Marie Louis von Franz and her method of interpreting Fairy Tales
In this essay, I will first, speak about Marie-Louise von Franz’s life and work and then
her method for interpreting fairy tales with aspects of her life and personality
interspersed throughout. And with that said, it is quite obvious that there has been no
better candidate to carry (and gladly carrying) the Jungian Baton forward than Marie-
Louise Von Franz. She truly was a kind of sorror mystica for Jung, marshalling and
shepherding his works for the new age that was, is and will come, but also remembering
to do it in her own way.
According to Von Franz, she merely was passing on a facet of Jung (Remembering
Jung), and that particular facet she shepherded was the elaboration on the
psychological importance of fairy tales. Out of her twenty-nine or so publications, eight
are dedicated solely to the investigation of the unconscious through fairy tales, which
amounts to about a third of her work. The rest devoted to alchemy, physics and other
unique topics as in mystery of the Grail Legend.
The method von Franz used to interpret fairy tales is similar but not exactly synonymous
to C.G. Jung’s guideline which could be “generally applied” to the structure of a dream.
However, she reminds us that fairy tales and myths are expressions of inner facts, as is
the dream, but that the fairy tale and the dreams are at times their own best
explanations (Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.37). Though this doesn’t stop us from
investigating, analyzing and amplifying fairy tales to help us make sense of the psyche.
But before we get into her method, I’d like to talk more about her life and especially in
relation to her typology, as something to hold in mind when we examine her method and
where her libido goes when she speaks about the method. I believe Von Franz was an
introverted thinking type with extraverted intuition. In modern MBTI language, that gives
us the type code of “INTP.” With introverted thinking, von Franz is interested in the order
and framework of the tale, as well as, to use the John Beebe keywords for Ti; “defining,
understanding and naming” (energies and patterns in psychological type pg.5). This
shows up in the way that she describes one of the steps (the exposition) as “the naming
of the problem” (Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.39). But perhaps you will see her
auxiliary function of extraverted intuition come to light more easily with the way she
especially particularly emphasizes the emerging patterns that are repeating in the tale,
such as number symbolism, and gender patterns. But also she is looking for the “lack of
a pattern” (Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.42) which tells us about what is missing. Part
of her life’s work is devoted to teasing out these patterns, to which owes some credit to
the writing of the book called “Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales.”
Now onto the method. The fairy tale structure includes Jung’s “four stage” dramatical
structure of locale, exposition, peripeteia and lysis, with two extra points that von Franz
adds, that are the amplification of symbols/patterns and the translation into
psychological language.
The fairy tale often starts with the locale or the time and place in which the story occurs,
often giving the declaration that the story occurred “once upon a time.” Humorously
enough, this once a upon a time is no time at all, and the fairy tale is a “non-localized”
setting. This non-localized self of the psyche is mirroring an aspect of the archetype of
the Self, which is the center and circumference of the psyche, and to be found nowhere
and everywhere. And von Franz informs us that that fairy tales relate to the
“timelessness and spaceless” realm of the collective unconscious (Interpretation of
Fairy Tales pg.39) to which Dr. James Newell expands on this statement saying that
“von Franz assumes that we are essentially located in the collective unconscious.”(Jung
and Fairy Tales). Being located in the collective unconscious is to say that we are
located in the unknown, and nobody knows where the unknown is located or what
timeframe it expresses. Perhaps it is best expressed her book, when von Franz says
that “expressing this once-upon-a-time…Eliade…most mythologists now call the illud
tempus, that timeless eternity, now and even. (Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.39). This
“illud tempus,” is what Eliade called “sacred time” in relation to “profane time.” Through
the use of Fairy tales, von Franz has brought back this quality of the Kairos, or sacred
time of the now and forever of the unconscious.
