Chapter II
Literature
Review
The following literature review
introduces the reader to the field of depth psychology, illustrates
psychological concepts that are relevant to this study, and explores research
that focuses on the connection between mythology, fairytales, and the human
psyche. After a brief introduction to the history of depth psychology, the
review describes the form and function of the human psyche; the process of
psychological development and self-realization; and the role that mythology,
fairytales, and archetypal stories play in the process of psychological
development. Lastly, this chapter explains the method of fairytale
interpretation that will be used to inform the heuristic component of this
thesis, which is located in Chapter III.
Introduction to Depth
Psychology
The term, depth psychology, was coined by Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler
“to denote the branch of psychological science which is concerned with the
phenomenon of the unconscious” (Jung, as cited in Samuels, Shorter, &
Plaut, 1986, pp. 43-44). Prior to the development of psychoanalysis in the late
1800s and early 1900s by the Austrian physician, Sigmund Freud, psychology had
focused primarily on the conscious mind’s relation to human thought, feeling, and
behavior (Gottlieb, 2012, lecture). With the rise of psychoanalytic theory in
the early 20th century, however, Freud’s emphasis on the unconscious brought
new insight and understanding to the internal mechanisms guiding human thought,
feeling, and behavior (Fishburn, 2012, p. 1).
Although Freud is considered the father
of modern depth psychology because of his discovery of the unconscious (Singer,
1972, p. 102), divergent theories developed regarding the concept of the
unconscious and the human psyche in total. Influenced by Freud’s work, Jung
began developing his own theoretical framework based on his clinical work with
patients and his own extensive self-exploration between the years of 1913 and
1917 (Geist, 2013). Jung’s discoveries laid the foundation for a branch of
psychology called analytical psychology, which
is now commonly referred to as Jungian
psychology (Geist, 2013).
Jung wrote extensively about his analytic
theories and methods, creating a 20-volume compilation called the Collected Works. He outlined the main
ideas of analytical psychology in Volume 6, Psychological
Types (1921/1971) and other, separate collections of correspondences,
remembrances, interviews, and biographical writings (Samuels et al., 1986, p.
22). Jung’s works provided a basis for many psychologists who are collectively
referred to as depth psychologists today.
When referring to depth psychology, then, this thesis utilizes a Jungian
perspective, employing the theories and concepts formulated by Jung and his
successors.
A
map of the psyche and psychological development.
The
ultimate end of depth psychology is to stand respectfully before inner truth
and dare to live it in the world.
Hollis,
2000, p. 104
The psyche: Instincts, archetypes, and
individuation. Modern depth psychology focuses on the human psyche, or the
psychic entity that embodies all psychic processes, both conscious and
unconscious (Stein, 1998, p. 25). The psyche, represented in Figure 1, can be
conceptualized as a self-regulating energetic system (Edinger, 1972, p. 61)
that contains different psychic areas and contents.
Figure 1. The psyche. Diagram created by the
author.
As Figure 1 indicates, the three main
areas of the psyche identified by Jung (1971) include consciousness, the
personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious (pp. 23-34), which
interact with one another to maintain homeostatic balance within the energetic
system. The psychic energy that is contained within this system has its source
in the underground layer of the instincts (Samuels et al., 1986, p. 22).
According to Jung (1983), the instincts themselves derive from “the most
primitive levels of nature”
(pp. 187-188) and are grounded in humans’ collective inheritance as a species.
This fertile soil exists before a person is born, and from it arise the
ever-present and biologically necessary drives, impulses, and energies that
pattern an individual’s behavior (Jung, 1997, p. 159). Jung (1997) believed
that humans, as biological beings, have “no choice but to act in a specifically
human way and fulfill . . . [their] pattern of behavior” (p. 159).
These inborn patterns of behavior are
inextricably linked with Jung’s concept of the archetypes. If the instincts
pattern human behavior, then the archetypes lie behind and direct them. Felt as
instinctual urges and present in the arousal of affect, they are recognizable
only in behavior and the primordial images of the psyche (Samuels et al., 1986,
p. 26). Archetypes are the internal presences that roam freely in the fertile
environment of the collective psyche, or the collective unconscious
and they regulate, modify, and motivate conscious contents in the individual
psyche (Jung, 1997, p. 161).
