Being dizzy
Heart pounding so hard you knew you were going to die
Right now.
Die.
Alone, in the middle of the street, in pain.
Only I had been enough times to ER to know
it wasn’t a heart attack.
Or not a heart attack in the sense of something wrong with my heart muscle.
It was a different kind of heart attack
A heart attack in my soul.
I had to see her.
She was the only one who helped.
I had to…
Panic Attacks in Pistachio: A Psychological Detective Story begins in the middle of a panic attack and never lets up. The man suffering from these agonizing panic attacks comes to his regular therapy session but instead of finding comfort discovers something no patient would ever expect to find. The drive to discover the truth behind this terrifying mystery sets him out on a quest, even a crusade, to discover the meaning of what happened. He must search among his fellow patients and ultimately enter his therapist’s temenos, the holy of holies.
In this psychological detective journey, he finds powerful help, through active imagination, from the greatest detectives of all time, Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. These inner figures help him solve the mystery and the process helps transform tragedy into the beginning of individuation. He discovers many secrets and ultimately the hidden connection between pistachio ice cream and his panic attacks. Written as a thriller, told in the first person, based on the author’s long experience as a Jungian analyst, the book makes compelling reading.
“Panic Attacks in Pistachio packs a lot of punch. There is the personal anguish of loss at the outset, the threat of mass destruction as the narrative unfolds, and the surprising compassionate ending at the conclusion. It’s a page turner from start to finish.”
Why Odysseus Came Home as a Stranger and Other Puzzling Moments in the Life of Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Abraham, and other Great Individuals
Author Henry Abramovitch comes from a culture that encourages people to ask why. As a Jungian analyst, he also values questions. In reading the life stories of “Great Individuals,” he often found himself asking the question, “Why?” Why did Arjuna, greatest general of his age refuse to fight? Why did Socrates remember his debt to Ascalapius, the god of healing, only in his last breath? Why did Jesus, the prophet of love, curse an innocent fig tree? Why did Abraham agree to kill the son he loved the most? Why did Lot’s wife look back? Why did Odysseus come home as a stranger?
A meeting between C.G. Jung and Rabbi Leo Baeck took place in Zurich in October 1946 at the Savoy Hotel Baur en Ville. Very little is actually known about this meeting. There are no extant notes or reports from the principals indicating what was said or discussed. There was no secretary present taking down minutes of the conversation. What is known from the few documents attesting to this meeting is that it took place at Jung’s request and that Baeck did not wish to meet with Jung. The play is an imaginative construction of what might have happened in this historic meeting of two great men.
HENRY ABRAMOVITCH Ph.D. is Founding President and senior training analyst at the Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology in Honor of Erich Neumann, Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University Medical School and Past President of Israel Anthropological Association. He is active in Israel Interfaith Encounter Association. He teaches and supervises Routers in the IAAP Developing Groups in Eastern Europe and Kazakhstan. He is author of The First Father (2010); Brothers and Sisters: Myth and Reality (2014); Why Odysseus Came Home as a Stranger and Other Puzzling Moments in the Life of…Great Individuals (2020), and with Murray Stein, the plays, The Analyst and the Rabbi (2019), My Lunch with Thomas (2023) and Eranos (2023). Since the beginning of the war, he has led a Reflection Group for Ukrainian Analysts on Zoom. This is his first novel.
When her husband was diagnosed with a serious brain tumor, Marianne Tauber turned to art—painting and poetry—to cope with the situation. Years later, she explicates what was behind the drive to create, presenting seventeen paintings and poems alongside a narrative of the time of crisis in journal form. She delves into the concepts of Jungian psychology and alchemy to make sense of the images and their healing effect, bringing about an alchemical rebirth.
“This is a gripping and powerful book, catalyzed by crisis and personal tragedy, but born of an imaginative and courageous spirit. Through her meditative discipline, painting, and poetry, Tauber looks unflinchingly into the darkest depths of her soul. Creatively developing an alchemical active imagination, she follows an arduous path, not only to psychological survival, but to redemption, greater wholeness, and wisdom. Replete with archetypal and symbolic amplifications, The Soul’s Ministrations is a significant and scholarly contribution to Jungian literature and a valuable guide to anyone who must struggle with the tragic aspects of life or wishes to learn about the creative depths of the psyche.” —Stanton Marlan, Ph.D., ABPP
The goal of the therapist is to find the child. When we have found the child, the child has also made an attempt at being seen. So there we are, face to face with the obstacles and disturbances between us.
