X. The Psychology of Folk: The Horse at the Well?

Marie-Louise von Frantz

Marie-Louise von Franz's classic work, The Feminine in Fairy Tales, is the basis for this investigation into the images of women in fairy tales.  Von Franz was a disciple of Jung, and, accordingly, her interpretations depend on the same lexicon as the Jungian terms we looked at in the second section of the lecture.

(I could, however, find not much mention of von Franz on the web, except for a book on aromatherapy for children.  Sic transit.)

Caption:  Sketch of a bat

Books by Marie-Louise Von Franz
Alchemical Active Imagination
By Marie-Louise Von Franz

Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales
By Marie-Louise von Franz

C.G. JUNG: His Myth in Our Time
By Marie-Louise von Franz

Von Franz traces the evolution of Jung’s basic concepts - complexes, archetypes and the collective unconscious, psychological types, the creative instinct, active imagination, individuation and much more - from their origins to their empirical documentation in his numerous books, papers and recorded lectures.


The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption. Based on a Romanian fairy
tale.
By Marie-Louise von Franz
Pages, 126. Released December 1998.

THE PROBLEM OF THE PUER AETERNUS
Marie-Louise von Franz (Zurich)
ISBN 0-919123-88-0. 288 pp. Sewn $20

The Latin term puer aeternus means eternal youth. In Jungian psychology it is used to describe a certain type of man - charming, affectionate, creative and ever in pursuit of his dreams. These are the men who remain adolescent well into their adult years, generally full of life yet strangely draining to those around them. We have worked with them, loved them and watched them wave good-bye.  It is impossible to overstate the influence on both men and women of this classic study, originally a series of lectures at the Zurich Jung Institute. It is Jungian psychology in its most down-to-earth voice, telling it like it is so accurately and with such a depth of understanding that it is still much in demand even though it has been out of print for many years. This new edition features a Bibliography and an extensive Index.

Marie-Louise von Franz, Ph.D., worked closely with Jung for almost 30 years. She is known world-wide for her many books on the practical application of Jungian psychology, including six other titles in this series.

Caption:  Young Lovers

followers in the footsteps

"In the fairy tales of Europe, the wolf more than any other animal has come to represent the unacceptable faces of society: sexual predation in Little Red Riding Hood, capitalist bullying in the tale of the Three Little Pigs. Its symbolic value in art and literature has become largely divorced from the reality of its existence. Like all animals in fairy tales, these wolves walk on two legs and speak with human voices. The wolf is thus a convenient metaphor for the storyteller, no doubt chosen because of an already unsavoury image.

The legend of the werewolf has done for wolves what the legend of the vampire has done for the bat - provided further layers of superstition and confusion, portraying the wolf as a supernatural and terrifying beast. The werewolf, by shifting between human and lupine forms, is at the same time a link between man and wolf and a creature totally alienated from both, and the deception of a creature that shifts between forms chills us further.

The symbolism of the wolf is one that has been exploited as well as subverted by Western art and literature, from fairy tales to the 'magical realism' of modern authors. The late Angela Carter, in her modern gothic collection of re-worked fairy tales The Bloody Chamber, explores the savage symbolism of the wolf to Central European cultures.

In Carter's telling of Little Red Riding Hood, our heroine is not a naïve child, but a sexually-aware teenager, traveling the woods armed with a knife, who brings about the fall of her werewolf foe not by escaping him but by seducing him. In The Werewolf and Wolf-Alice, she explores the manifold myths of werewolves that are the folklore of Central Europe, depicting through her fiction a brutal existence made more perilous by the existence of deceitful, powerful, sexually potent wolf-men.

Other cultures have had different perceptions of the wolf - to Native American Indians, the wolf is regarded as a teacher and pathfinder, an animal whose skills and sense of community made it an example from nature to be followed. In Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, the hero, Mowgli, is a boy who has been abandoned in the forest and raised by wolves, reflecting different cultural attitudes to the animal on the Indian sub-continent. And every school child knows the legend of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome - they too were raised by a she-wolf. "  more on Wolf Totem and Taboo.