The primordial images associated with the
archetypes are found in fairytales, mythology, religion, and world literature
(Aizenstat, 2011, p. 16) as well as in poetry and art (Campbell, 2004, p. 20).
These images represent the “underlying ground themes upon which conscious
manifestations are sets of variations” (Jung, 1983, p. 16); these themes
include but are not limited to birth, ascendance, death, and rebirth (Hollis,
2000, p. 33). Although these patterns of behavior are inborn and universal,
each person is unique in his or her manifestation of them (Samuels et al.,
1986, p. 26). The archetypes, intimately connected with human instinct, dwell
in the psychic area of the collective unconscious and influence human thought,
feeling, and behavior.
The archetype of the self and
individuation. One’s unique expression of these universal archetypal
patterns is directed by the archetype of the Self. The Self is the central
inner voice, the God within, that directs one on the path to
Self-actualization, or what Jung (1983) called individuation (p. 20). By heeding the call of the voice within, the
individual achieves a sense of wholeness and the “realization of the meaningful
life” (Storr, 1983, p. 19). As the archetype of both unity and purpose, the
Self simultaneously functions to bring the contents of the psyche into balance
with one another and to direct the course of the individual’s life (Storr,
1983, pp. 19-24).
Referring back to the idea of the psyche
as a self-regulating energetic system, the Self allows the energy of the
psychic system to flow freely within a number of energy channels that are
biological, psychological, spiritual, and moral in character (Samuels et al.,
1986, p. 54). By doing so, the Self serves as the homeostatic regulator of the
psyche and acts like an “instinctive wisdom” (Edinger, 1972, p. 61) that can
correct the imbalances that inevitably arise within it. The Self, then, can be
considered “the ordering principle of the entire personality” (Samuels et al.,
1986, pp. 50); it not only knows how the energy should be flowing within the
system, but also corrects it if it becomes blocked or incorrectly channeled
(Samuels et al., 1986, pp. 50-54). Sourcing its energy from the instincts, the
psyche is directed by the central archetype of the Self, which in turn
organizes the human personality, both internally and externally.
The self and the ego: God seeking
expression. If the Self is the ordering principle of the entire
personality, then the ego is the psychic structure that responds to the Self’s
orders. In other words, the Self “provides the more holistic view and is
therefore supreme, but it is the function of the ego to challenge or fulfill
the demands of that supremacy” (Samuels et al., 1986, pp. 50-51) in the
external world. The ego, if it follows the orders of the Self—the archetype
that “Jung believed . . . was the underlying reality manifesting itself in the
various systems of monotheism” (Storr, 1983, p. 20)—is the means through which
“God seeks his goal” (Jung, as cited in Storr, 1983, p. 20) on earth. The
individuation process, which facilitates the flowering of human potential,
requires that the ego integrate and realize the Self’s orders.
Psychological development.
In order for the Self to
find expression in the outer world, the ego must be aligned with its creed, and
this alignment requires that the individual undergo the process of
psychological development (Edinger, 1972, p. 103). Initially, in psychological
development, the ego is completely merged with the Self and therefore is in
complete alignment with its psychic orders (Samuels et al., 1986, p. 50). In
the original psychic state (see Figure 2), which is present in infants and
young children, the ego and Self are one (Edinger, 1972, p. 6).
Figure 2. Original psychic state.
Adapted from Ego
and Archetype, by E.
Edinger, 1972, p. 5. Copyright 1972 by C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical
Psychology.
Jungian analyst Edward Edinger (1972)
explained that with the development of consciousness, a necessary process in
psychological development, the ego emerges from the Self like a wave from the
ocean. In order to meet the demands of the outer world, those environmental
structures that conflict with the ego’s natural flow, the ego comes forth into
psychic awareness (p. 51). This emergence, or the development of consciousness,
is the way in which the Self finds expression in the outer world. As seen in
Figure 3, out of one center of psychic being come two—the Self, as the center
of the personality, and the ego, as the center of consciousness (pp. 4-6).
