonskaya. This was the woman who had come earlier in the morning, with whom Anna had gone out shopping. Anna seemed oblivious to Vronsky’s worried and questioning expression and began eagerly recounting her morning’s shopping. He could see that something was stirring within her; in her flashing eyes, when they rested on him, there was an intense concentration, and in her words and movements, there was that rapid nervous grace that had initially captivated him, but now only made him uneasy and filled him with disgust.

Anna was suppressing her inner turmoil: a growing restlessness, insecurity, and aggression. She concealed them behind a cheerful mask, remaining oblivious to the signals her partner was sending. This is a common pattern for Sexual 3s.

He looked at her with serious eyes, but she responded with a defiant, half-mirthful, half-desperate look that he could not decipher. At dinner, Anna was in overly high spirits and even seemed to flirt with Tuschkevich and Yashvin.

Flirting, for Anna, serves as a form of narcissistic nourishment. The act of seduction energizes her and validates her through this game of attraction, which also functions as a provocation toward her partner. It becomes a means of revenge, giving her a sense of power and an illusion of control over the situation. Her unacknowledged aggression leads her to a provocative act: she goes to the opera in a flashy dress without Vronsky, where she is openly humiliated by Russian society. People avoid her as if she were suffering from a contagious disease. Clearly, they are punishing her for disregarding the social rules. Upon returning, she bitterly blames Vronsky for her ordeal.

“I begged you, I implored you not to go. I knew it would be unpleasant…” “Unpleasant!” she cried. “It was hideous! I’ll never forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me.” “A silly woman’s chatter,” he said. “But why risk it, why provoke—” “I hate your calm. You shouldn’t have put me in this position. If you loved me…” “What’s all this talk of love now, Anna?” “Oh, if you loved me as I love, if you were tortured as I am!” she said, looking at him with an expression of terror.

He was sorry for her, yet angry at the same time. He assured her of his love because he knew that was the only way to soothe her. Though he reproached her deeply in his heart, he said nothing that could displease her.

Vronsky and Anna are both lying to each other; frustration has no place in a vain relationship. She begins to openly demand love from him, accusing him and burdening him with the responsibility for her unhappiness—an impossible task for anyone. Victimization now becomes part of her revenge: “It is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes the other. I can’t have them together, and that’s the only thing I want. And since I can’t have that, I don’t care about the rest. I don’t care about anything, anything.”

It’s not just that her husband is no longer willing to give her their son; it’s that Vronsky’s desperately sought love leaves no room for anything else.

Anna approached Dolly, sat beside her, and, looking at her with eyes full of deep suffering and immense regret for her guilt, took her sister-in-law’s hand. “What are you thinking? What do you think of me? Don’t despise me. I don’t deserve contempt... I am simply unhappy. If there is a wretched being in the world, it is I,” she said, turning her face away and weeping bitterly. In the meantime, Anna returned to her boudoir, took a wine-glass, and poured a few drops of a medicine, the main ingredient of which was morphine. After drinking it, she sat motionless for a while, then went to bed in a soothed and somewhat cheerier frame of mind.

When she entered the bedroom, Vronsky looked at her intently, searching her face for traces of the long conversation he assumed she had had with Dolly. But in her expression of restrained excitement, and in a sort of reserve, he found nothing but her beauty, which, though he was accustomed to it, always bewitched him anew. Whether it was simply because he was in awe of the beauty of his beloved, or because it awakened desires that consumed his thoughts, Vronsky asked nothing. He hoped she would tell him something of her own accord. But she only said, “I’m so glad you like Dolly. You do, don’t you?”

Anna is already using morphine to calm the emotional storm inside her, relying on it to conceal her inner turmoil. It’s a way to numb the painful, unhappy, shame-filled, and hateful emotions that crowd her mind.

But her primary concern remains herself—how much she is dear to Vronsky and how much she can make up for all he has given up. Vronsky appreciated this desire, not only to please but to serve him, which had become the sole aim of her existence. However, at the same time, he wearied of the amorous snares in which she tried to entangle him. As time passed, and he found himself more and more often caught in these traps, he grew less interested in escaping them and more curious to see whether they hindered his freedom.

Anna’s attempts to bind him to her, to have him at her disposal whenever she wishes, along with her manipulations, accusations, and jealousy, only push him away. The more she tries to control him, the greater her desperation becomes. She continues to project her insecurities onto him, leading to the very outcome she fears the most:

“That glance shows the beginning of indifference.” Though she is sure that Vronsky’s coldness has begun, there is nothing she can do to alter their relationship. As before, only love and charm could keep him, but now, just as before, only daytime distractions and morphine at night could stifle the terrifying thought of what would happen if he ceased to love her. She still sees one possibility—if she cannot keep him, at least to be closer to him so that he cannot leave her. That possibility is divorce and remarriage. She began to long for that and decided she would agree to it the first time either he or her brother approached her on the subject.