Jungian Psychology and the Christian Mystical Tradition
Two towering figures thread their way through this book: St Teresa of Avila, the sixteenth century Spanish Carmelite saint, writer and reformer and C. G. Jung, the founder of modern depth psychology. Through sharing fifteen key papers, chapters and talks written over nearly twenty-five years, the author draws on their writings to focus on, and explore, the interface and relationship between the Christian mystical tradition and Jungian, depth psychology.
DSM-5-TR Insanely Simplified: Unlocking the Spectrums within DSM-5-TR and ICD-10
by Steven Buser & Len Cruz
The publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 5 (DSM-5, 2013) and the more recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 5 – Text Revision edition (DSM-5-TR, 2022), together ushered in a major change to the field of mental health diagnosis. DSM-5-TR Insanely Simplified provides a summary of key concepts of the new diagnostic schema introduced in DSM-5 as well as the updated DSM-5-TR. It utilizes a variety of techniques to help clinicians master the new spectrum approach to diagnosis and its complex criteria.
Blue Salamandra creates artistic projects for Jungain Psychology. In this podcast episode, Murray and Henry are traveling together on a train from Zurich to Ascona, Switzerland. Their conversation revolves around the perplexing story of a relationship that began with a lunch at a Zurich restaurant that led to a surprising outburst of creativity and ended in a climax that may have been mysteriously forecast in a dream. Along the way we lean about Thomas Arzt and the strange bond that led to the creation of the Red Book for Our Times series!
Volume 8 of the Collected Works of Marie-Louise von Franz
Introduction to the Interpretation of Fairytales
& Animus and Anima in Fairytales
Marie-Louise von Franz believed fairytales to be the purest and simplest expressions of the collective unconscious. Too often the interpreter regresses to a personalized approach, however, heroes and heroines are abstractions that embody collective archetypes. The innumerable variations within the same fairytale told in different cultures are like a musical theme crisscrossing humanity. In Volume 8, von Franz establishes that there is only one psychic fact to which the fairytale addresses itself, namely, the SELF. This volume contains new and updated translations of The Interpretation of Fairytales along with Anima and Animus in Fairytales and combines them into a single volume, clarifying the Jungian approach to interpreting fairytales and offering a deep dive into anima and animus.
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein:
Volume 7 – The Problem of Evil
Volume 7 of the Collected Writings of Murray Stein brings together the author’s writings on moral conscience and the problem of evil as developed in the works of C.G. Jung and other psychologists and philosophers. Included are reflections on the nature of evil and the source of evil, the importance of becoming conscious of what Jung called “the shadow” aspect of the personality, and the role of the individuation process for containment of shadow enactments.
Panic Attacks in Pistachio:
A Psychological Detective Story
Panic Attacks in Pistachio: A Psychological Detective Story begins in the middle of a panic attack and never lets up. Written as a thriller, told in the first person, based on the author’s long experience as a Jungian analyst, the book makes compelling reading.
The Letters of Hope Street
What if a spirit from your past could guide you into your future? Beautifully illustrated, The Letters of Hope Street hints at how synchronicity occurs at just the right time to nudge us into our future.
Depth Calls to Depth:
Spiritual Direction and Jungian Psychology in Dialogue
Depth Calls to Depth: Jungian Psychology and Spiritual Direction in Dialogue draws on the author’s dual background as a certified Jungian analyst and psychologist as well as a spiritual director with a master’s degree in theology.
New Releases
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein: Volume 5 – Analytical Psychology And Christianity
This volume of the Collected Writings of Murray Stein contains the authors works on the topic of C.G. Jung’s personal relationship to his own religious tradition and his analysis and critique of Christian theology and practice. These were topics that preoccupied Jung’s mind during the entire course of his adulthood. The author argues that Jung’s constructive suggestions can be of assistance to Christianity in the 21st Century and beyond.
The goal of the therapist is to find the child. When we have found the child, the child has also made an attempt at being seen. So there we are, face to face with the obstacles and disturbances between us.
Jungian Psychology and the Christian Mystical Tradition
Two towering figures thread their way through this book: St Teresa of Avila, the sixteenth century Spanish Carmelite saint, writer and reformer and C. G. Jung, the founder of modern depth psychology. Through sharing fifteen key papers, chapters and talks written over nearly twenty-five years, the author draws on their writings to focus on, and explore, the interface and relationship between the Christian mystical tradition and Jungian, depth psychology.