Figure 3. Emergence of the ego. Adapted from Ego and Archetype, by E. Edinger, 1972,
p. 5. Copyright 1972 by C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology.
The
split personality. Because psychological development requires adaptation to the
world around one, the ego and the Self progressively separate from one another
and develop into autonomous centers of psychic being (Edinger, 1972, pp. 4-6).
Essentially, the ego and Self begin to inhabit two separate realms of the
individual’s psyche, and the personality becomes split between what Jung (1983)
called Personality No. 1, or
ego-personality, and Personality No. 2,
the shadow (p. 94). The ego-personality “is oriented on the one hand by the
expectations and demands of society, and on the other by the social aims and
aspirations of the individual” (p. 98). The ego-personality, then, is focused
on the individual’s ability to relate to the outer world.
The
shadow, on the other hand, is that part of the psyche which becomes split off
from the ego-personality. According to Campbell (2004), a depth psychologically
oriented mythologist, “the shadow is the blind spot in . . . [one’s] nature”
(p. 73) or all the repressed potentialities that exist within oneself as one
develops psychologically (p. 73). If the ego is in the center of consciousness,
explained Campbell, then the shadow is opposite it in the center of the unconscious
(p. 74), as portrayed in Figure 4. Psychological development necessitates the
formation of these two separate regions, which function psychologically as a
split personality within the psyche (Jung, 1961/1965, p. 33).
Figure 4. The split personality. Diagram created by the author.
Consciousness
and the unconscious.
Also seen in Figure 4, emergence of the ego creates not only a split
personality but also a separation between consciousness and the unconscious
(Edinger, 1972, pp. 4-5). Consistent with a Jungian viewpoint, the unconscious
is defined as all “expressions of thought and behavior which do not seem to
originate with one’s own will or awareness” (Singer, 1972, p. 27). Jungian
analyst June Singer (1972) explained that, including the above-mentioned
personal shadow, these expressions of thought and behavior originate not only
from the individual’s experience but also from the collective experience. The
personal unconscious holds the individual’s deeper memories, concerns, and
yearnings, whereas the collective unconscious stores the content that is held
in common by the individual’s family, social group, nation, race, and,
ultimately, all of humanity (p. 104). As Singer pointed out, the collective
unconscious is, in fact, the fertile ground that contains the archetypes. She
further explained that as the ego separates from the Self during psychological
development, part of the Self necessarily shifts into the unconscious, creating
a split between the ego-personality and shadow, and between consciousness and
the unconscious.
The ego and the persona.
According to social
worker and Jungian analyst David Schoen (2009), when the ego emerges with the
advent of consciousness, it becomes the psychic entity that “perceives,
selects, focuses, concentrates, emphasizes, organizes, and processes our
relationship to ourselves, to the world, and to other people” (p. 32). He
stated that the personality that constellates around the ego, that part of the
self that is concerned with relating to and surviving in the world, interacts
with the external world via the persona. According to Jung (1983), the persona
is an archetype that functions like a mask—it is designed to “make a definite
impression upon others,” (p. 94) defines a person’s social identity, and is
constructed so that he or she can be presentable and acceptable to society
(Schoen, 2009, p. 32).
Ideal
psychological development: Redeeming the hidden self. According to von
Franz (1970), ideal psychological development occurs “when the ego, with a
certain plasticity, obeys the central regulation of the psyche” (p. 44). She
stipulated, however, that because of the demands of the outer world, the ego
can begin to “act according to its own reasons” (p. 44), and if the separation
between ego and Self continues to occur, the ego loses contact with the fertile
ground belonging to the instincts and archetypes and begins to over-identify
with the persona. Even though the persona, as Edinger (1972) stated, is a
“partial aspect of the Self” (p. 38), because the Self is the central archetype
within the psyche (pp. 38-39), identification with the persona makes it so the
ego only relates to consciousness and has no relation to all the aspects of the
Self that have been pushed out of conscious awareness (Jung, 1983, p. 103).