Absorbed in such thoughts, she spent five days apart from him—the five days they were to be separated. “Never mind,” she thought. “As long as he’s here, he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me.”

Apparently, her striking beauty and special attention are not enough to hold him down, and her frustration drives her to even greater efforts to control him, restricting his freedom. In her desperation to manipulate him, she moves with him to Moscow, believing that her presence there will prevent him from distancing himself. She also decides to marry him as a

last resort to secure his commitment and finally asks her husband for a divorce. Yet the more she tries to control him, the more he asserts his right to personal space.

One thought—one thought alone—pursues her in different forms and refuses to leave her. “If I have such an effect on others, on this man who loves his home and his wife, why is Vronsky so cold toward me?... Not cold exactly, he loves me, I know that! But something new is drawing us apart. Why wasn’t he here all evening?... He is glad of an opportunity to show me that he has other duties. I know that, and I submit to it. But why prove that to me? He wants to show me that his love for me does not interfere with his freedom. But I need no proof—I need love.”

Anna craves her partner’s affection. Her thoughts, her emotions… everything is consumed by an obsession that can never be fully satisfied. The Sexual 3 tends to rationalize love, transforming it into a strategic set of actions to maintain the attachment of the other person. In this context, we can observe elements of her oral-stage fixation: deep down, she resembles not an adult woman embracing her feminine strength, but rather a baby, unable to soothe herself due to the absence of a secure and constant connection to her mother. This character, in her anxiety, abuses her partner by seeking comfort in his adored presence.

“I can do nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait, inventing amusements for myself—the English family, writing, reading—but it’s all just a sham, just like morphine. He ought to feel for me,” she says, tears of self-pity welling up in her eyes. She hears Vronsky’s abrupt ring and quickly dries her tears—not just drying them, but sitting by a lamp and opening a book, pretending to be composed. She wants to show him that she is displeased with his failure to come home as promised—displeased, but not to let him see her distress, and least of all, her self-pity. She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She doesn’t want conflict, blaming him for wanting to quarrel, but unconsciously putting herself in an antagonistic position.

The persistent frustration in her attempts to merge with her lover and control him fuels an aggression she can no longer suppress. The rage, the pugnacious insistence on proving her worthiness of love, gradually seeps into her interactions, transforming into hatred and a desire for revenge, deepening the rift and resentments. Her shadow is already taking over, and the mask of victimhood is firmly in place. The emptier she feels inside, the more desperate her demand for attention becomes. And the less attention she receives, the more anesthesia she requires to cope with her growing anxiety.

Vronsky’s attempts to reclaim his personal space jeopardize her pursuit of what she desires from him. And for her, it’s all or nothing. Black or white. No middle ground, no alternatives. Her infantile conscience leaves no room for compromise.

Her words, her intonation, her gestures—everything about her reflected a desire to argue, to fight... She was glad for the tenderness he showed, but some strange force of evil wouldn’t let her surrender to her feelings, as if the rules of warfare would not permit her to yield.

Although she appreciated his tenderness, her pride kept her from fully surrendering to and nourishing herself with his affection. Her mind was set on revenge for the thwarted love they once shared.

“For you, it’s a matter of obstinacy,” she said, watching him intently, suddenly finding the right word for the expression of his that irritated her so much. “Simply obstinacy. For you, it’s about keeping the upper hand over me, while for me...” Again, she felt sorry for herself, and she almost burst into tears. “If you knew what this means for me! When I feel, as I do now, that you are hostile—yes, hostile to me—if you only knew what this feels like! If you knew how close I am to calamity at this very moment, how afraid I am of myself!”

In her desperation, she began using emotional threats of suicide to gain control over him. For a brief moment, she succeeded:

Anna turned away, hiding her sobs. “But what are you talking about?” he said, horrified by her despair. He bent over her again, took her hand, and kissed it. “What is this for? Do I seek amusement outside our home? Don’t I avoid the company of other women?” “Well, yes! If that were all!” she replied. “Come, tell me what I should do to ease your mind. I’m ready to do anything to make you happy,” he said, touched by her expression of despair. “What wouldn’t I do to save you from distress, Anna?” “It’s nothing, nothing!” she said. “I don’t even know if it’s loneliness or just my nerves... Come, let’s not talk about it. What about the race? You haven’t told me!” she asked, trying to conceal her triumph at her victory, which, after all, had been on her side.