Polly Young-Eisendrath´s Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to Be Wanted was first published by Harmony Books in 1999. Since then, it has become a classic read for those readers– to use a cinematographic expression – who want to use analytical psychology to shed light on what women want. This book, when first published, was described (and still is) as “provocative and vital.”
This book is the second of the series titled Jungianeum: Re-Covered Classics in Analytical Psychology curated by Stefano Carpani.
Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul In the 21st Century – An Eranos Symposium Volume 5
The essays contained in this fifth and final volume in the series, Jung’s Red Book for Our Time, were delivered at the Eranos Symposium on “Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for Soul in the 21st Century,” held at Monté Veritá Conference Center in Ascona, Switzerland on April 28 – May 1, 2022.
The papers contained in this volume are published in the order they were presented at the Symposium. They show a deep underlying coherence that was not consciously designed but rather seemed to obey a will of its own.
The Collected Writings Of Murray Stein: Volume 6 – Analytical Psychology And Religion
Analytical Psychology and Religion is the sixth volume of the Collected Writings of Murray Stein. It includes works on the Bible from a depth psychological perspective, the relationship between some Jungian concepts and religious doctrines such as Divine Providence and the human as imago Dei, and a reflection on the dialogical relationship between analytical psychology and religion.
Volume 5 of the Collected writings of Murray Stein – Jungian Psychology and Christianity – is currently in production and will be published later this year.
Volume 7 of the Collected Works of Marie-Louise von Franz: Aurora Consurgens
Chiron Publications is honored to publish the newly translated volumes of the Collected Works of Marie-Louise von Franz, one of the most renowned authorities on fairytales.
Aurora Consurgens, the rising sun, is a vision forged in the pseudo-Aristotelian tradition that became a cornerstone of medieval Church doctrine and the centerpiece of the Dominican and Franciscan traditions. While its authorship has been shrouded in mystery and controversy, Marie Louise von Franz furnishes ample evidence that this was a final work of Thomas Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church. His vision begins with an anima figure of the Sapentia Dei.
This medieval alchemical text is rich in symbolism and offers a glimpse into how unconscious contents can be understood through their interactions with the material world. Marie Louise von Franz places Aurora Consurgens squarely in the tradition of visionary spiritual writings similar to the visions of Hildegard von Bingen or John of Patmos. Aquinas’s visions and his final commentary on the Song of Songs appear to have been the result of a state of ecstasy into which he fell just before his death. Marie Louise von Franz excavates a psychological treasure from his work.
DSM-5-TR Insanely Simplified: Unlocking the Spectrums within DSM-5-TR and ICD-10
by Steven Buser & Len Cruz
The publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 5 (DSM-5, 2013) and the more recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 5 – Text Revision edition (DSM-5-TR, 2022), together ushered in a major change to the field of mental health diagnosis. DSM-5-TR Insanely Simplified provides a summary of key concepts of the new diagnostic schema introduced in DSM-5 as well as the updated DSM-5-TR. It utilizes a variety of techniques to help clinicians master the new spectrum approach to diagnosis and its complex criteria.
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein – Volume 4: The Practice of Jungian Psychoanalysis
Dr. Murray Stein’s prolific career has produced a substantial body of writings, lectures, and interviews. His writings, captured in these volumes, span a wide domain of topics including Christianity, individuation, midlife, the practice of analytical psychology, and topics in contemporary society. His deep understanding of analytical psychology is much more than an academic discourse, but rather a deeply personal study of Jung that spans nearly half a century.
The Practice of Jungian Psychoanalysis is the fourth volume in The Collected Writings of Murray Stein. It is an extraordinarily practical volume, indispensable for Jungian analysts, Jungian psychotherapists or students hoping to sharpen their analytical skills. Topics include the goals of analysis, transference, countertransference, dream interpretation, individuation, active imagination, sibling rivalry and envy, the symbolic attitude, the faith of the analyst, and even the problem of sleepiness during sessions. The volume concludes with Dr. Stein reviewing the “4 Pillars of Jungian psychoanalysis.” Volume 4 is truly the “nuts and bolts” of Jungian analytical practice.