According to Jung, when the ego
over-identifies with the persona, the Self responds by redirecting the
individual’s psychic energy in an attempt to integrate the conscious and
unconscious aspects of the Self (as cited in Chodorow, 1997, p. 4). If the persona is the face of one’s
conscious life, then the soul is that of one’s unconscious life (Jung, 1983,
pp. 100-101). As the “personification of the unconscious” (Jung, as cited in
Hillman, 1975, p. 22), the soul is the archetype that functions to bring
individuals’ awareness to the deeper aspects of themselves. By acting in a way
that is complementary to the persona, the soul illuminates the unconscious aspects
of the Self—one’s inner world, which holds the shadow and all “those faculties
for experiencing and judging that have not been employed in . . . [one’s] life”
(Campbell, 2004, p. 80). Jungian analyst Murray Stein (1998) pointed out that
the content of the unconscious “[enters] consciousness in the form of
intuitions, visions, dreams, perceptions of instinctual drives, images,
emotions, and ideas” (p. 103) and can manifest as psychosomatic symptoms
relating to the interaction between mind and body and as parapsychological
happenings. By allowing this content to manifest, the soul allows the Self to
maintain its rightful place in the center of the personality. As Jung said,
if
the unconscious can be recognized as a co-determining factor along with consciousness,
and if . . . [people] can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious
demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the . . . [center] of
gravity of the total personality shifts its position . . . [to] the
hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious. (As cited in Storr, 1983,
p. 19)
As
indicated in Figure 5, with the Self in the center, the complementary
relationship between the ego-personality and the shadow and between the persona
and the soul allows the ego to become aware of the conscious and unconscious
aspects of the Self. With equal footing in consciousness and the unconscious,
the Self can find expression in the external world. This redemptive process of
Self during psychological development is imperative to the process of
individuation (Edinger, 1972, p. 103).
Figure 5. Self as center of the personality. Diagram created by the author.
The
ego-self axis and individuation. By becoming aware of the conscious and unconscious aspects
of the Self, the ego has the potential to form a lasting connection with the
God within; instead of dialoguing with the society, then, the ego connects with
the Self and its archetypes (Hollis, 1995, p. 60). According to Edinger (1972),
this gateway or path of communication is the ego-Self axis (p. 38), which
allows for a dialogue between consciousness and the unconscious, the ego and
shadow, and inner and outer experience (p. 96). As illustrated in Figure 6, by
“promoting a state in which the ego is related to the Self without being identified
with it” (p. 96), the ego-Self axis allows
for the Self to find expression in the outer world (pp. 96-103).
Figure 6. Ego-self axis. Diagram created by the author.
Edinger (1972) stated, however, that in
order for the ego and Self to form a lasting connection, the ego must surrender
some of its autonomous power. Having separated from the Self and developed into
an autonomous center of functioning, it can resume the path of the Self only if
it is able to surrender or at least relativize its power to the totality of the
Self, realizing its impotence in relation to the God within (p. 50). This
relativization of the ego to the Self, said Edinger, is essential to the process
of individuation (p. 97). According to Edinger (1994), ego-consciousness is
offered
up to the unconscious by a kind of voluntary death of one’s psychic comfort,
rightness, and rationality. One allows oneself to be less in order to be
more—less nearly perfect [according to his ego- identity], but more nearly
whole. (p. 161)
This urge to sacrifice the smaller
aspects of the Self, to relinquish old patterns of behavior, values, and ways
of being in the external world, allows one to come into contact with and
integrate the larger aspects of the Self, namely the God within. According to
Jacqueline Feather (2013), a psychologist and award-winning screenwriter, this
idea of sacrificing oneself to God or the Gods is a recurring motif that occurs
in many religions, mythologies, and cultures around the world (p. 337), and it
points to the psychic necessity of allowing the ego to relinquish its power to
the God within. Jung (1957/1990) said that the only way for individuals to find
justification for their existence and meaning in their lives is to relativize
the “overpowering influence of external factors” (p. 14) to the “extramundane
principle” (p. 14) that dwells inside. In summary, Edinger (1972) indicated
that successful psychological development thus entails a separation of ego and
Self, followed by the emergence of the ego-Self axis into consciousness via
sacrifice of the ego-identity, and ultimately a conscious dialectic
relationship between ego and Self that leads to the process of individuation
(pp. 4-6).