He requested supper and began telling her about the races, but in his tone, in his eyes—growing colder with each moment—she saw that he did not forgive her for her victory. The feeling of obstinacy she had been struggling with had returned in him. He was colder toward her than before, as if regretting his surrender. And she, remembering the words that had won her that moment, “how I feel on the brink of calamity, how afraid I am of myself,” realized that this weapon was a dangerous one, not to be used again. She felt that, alongside the love that bound them together, an evil spirit of strife had grown between them—a spirit that she could neither exorcise from his heart nor her own.

Her struggle was that of a codependent woman. What she truly sought was symbiosis with her partner—a state where the boundaries between “I” and “you” dissolve into a unity without limits, without individuality, and without personal freedom, as these posed threats to the union she craved. The will of the other became pure poison. The partner morphed into an extension of herself, an existential wellspring for survival. She couldn’t see him with all his flaws and virtues; she couldn’t love him. True love respects differences and sees the other as they are, unencumbered by the lens of oral fantasies that make one perpetually search for the mother’s breast.

Anna didn’t want a partner on her level; she needed to lift him up or bring him down to fulfill her projections—either sanctifying or demonizing him. Whenever she succeeded in soothing her anxiety with affection, she felt blissful. It was the contentment of a child finally receiving the comforting affection of a parent. In Neurosis and Human Growth, Karen Horney characterizes this personality as dependent, seeing love as the key to paradise, where all suffering ceases.

In Anna’s eyes, the entirety of Vronsky—his habits, ideas, desires, spiritual and physical temperament—was one thing: love for women, and she felt that love should be entirely focused on her. When that love seemed diminished, she reasoned that he must have transferred part of it to other women, or perhaps to another woman entirely—and so she became jealous. But she wasn’t jealous of any one woman in particular; she was jealous of the decrease in his love. Not having an object for her jealousy, she invented one. At the slightest hint, she transferred her jealousy from one object to another. At one moment, she was jealous of the low women with whom he might easily rekindle old bachelor ties; then, she was jealous of the society women he might meet; then, she was jealous of the imaginary girl he might want to marry, for whose sake he would leave her. This form of jealousy tortured her most, especially after he had unwittingly told her, in a moment of frankness, that his mother had tried to persuade him to marry the young Princess Sorokina.

And being jealous of him, Anna became indignant and found grounds for that indignation in everything. For everything that was difficult in her position, she blamed him. The agonizing suspense she had endured in Moscow, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s tardiness and indecision, her loneliness—she held him responsible for it all. If he had loved her, she believed, he would have understood the bitterness of her situation and rescued her from it. It was his fault she was in Moscow and not in the country. He could not live buried in the country as she would have liked. He needed society, and he had put her in this awful position—one he refused to understand. And again, it was his fault that she was forever separated from her son.

Everything now revolved around the obsessive madness of attaining a love that didn’t truly exist. Two human beings cannot live in symbiosis. In the symbiosis we crave to the point of

insanity, love withers, and an emotionally violent dynamic is born, oscillating between love and hate, attraction and repulsion. As the impossible becomes clear, the relationship breeds frustration, which spirals into escalating violence and revenge:

“He hates me, that’s clear,” she thought, and in silence, without looking back, she walked with faltering steps out of the room. “He loves another woman, that’s even clearer,” she told herself as she went into her own room. “I want love, and there is none. So, then, all is over.” She repeated the words she had just spoken, “and it must end.” “But how?” she asked herself, sitting down in a low chair before the looking-glass. And all at once, she knew what was in her soul. Yes, it was that thought that alone solved everything. “Yes, to die!... The shame and disgrace of Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my awful shame—my death will save it all. To die! And he will feel remorse, he will repent; he will be sorry, he will love me; he will despair and suffer because of me.” With a trace of self-commiseration, she sat down in the armchair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left hand, vividly picturing from all angles Vronsky’s suffering after her death. “Anna, why distress yourself—and me—so?” he said to her, kissing her hands. There was tenderness in his face now, and she fancied she heard tears in his voice, feeling them wet on her hand. Instantly, Anna’s despairing jealousy shifted to an exalted passion of tenderness. She put her arms around him, covering his head, neck, and hands with kisses.

Seeing him disarmed, vulnerable, and suffering, she experienced an abrupt shift from hatred to desperate affection, leading to a momentary reconciliation. Anna didn’t just want to be loved; she also needed her love to be received. Affection and excitement made her feel alive, gave meaning to her life... Yet, the moment of harmony was short-lived. Soon they quarreled again, this time over a visit he intended to make to his mother—whom Anna despised for suggesting he marry another woman. In Anna’s eyes, this advice made her mother-in-law despicable, an enemy, a threat to her longing to merge completely with Vronsky. She projected her guilt and self-loathing onto him, and her desire for revenge had already won.