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein –Volume 3: Transformations
Transformation suggests a profound change in someone’s life, often of a psychological or spiritual nature. It is the emergence of the Self-Imago through individuation. In Volume 3, Dr. Stein examines this developmental process on a personal as well as a cultural level. Great works of transformation are explored, including those of Rembrandt, Picasso, Dante, and Jung. One’s life arc of transformation through the entire life cycle is scrutinized, particularly in the psychological transformation of men. Even the God Image transforms over time and can lead to profound meaning in our journey. The volume concludes with an exploration of Dante’s Divine Comedy and the alchemical transformations found within.
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein – Volume 2: Myth and Psychology
Volume 2 looks at Mythology through a Jungian lens. Dr. Stein examines a vast array of mythologic figures. Cronos the devouring Olympian father, Hephaistos with his powerful creativity, and Narcissus with his legendary vanity, are just a few of the archetypal figures he pursues. The passage through midlife and its mythological nuances is portrayed with astute attention to the liminal space it embodies. Mythology is ripe with transformative symbols reaching deep into our unconscious. Dr. Stein masterfully unpacks the archetypal cores from within as he guides us through this transformation.
The Collected Writings of Murray Stein –Volume 1: Individuation
Volume 1 contains one of the core elements of Dr. Stein’s lifelong teaching, namely the concept of individuation. The process of individuation fosters the fulfillment of our unconscious potential as called forth by the archetypal Self. In many ways, it is the meaning of one’s life journey. It encompasses the entire lifetime and includes both our psychosocial as well as spiritual development. Concepts of transformation, failure, midlife, mythological figures, and liminality are central to his writings on individuation. Our journey culminates as we approach alchemical union through the Unus Mundus.
Murray Stein shares these timeless lectures—a work of respectful and loving interpretation. The Bible presents a world elaborated with reference to a specific God image. As the mythographer Karl Kerenyi puts it in writing about the Greek gods and goddesses, every god and every goddess constitutes a world. So it is too with the biblical God, whose name Stein exceptionally capitalizes throughout out of cultural respect. The biblical world is the visionary product of a particular people, the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, who delved deeply into their God image and pulled from it the multitude of perspectives, rules for life, spiritual practices, and practical implications that all together created the tapestry that we find depicted in the canonical Bible. Yahweh is the heart and soul of this world, its creator, sustainer, and destroyer. The Bible is a dream that tells the story of how this world was brought into being in space and time and what it means.
Robert A. Johnson, best-selling author of He, She, We and other psychology classics, shares a lifetime of insights and experiences in this easy-to-listen-to explanation of psychological projection – seeing traits in others that are, in fact, our own. He masterfully reveals how each of us gives up our inner gold to those whom we idealize or are attracted to. Each one of us must learn the arduous task of “taking back” this gold as we move through life’s journey.
Drawing on early Christianity, medieval alchemy, depth psychology, and the myths of the Flying Dutchman and the Once and Future King, he also explores the subjects of loneliness, fundamentalist religion, and the spiritual dimensions of psychology.
One of the most influential and visionary analysts of his generation, Johnson follows the tradition of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell among those whose ideas have shaped our deepest metaphors of self and psyche. His books are known worldwide for presenting Jung’s complex theories with the simplicity and grace.
The War of the Gods in Addiction, based on the correspondence between Bill W., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Swiss psychiatrist, C.G. Jung, proposes an original, groundbreaking, psychodynamic view of addiction. Using insights from Jungian psychology, it demonstrates why the twelve steps of AA really work.
It explores, through theoretical and clinical material, modern and ancient myths, and fairy tales, the crucial process of neutralizing the archetypal shadow / archetypal evil, an aspect of all true addictions. It also explains how dreams may be used in the diagnosis and treatment of addiction. This book bridges the longstanding gap between the mental health and twelve-step recovering communities in ways that significantly encourage mutual understanding and benefit. Previously published by Spring Journal.
David Schoen, LCSW, MSSW, is a Jungian analyst who practices near New Orleans, Louisiana. He lectures and teaches nationally, is an internationally published author on the psychic significance of the hurricane, and a Louisiana poet.
Prisms: Reflections on the Journey We Call Life James Hollis summarizes a lifetime of observing, engaging, and exploring why we are here, in service to what, and what life asks of us. These 11 essays, all written recently, examine how we understand ourselves, and often have to reframe that understanding, the nature and gift of comedy, the imagination, desire, as well as our encounters with narcissism, and aging.