I was particularly struck when von Franz says that “Psychological interpretation is our
way of telling stories; we still have the same need and we still crave the renewal that
comes from understanding archetypal images” and that “because it has a vivifying effect
and gives a satisfactory reaction and brings one into peace and one’s unconscious
instinctive substratum,“ (Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.45). Why of course! This
Jungian approach we are doing is a reimagination of what of we have always done! It is
as though when read a tale or make an interpretation of a tale or a dream, we step out
of modern waking tempus and walk into an “illud tempus” that brings us back to that
“once upon a time,” which is no time at all. This aligns with von Franz when she says
that the tale is a “rite de sortie” which means a kind of ceremony or rite of passage that
helps you transition from stage to another. It seems as though to pass from a particular
stage that we may be stuck in (time), we need the illud tempus (no time) to transition
and the fairy tale helps provide a parallel in this individuation.
The next part of the method is the exposition or the illustration of the overall “main”
problem of the story. Stories and problems are entangled with one another, that’s why
when people in modern terms speak about “drama” they don’t mean the structure of a
play or film, but they are referring to problems of the current story going on in their lives.
With her introverted thinking, von Franz says “so you define the trouble psychologically
as well as you can and try to understand what it is.” (Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.40).
In much of the same way, in the dream, the psyche comments with an exposition of its
own and the main problem you are working on, making the study of fairy tales a useful
analog to the practice of dream tending.
Within the exposition, there is the peripeteia, both singular and multiple climaxes or high
intensity change points in the story that become the key knowing whether the story en
route to a happy or tragic ending (Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.40). The peripeteia
may be associated with the Jungian idea of “enantiodromia, where when something
reaches its highest point of tension (the climax) it starts to move in the other direction
towards its opposite. The last of the four stages is the lysis, or “how the tale ends” which
is provides good parallels how the stories in our lives end or continue to perpetuate.
The last two steps that von Franz has added are the amplification of symbols and the
translation into psychological language. I’ll include the dramatis personnae within the
amplification of symbols, though it could be included in the above four stages within the
locale. The amplification of symbols is in line with the Jungian taxonomy of counting and
classifying for clarity. This classifying helps navigate in the investigation of the zoology
of the Psyche. One must pay attention to the genus and species of the archetypal
characters that surface in the story. The gender of the characters proves to be a key
touchstone for understanding, as it shows the “Lack” of a pattern. Though the essential
and perhaps most important amplification lies in looking at the number symbolism, i.e.
trinities vs. quaternities and so on. This can help you grasp the whole meaning of the
story.
The last step of translating into psychological language includes a bit of the previous
step because one has find parallels with myths and other motifs in order to discover the
antidote that the psyche needs for its healing. Von Franz has written several books and
translating fairy tale vocabulary into psychological terminology. She has shown how the
dramatis personnae in fairy tales are related to archetypal characters in the psyche, like
the Shadow, the Anima and Animus and so on. She also shows how the typology of the
psyche works in fairy tales with the story of the King’s son as the dummling hero who
represents the fourth or inferior function, as the renewal or bringer of new energy.
(Interpretation of Fairy Tales pg.40 & 43). Her life’s work and mastery or these
concepts, I believe had a profound influence on John Beebe and his typological model
of the function-attitudes like extraverted feeling or introverted sensation, which find
homes in the archetypal figures in one’s dreams, and show “how” we are using a
function.
The whole idea of amplification and translation into psychological language is in relation
to and for the healing of the narrative of our individuation story. It seems that more often
than not, the story ends in a catastrophe, yet we are victims to it because we are
unconscious to how it all works. And so, to conclude, you might say that the story of the
life of Marie Louise von Franz was to marshal an approach to show us how it works and
to help heal the story/our stories, with her laboring efforts to understand fairy tales. She
helped us see that though the story may end in a catastrophe, it is always a happy
ending when you know how and why.
Resources:
Beebe, J. (2017). Energies and patterns in psychological type: the reservoir of consciousness. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Franz, M.-L. von, & Franz, M.-L. von. (1996). The interpretation of fairy tales. Boston: Shambhala.
Remembering Jung. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3522&v=K6GU1OV_OeE
Newell, J. Jung and Fairy Tales online course, 2019 Module 2
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