The
role of pathology in the process of individuation. As mentioned above, when the ego
becomes overidentified with the persona and loses touch with the Self, the Self
acts in a compensatory way to reestablish the flow and balance of psychic
energy (Edinger, 1972, p. 61). The soul, as the center of the unconscious, is
set into motion by the Self in order to bring the unconscious aspects of the
Self into awareness. According to depth psychologist James Hillman (1989), the
soul presents itself through symptomology (p. 142). In other words, the soul pathologizes, or “[creates] illness,
morbidity, disorder, abnormality, and suffering in any aspect of behavior” (p.
143), in order to move the energy within the psyche (pp. 143-145). These
pathologies, if imagined as voices of the soul and, ultimately, of the Self,
can lead the person to view the pain of the wound as a message from the Self
that, if tended to and integrated, can facilitate a necessary shift in the
energetics of the psyche (pp. 148-150).
By pathologizing, said Hillman (1989),
the soul encourages one to relate one’s symptoms to an archetypal background
(p. 146). He explained, “Pathologizing takes one out of blind immediacy,
distorting one’s focus upon the natural and actual by forcing one to ask what is
within it and behind it” (p. 146). He posited that behind every symptom
ultimately lies an archetype, and finding the archetypal “background for the
affliction calls for familiarity with an individual’s style of consciousness,
with his pathologizing fantasies, and with myth to which style and fantasy may
revert” (pp. 146-147). In other words, the gods and characters found in
mythology, fairy tales, and world literature reach people through their
afflictions such that “when consciousness neglects the shadowy parts and
inflates its own importance, the gods grow interested, draw near, and bring
about the restoration of balance” (Hollis, 1995, p. 69). Hillman (1989)
asserted that, when considered with an open imagination, the symptoms
ultimately produce “an intensely focused consciousness of soul” (p. 148).
This focus on the center of the
unconscious, said Hillman (1989), allows for psychological insight, because
people can relate their own personal stories to those of the gods that reside
within them (p. 149). Because the world of the gods in mythology is essentially
an imitative projection of the psychic life of humans (p. 150), mythology can
offer people a field in which to locate themselves (Campbell, 1972, p. xvi).
Exploring the archetypes and symbols associated with their afflictions thus can
lead people to a better understanding of the Self, which in turn leads to
transformation and individuation.
Mythology and Fairytales:
Guides to the Human Psyche and Individuation
Illuminating
the psyche and one’s transpersonal story. As the central archetype, the Self subordinates all other
archetypes such that every archetypal image carries at least a partial aspect
of the Self (Edinger, 1972, pp. 38-39). Studying the archetypes is a process of
looking at the mythical world, or the inner world of images inside oneself
(Campbell, 2004, p. 17). According to Campbell (2004), the imagery of myth is a
symbolic language system that communicates deep truths about humanity, and the
symbols and deities in myths serve as models that remind people to pay
attention to the deeper, transpersonal aspects of life (pp. xxvii-21). Von
Franz (1970) claimed that the fates of the gods “are expressions of the
difficulties and dangers given to us by nature” (p. viii). By grounding their
personal stories and systems of images in a larger context, people’s sense of
Self expands with increased consciousness, and they gain a sense of meaning in
their existence (Campbell, 2004, p. 6). The stories that occur in myths allow
people to understand their own stories and function to bring people in contact
with life themes that resonate with all of humanity.
Mythology not only grounds one’s
personal story in a deeper layer of existence but also functions to provide
understanding of one’s inner psychic world. According to von Franz (1970), the
characters and stories in mythology serve as symbolic motifs that reflect the
basic patterns of the human psyche (pp. 1-12). Mythology essentially serves to
“initiate the individual . . . into the mysteries of the gods, the world,
society, and oneself” (Hollis, 1995, p. 17).
The
cosmic drama: The eternal return and the hero’s journey. According to
Hollis (1995), all mythology centers around a pattern he called the cosmic drama, which is essentially
an amplification of two vital mythic patterns—the eternal return and the hero’s
quest (p. 53). The eternal return is a life-death-rebirth cycle, and the hero’s
quest is the movement from identification to individuation (p. 53).
