Kay F. Stone on Marie Louise von Franz

from her article 'Feminist Approaches to the Interpretation of Fairy Tales' in Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm.

 

An even more detailed examination of myth and Märchen as paradigms for inner growth is found in Marie-Louise von Franz's Problems of the Feminine Fairytales, published a decade earlier than the Monaghan and Perera works. As a Jungian analyst, von Franz is able to present concrete connections between the feminine in traditional literature and in the real world of women. Using Jung's concepts of anima and animus she insists that women come to terms with their masculine force as well as with the dark side of their feminine force. It is precisely this dark side that women have been taught to ignore and repress, according to many feminist writers. Von Franz also suggests that men develop familiarity with their feminine forces, but she does not comment on the fact that the dark sides of their masculine forces already have full expression. In the opinion of von Franz and other Jungians, full individuation for both females and males is encouraged by understanding myth and sharpen and other forms of archetypal expression such as dreams. As a Jungian rather than a feminist, von Franz is too moderate. She does not fully acknowledge the additional difficulty women face in attaining individuation in a male world.

 


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