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Originally Posted by Lalwendë
I thought that the daemons were meant to represent the anima/animus. Female characters have male daemons, males have females. Also daemons are not fixed until characters approach emotional maturity - Lyra's daemon becomes fixed when she is in love with Will. Possibly Pullman means this has something to do with first love fixing 'ideals' in the mind or that only when the Daemon is fixed we can begin to look 'outside' ourselves and to other people.
I'm not sure if the actual creatures that Daemons become are significant in this respect - Lord Asriel has his snow leopard, which sounds fitting, but how do the little obedient terrier daemons belonging to the staff at the research centre fit with this idea? What does that say about what has happened to these adults? And what does it say about the poor children who are severed from their daemons?
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Anima is a likely explanation, but as I said in a post above, I've read HDM only once and haven't deeply pondered all its implications. I suppose one would have to know Jung very well to be able to say--or accept Pullman's word for it. I can't help but think of Tolkien's comment that one of the consolations of fantasy (or profound desires which fantasy can satisfy ) is to communicate with animals. It is fascinating to me that Pullman creates these alternate selves or identities that are animals. What is it like to live with another self that is, quite literally, a beast? The narrator does, after all, describe Lyra in childhood as a "half-wild cat."
There is that statement that all servants have dćmons who are dogs, so from that I assume there is some kind of relationship between adult form and the human's personality. Does this relate to the researcher's terriers?
While we see strongly the relationship between humans and their dćmons, I don't think we often are privilege to the dćmons' own thoughts--I could be wrong about this, but one incident stands out to me. When the gyptians kill the men who had caught Lyra, Pan squirms around with great curiosity to see what happens to their dćmons. That I found really poignant. Imagine your fate tied to the life span of another creature.