Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales

This book is published in a series entitled ‘Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts’ under the general editorship of Daryl Sharp.

Marie-Louise von Franz, who died six years ago, was an especially close collaborator of Jung’s. They first met when she was still in her teens and Jung in his late fifties. There was an immediate rapport, as she helped him to prepare lunch at his retreat on Lake Zurich. For his part he recognised in her an exceptional intellect, free-ranging, yet disciplined, as well as an earthiness, and he responded to both with approval. She quickly became involved in his work on alchemy. She also worked throughout her life on dreams, and fairy tales. On several occasions Jung remarked that she was the person whom he most trusted to understand his work (by no means always an easy matter).

Daryl Sharp, the founder of Inner City Books, is a Jungian analyst, and a great admirer of von Franz. He has assembled this book – one of several on fairy tales under her name – from notes taken by someone else at a seminar she gave in 1953 and, as such, it is a moving token of his esteem. It is also coloured by its origin: there is a freshness about it; but it is also didactic and, at times, sketchily simplistic.

Animus and anima are two of the best known Jungian concepts. The animus represents the masculine in the psyche of a woman, while the anima is its complement – the feminine in the psyche of a man. There have been elaborations by Jung and by Jungians, but the contra sexual aspect is at the heart of both and both, according to the theory, have personal and collective (impersonal) aspects.

The interest of fairy tales for Jungians is mainly for the light they throw on the collective, archetypal nature of the psyche. Von Franz puts this in its starkest form in her Preface where she declares that in fairy tales ‘we have just the skeleton of the psyche with the skin and flesh removed’. She deals with seven stories, and covers a wide geographical canvas, including Africa, Russia, Turkestan, and the Americas. The stories themselves, and their interpretations, are presented in a style which is clear and vigorous. Jung’s works may leave readers pondering what he means (which is by no means unproductive); they will not have this problem with von Franz.