Historically, said Hollis, the myth of the eternal return was associated with
the Great Mother archetype, which represented procreation and nurturance, the
transformation through the many passages of life, and the weaver of fate (pp.
53-55). On the other hand, the hero’s quest was associated with the Father
archetype, the solar hero who represented “the capacity to rise to the
challenge of life” (p. 53) and take on the task of individuation.
Hollis (1995) posited that the Great
Mother and Father give birth to the archetype of the divine child (p. 60),
which is synonymous with the Self in that the child is the entity within that
undergoes the process of psychological development and individuation. According
to Jung, “the various child fates may be regarded as illustrating the kind of
psychic events that occur in the entelechy or genesis of the ‘self’” (Jung
& Kerenyi, 1949/1963, p. 166). Jungian analyst Donald Kalsched (2013)
pointed out that, like the Self, the child, as a symbol, is “suspended between
two worlds, one material, one spiritual, one inner, one outer; and this dual
aspect of the child is part of what marks him or her as a symbol for that
paradoxical unity or wholeness” (p. 56) that is the Self.
The child can be seen as the symbol of
the emergence of the Self that must undergo the cosmic drama. Hollis (1995)
identified four parts of the cosmic drama: chaos, creation, separation, and
going home (p. 110). Chaos is “a
metaphor of the time when the earth was without form and humans nonexistent”
(p. 110). In relation to the individual, then, chaos is like the womb of the
great mother or “the fetal state where [individuals] float timelessly through
the unconscious sea” (p. 110). Creation
is the making of something from nonexistence and corresponds to the coming
together of the Great Mother and Father to create the divine child (pp.
53-111). Separation is the embodiment
of the hero’s quest in that one must disidentify with the security of the
Mother’s womb and become conscious and fully human (p. 111). Lastly, going home refers to the process of returning
to the source of the Mother and reclaiming the instinctual life one has lost
along the way (p. 112). The cosmic drama embodies both the life-death-rebirth
cycle and the hero’s quest, and it is a central theme in mythology.
Fairytales
as doorways to Self-knowledge and individuation.
Once
upon a time the famous physicist Albert Einstein was confronted by an overly
concerned woman who sought advice on how to raise her small son to become a
successful scientist. In particular she wanted to know what kinds of books she
should read to her son.
“Fairy Tales,” Einstein responded without
hesitation.
“Fine, but what else should I read to him
after that?” the mother asked.
“More fairy tales,” Einstein stated.
“And after that?”
“Even more fairy tales,” replied the
great scientist, and he waved his pipe like a wizard pronouncing a happy end to
a long adventure.
Zipes, 1979, p. 1
This humorous fairytale, which is based
on the great Albert Einstein’s actual remarks, refers to the idea that
fairytales lead to knowledge. Although mythology is capable of leading to
Self-knowledge, fairytales, according to some, are the preferred roadmap to the
Self. Von Franz (1970) observed that because mythology’s stories are elaborate
and overlaid by cultural material, it is sometimes difficult to apply them universally
(p. 15). She noted that, even though the archetypal significance is universal,
mythology may be difficult to decipher because of its origins (pp. 27-28).
Because mythology links the archetypes to the historical and cultural
collective consciousness of the nation in which it originated, it can lose some
of its generally human character
(p. 27). In order to “best study the comparative anatomy of the psyche,” (p.
15), said von Franz, it may be desirable to look at a more simple form of
story: the fairytale (p. 15).
According to von Franz (1970),
because the fairytale lacks cultural ties, its stories and motifs “seem to be
the international language of mankind—of all ages and of all races and
cultures” (pp. 27-28). As she aptly expressed, “the fairy tale is like the sea,
and the sagas and myths are like the waves upon it; a tale rises to be a myth
and sinks down again into being a fairy tale” (p. 26). Although mythology
undoubtedly represents universal patterns of behavior via the archetypes,
fairytales “represent the archetypes in their simplest, barest, and most
concise form” (p. 1). Fairytales thus ground people’s stories and reflect the
human psyche in a more universally understandable manner.