It had never before happened that Anna and Vronsky had spent an entire day at odds, and for Anna, this was clear evidence that Vronsky’s love for her had disappeared, or at least grown cold. How else could he have looked at her with such indifference when he entered the room to collect the guarantee? How could he have seen her heart breaking and left without a word, his face marked by such callous composure? He didn’t just seem cold—he hated her, because he loved another woman. That was clear. And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna filled in the rest with the words he had clearly wished to say but hadn’t. She grew increasingly exasperated, imagining the cruel things he might have said: “I won’t stop you. Go where you want. You didn’t want to divorce your husband, probably

so you could go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I’ll give it to you. How many roubles do you need?” All the most brutal things a man could say, he had said to her in her imagination, and she couldn’t forgive him for them, as if he had actually spoken them.

Her mind is hallucinating, further accelerating her emotional whirlwind. She has lost touch with reality, and an intense fury over an imaginary wound—a fantasy of rejection and humiliation—fuels her thirst for revenge. These destructive thoughts have become addictive, and her mind fixates on conjuring the most agonizing scenarios possible. She longs to destroy, to leave nothing but desolation in her wake. Revenge seems to be her only trump card in the battle for Vronsky’s love; through suicide, she will force him to acknowledge his sole obligation—to love her. In her vision of revenge, he will suffer forever after losing her.

As the only means of resurrecting the affection for her in his heart, of punishing him, and of achieving victory in the struggle with the evil spirit possessing her heart, the idea of death arises clearly and vividly in her mind. At this point, nothing else matters to her: going to Vozdvizhenskoe or not, getting a divorce from her husband or not—it all feels irrelevant. She wants only one thing: to punish him. When she pours herself her usual dose of opium and thinks she only needs to drink the whole bottle to die, it seems so simple and easy that she begins to muse with twisted enjoyment about how he will suffer, repent, and love her memory when it is too late.

“I’ll go to him myself. Before going away forever, I’ll tell him everything. Never have I hated anyone as much as I hate that man!” she thinks, rushing to her room. (7/XXIX)

She projects hatred onto him, but the truth is, she hates herself. “He is everything to me, and I want him more and more to give himself up to me entirely. But instead, he wants more and more to get away from me.” The Sexual 3 projects desire and surrender onto others to compensate for their own inability to surrender and the suppression of their own desires.

“If I could be anything but a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but his caresses, but I can’t, and I don’t care to be anything else. And by that desire, I rouse aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me, and it cannot be different. Don’t I know that he wouldn’t deceive me, that he won’t desert me? I know all that, but it makes it no better for me. If, without loving me, from duty, he’ll be good and kind to me without what I want—that’s a thousand times worse than unkindness! That’s hell! And this is precisely what we have now! He hasn’t loved me for a long time. And where love ends, hate begins. […] If something disturbs me, I have reason to escape from it. That is, I must get rid of it. And why shouldn’t I be able to put out the light when there is nothing left to look at, when I feel nothing but disgust for it all?

Why are they talking, why are they laughing? It’s all lies, deceit, cruelty. Thus, I will punish him and escape from everyone and from myself.” (7/XXXI)

In the end, her lower self prevails; the desire for revenge triumphs, and she takes her own life—an act that seems to us the greatest form of self-punishment and aggression against both herself and others. Karen Horney posits that the dependent personality can only achieve surrender through self-denial. This surrender through symbiosis can only be felt, according to the author, in humiliation, mistreatment, and aggression, as these elements break down the pride that inhibits true surrender. However, this humiliation, in turn, reignites desires for revenge and self-loathing, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

Therefore, Anna must fantasize about humiliation to win the battle for love with Vronsky. The deep-seated longing for surrender—the greatest desire of the Sexual 3—can lead to suicide because this surrender, by definition, cannot be attained in a codependent relationship. Conversely, surrendering to death does fulfill this profound desire.

The novel Anna Karenina opens with an epigraph from the Bible: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (Deuteronomy 32:35). It is clear that Tolstoy is not referring to a vengeful God, but to the destructive shadow of the protagonist. More broadly, it alludes to the shadow of the Sexual 3, whose vengeful force ultimately stems from self-loathing originating in the repression of Eros—the source of life’s vitality, emotion, pleasure, and vivacity. If this character would allow themselves the permission to fully experience their emotions, love without guilt, and embrace life’s experiences as they come, they could simply be.