In Hauntings, James Hollis considers how we are all governed by the presence of invisible forms – spirits, ghosts, ancestral and parental influences, inner voices, dreams, impulses, untold stories, complexes, synchronicities, and mysteries – that move through us through history. He offers a way to understand them psychologically, examining the persistence of the past in influencing our present, conscious lives and noting that engagement with mystery is what life asks of each of us. From such engagements, a deeper, more thoughtful, more considered life may come.
James Hollis, Ph.D., a Jungian Analyst in Washington, D.C., explores the roadblocks we encounter and our on-going challenge to live our brief journey with as much courage, insight, and resolve as we can bring to the table.
explores the need to know ourselves more deeply, and the many obstacles that stand in our way. The various chapters illustrate internal obstacles such as intimidation by the magnitude of the project, the readiness to avoid the hard work, and gnawing self-doubt, but also provide tools to strengthen consciousness to take these obstacles on. Additional essays address living in haunted houses, the necessity of failure, and the gift and limits of therapy.
Most of all, Hollis addresses the resources we all have within, or can obtain for ourselves, to lead a more abundant life and to step into larger possibilities for our unfolding journeys.
James Hollis, Ph.D. is a Zürich-trained Jungian analyst in private practice in Washington, DC where he lives with his wife Jill, whose art has provided four Chiron covers. The Broken Mirror, his eighteenth book, includes “notes toward a memoir” that illustrates the benefits a review of one’s life may bring the reader.
The Best of James Hollis: Wisdom for the Inner Journey
is a collection of excerpts from the writings of James Hollis, PhD, Jungian psychotherapist and author. These selections span across his body of work from TheMiddle Passage (1993) to Prisms (2021) organized into different topics ranging from the psychological concepts of Carl Jung to the everyday tasks of our living and callings. Hollis’s wisdom will challenge readers to find their own path, to be who they are called to be, to take the risks to trust their soul, and thus live a life worthy of their unique gifts. Hollis’s writings ask us to live a deeper and more authentic life.
James Hollis, Ph.D. is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Washington, DC. Originally a Professor of Humanities, he is the former Director of the Houston Jung Center and the Washington, D.C. Jung Society. He is Vice-President emeritus of the Philemon Foundation, author of seventeen books, and a frequent public speaker. He lives with his wife Jill, a retired therapist and painter, and together they have three living children.
Where the Shadows Lie takes the reader on a journey through Tolkien’s Middle-earth, following the hobbits, their companions, and the characters they encounter on their quest. Along the way, Skogemann reveals the deep symbolic layers that are the source of joy and enchantment that many find in reading The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn, with the aid of Gandalf, Legoli, and Gimli, ascends to the throne and becomes the center of a great, unified kingdom—a symbol of the collective Self. The four hobbits, representing individual ego-consciousness, are transformed by the quest and acquire the psychological tools they need to renew the Shire—the small domain enfolded in the great.
Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes provide a key to understanding the forces of fantasy that are so powerful in Tolkien’s masterpiece—and thereby a key to understanding ourselves and the events of the outside world in our modern times.
Robert A. Johnson was more than an international best-selling author of 15 books, brilliant and influential Jungian analyst, and acclaimed international lecturer; he was a master storyteller. This audiobook is a direct recording of Robert’s own tellings of these stories, remastered for improved quality. Robert told these stories, his favorites, to an appreciative and revering community each night at Journey into Wholeness events from 1981 to 2001. Robert collected several of these stories in his beloved India, but the audiobook includes stories and myths from Chinese, Native American, Mexican, and European traditions. Each story is introduced by a colleague, mentee, or friend whose life was profoundly changed by the presence and teachings of this wise and other-wordly sage.
Robert taught us we could enjoy a myth or a story as a child would, or we could listen more carefully to discover a road map for our own inner work. Magical, humorous, tragic, enigmatic, these stories illustrate Robert’s capacity to speak to the delights and adversities of the human experience, and to our collective quest to become our most conscious and authentic selves.