Caption:  Blonde bombshell wrapped in leopard skin

books by Pam Keesey

Women Who Run with the Werewolves
Cleis Press, 1995, $12.95
ISBN 1-57344-057-4

“The 15 stories collected examine a wide range of images of the female werewolf, from the warm and funny to Melanie Tem's disturbing and painful ‘Wilding.’ Being a changeling can be a curse, a blessing of liberation, or even a sacred responsibility. Stories connect the werewolf mythos to the female life cycle, including menstruation, childbirth, menopause and old age. We see some werewolves ostracized by their communities, and some finding new forms of communion. Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin and Suzy McKee Charnas are included in this solid anthology, along with a thoughtful and informative introduction by Keesey.”

Vamps: An Illustrated History of the Femme Fatale
Cleis Press, 1997, $21.95
ISBN 1-57344-026-4

“Vamps is an insightful look into the long history of the so called ‘bad girl.’ It peels away layers of suspicion, conspiracy, and fear to get to the roots of this powerful, often dangerous image of woman as a sexual and independent creature. From the ancient tales of Lilith and Eve, to the witch trials, vampire myths, and modern film vamps, Keesey explores the rich heritage of the femme fatale. She delves into the reasoning behind the vilification of the goddess, and the midwives of old; and the power behind the appeal of characters like Basic Instinct's Catherine Trammel (played by Sharon Stone). There is ample vampire content in Vamps, and the photos are splendid and plentiful. It includes numerous quotes from historical sources, films, artists, and poetry; and ends with both a filmography, and a videography concerning film's most notable femme fatales. A wonderful resource, this book should not be missed.”

Caption:  Wolf Howling

from Women's Aggressive Fantasies

A Feminist Post-Jungian Hermeneutic

Sue Austin

"Usually, feminist analysis of this kind of material is given in terms of it being a psychic embed which occurs as a near-inevitable result of women growing up in a patriarchy. The common (feminist and non-feminist) assumption is that if a woman simply learns to 'love herself enough', develop enough 'good internal objects', come to terms with her 'inner masculine', or whatever, either the inner critic will stop, or the woman will somehow be better able to stand up to it (2). I would argue, however, that these experiences are more complex than is usually allowed for and that they say something important about women's experiences of, and fantasies around power, aggression, visibility, agency, and much more besides.

It needs to be made clear that I am not suggesting that such experiences are somehow 'good for women' or 'part of women's essential nature'. Nor am I refuting the notion that, to some degree (possibly in large part), they may be to do with women's experience of life under patriarchy. I am simply more interested in questioning what women can do with these experiences to turn them into something which serves their own interests.

Perhaps the phenomena in question could usefully be regarded as aspects of women's resistance to identity which, as Rose points out, lies at the core of psychic life. Again, this statement is not essentialist, it is simply an attempt to frame observed phenomena in such a way as to make meaningful exploration of them possible.

Splitting and Social Reinforcement of Splits

The resistance to identity which Rose refers to is a discomforting, unsettling, potentially tormenting thing which uproots our attempts to build an illusion of coherence, or makes us suffer for our pains when we try to build it. Here, experience is a coalescing, fragmenting, kaleidescoping uncertainty around identity, with discomfort as a constant and a given.

A way of managing this level of experience is to channel the terror associated with it into socially sanctioned forms backed by the institutions and discursive practices which support and perpetuate them. Thus moving beyond these structures may not be as straightforward as it at first seems. Part of what societal violence towards women offers is a way of locating the instability, danger and madness 'out-there'. None of it is 'in-here', 'inside us', or 'inside me', particularly if 'I' happen to be a member of a socially privileged group. A strong case can be made for the position that women do this as a result of living under a patriarchally defined gender-regime. But that does not facilitate change. It is a position which once understood needs to moved beyond, otherwise it becomes self-victimisation. The question is, how?

The curious thing about female identity is that it is so clearly learnt, a fact which makes it both interesting and disconcerting. Walkerdine points out that Freud commented '[T]he constitution [of the little girl] will not adapt itself to its function [heterosexual femininity] without a struggle (Freud 1933, p.117)', (Walkerdine, 1990, p.88) and Judith Butler (1990) argues that female identity is one of the places in social discourse where the extent to which identity (in this case gender identity) is performance is most obvious. To take the argument further we need to look at work done on how girls learn to be women. Specifically of interest is how girls learn to fabricate an illusion of
coherent 'feminine' identity which offers them significant defenses against the experiences which arise from a fundamental resistance to identity."

Caption:  Human werewolf

Lilith Notes