Relationships are hard enough to negotiate without advice from outsiders who don’t know you at all. This book is not a “how-to” aimed at attaining the ideal. Rather, it is a how-it-is, an exploration of how relationships are, how they develop, how they deteriorate, how they may end and how they may even revive. Strange as it may seem, it is not a book about how individual human beings are. It doesn’t concern itself with individual human failings. Those failings are given in being human. Instead, it describes the potentials for joy, disappointment and burden that are intrinsic to relationship and by extension to the process of becoming fully human. In a world obsessed with attaining an illusory ideal, becoming fully human is the greatest threat.
John A. Desteian, J.D., L.P., diplomate Jungian psychoanalyst, has been in private practice in Saint Paul since 1983. He is the author of Coming Together, Coming Apart and numerous articles and book reviews, appearing in professional journals and anthologies, which concern interpersonal (object) relations, gender, creativity, and politics.
The Collected Works of Marie-Louise von Franz is a 28 volume Magnum Opus from one of the leading figures in Jungian Psychology. The first volume, Archetypal Symbols in Fairytales: The Profane and Magical Worlds, released on the author’s 106th birthday, January 4th, 2021 and is to be followed by 27 more volumes over the next 10-12 years. Volume 2 examines the hero’s journey, whereas Volume 3 explores the maiden’s quest. Five of the 28 volumes have already been released with an anticipated schedule of 2-3 new volumes per year. Volume 8 should be released in the next few months.
Von Franz was a renowned authority on fairytales, dream interpretation and the analysis of the unconscious. She was an original thinker whose body of work presents a wide-ranging and systematic approach to a psychology of the unconscious and the archetypal symbols that appear in fairytales, dreams, and alchemy.
At the age of eighteen, while still in high school, Marie-Louise von Franz met the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung at his Bolingen Tower. She later described this as the most decisive encounter of her life. She entered analysis with him months later, completed her doctorate in classical philology and began seeing her first analytical patients soon after. She acquired a deep understanding of the unconscious and developed a far-reaching expertise in fairytales, alchemy, synchronicity and numbers. She is estimated to have personally analyzed over 65,000 dreams. She was a prolific writer and a highly sought-after teacher.
Chiron Publications is currently offering free sample chapters
of Volumes 1, 2, and 3
(click on the boxes below to download)
as well as a 20% discount on all volumes of the Collected Works of Marie-Louise von Franz.
Volume 3 turns to the Maiden’s Quest within fairytales.
The maiden/heroine navigates a complicated maze of inner and outer relationships as she builds a bridge to the unconscious. The heroine contends with the animus in many forms like a devouring and incestuous father, demonic groom, the beautiful prince, an androgenous mother, a cold dark tower, and through conflict with the evil stepmother.
Dangers and pitfalls await her as the conscious feminine strives to make connections with the unconscious masculine. The maiden is the undeveloped feminine and the promised fruit of her struggle with the animus is the coniunctio. Volume 3 is a masterwork of cross-cultural scholarship, penetrating psychological insight, and a strikingly illuminating treatise. With her usual perspicacity and thoroughness, von Franz gathers countless fairytale motifs revealing a myriad of facets to the maiden’s quest.
Volume 2 – The Hero’s Journey is about the great adventure that leads to a cherished and difficult to obtain prize. In these fairytales, the Self is often symbolized as that treasured prize and the hero’s travails symbolize the process of individuation. In its many manifestations, the hero embodies the emerging personality. “In the conscious world, the hero is only one part of the personality—the despised part—and through his attachment to the Self in the unconscious is a symbol of the whole personality.”
Von Franz’s prodigious knowledge of fairytales from around the world demonstrates that the fairytale draws its root moisture from the collective realm. This volume continues where Volume 1 left off as von Franz describes the fairytale, “suspended between the divine and the secular worlds (…) creating a mysterious and pregnant tension that requires extreme power to withstand.” The resistance of the great mother against the hero and his humble origins, as well as the hero freeing the anima figure from the clutches of the unconscious are universal archetypal patterns. The spoils retrieved by the hero symbolize new levels of consciousness wrested from the unconscious.
Volume 1 – Fairytales, like myths, provide a cultural and societal backdrop that helps the human imagination narrate the meaning of life’s events. The remarkable similarities in fairytale motifs across different lands and cultures inspired many scholars to search for the original homeland of fairytales. While peregrinations of fairytale motifs occur, the common root of fairytales is more archetypal than geographic. A striking feature of fairytales is that a sense of space, time, and causality is absent. This situates them in a magical realm, a land of the soul, where the most interesting things happen in the center of places like Heaven, mountains, lakes, and wells.