The archetypal images in fairytales
are “the images by which consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious”
(Campbell, 2004, p. 87). By existing in timelessness and spacelessness,
represented by the variations on the introduction, Once upon a time, fairytales refer to the archetypal stories that
occur in the realm of the collective unconscious (Franz, 1970, p. 40). The
characters found in fairytales, then, are “projections of . . . [people’s] own
fantasies, . . . [their] own consciousness, . . . [and their] own deep being”
(Campbell, 2004, p. 107). Because they put people in touch with their own deep,
archetypal images, fairytales offer a medium by which consciousness and the
unconscious communicate. Referring to the process of individuation mentioned
previously, this dialogue, represented by the development of the ego-self axis,
leads one on the path to individuation.
Fairytales
attempt to describe imaginally what the Self is: “the psychic totality of an
individual and . . . the regulating center of the collective unconscious,”
stated von Franz (1970, p. 2). They orient people to the cosmic drama of the
human experience by bringing attention to the different psychic entities and
processes of the journey to Selfhood. According to von Franz (1970),
different
fairy tales give average pictures of different phases of this experience. They
sometimes dwell more on the beginning stages, which deal with the experience of
the shadow and give only a short sketch of what comes later. Other tales
emphasize the experience of . . . [the soul] and of the father and mother
images behind them and gloss over the preceding shadow problem and what
follows. Others emphasize the motif of inaccessible or unobtainable treasure
and the central experiences. (p. 2)
Although
there are many variations of fairytales, they all point to the archetypes of
the Self. Exploring different fairytales, then, allows one to get in touch with
the essential properties of the Self and the archetypes that are related to it.
Interpreting Fairytales
By studying the symbols, motifs, and
archetypal patterns inherent in fairytales, one can gain a better understanding
of one’s deeper Self in its totality (Franz, 1970, p. 2). Regardless of which
traditions, mythologies, religions, art, or fairytales people turn to for
guidance and meaning, however, the ones that resonate with an individual or
instill a sense of excitement and bliss are the ones worth interpreting
(Campbell, 2004, p. xxiv). In other words, said Campbell (2004), unless those
mythologies become personally relevant to a person, they will not release the
transcendent meaning inherent within them (p. xxiv). As he advised,
any
mythic tradition can be translated into your life, if it’s been put into you.
And
it’s
a good thing to hang on to the myth that was put in when you were a child,
because
it is there whether you want it to be or not. What you have to do is
translate
that myth into its eloquence, not just into the literacy. You have to learn
to
hear its song. (p. xxiv)
By
learning to hear the song of the fairytale and understand its eloquent message,
one can understand one’s own archetypal story and essentially discover the
secrets of the Self
(p. 87).
Although one may approach fairytale
interpretation in different ways, this paper utilizes the method outlined by
von Franz (1970) in her book, The
Interpretation of Fairytales. According to Von Franz, the fairy tale must
first be divided into its various dramatic aspects (p. 27). These aspects,
according to the 19-century literary scholar, Gustav Freytag, include the
exposition, the complication, the climax, the falling action or resolution, and
the denouement (Dailey, 2001, p. 211). Arts educator Jeff Dailey indicated the exposition as the beginning of the story
and said that it tells the reader what happened before the story began (p.
211). The complication, or rising
action, occurs when there is a conflict of opposing forces within the story (p.
211). Following the rising action is the climax,
during which the crisis peaks (p. 211). After the crisis peaks, a falling
action or resolution occurs, during
which the various plot lines of the story come together (p. 211). Lastly, the
fairytale finishes with the denouement,
or ending, during which the plot of the story comes to a close (p. 211).
After dividing the fairy tale into its
various dramatic aspects, said von Franz (1970), one can focus on the
fairytale’s characters, or dramatis
personae, and the symbols, metaphors, and motifs that appear in the story
(pp. 27). By amplifying the images that arise within the story or enlarging the
images by collecting a quantity of parallel motifs, one can make a sound
interpretation about what the fairy tale seems to represent (pp. 30-32).
Lastly, one can “translate the amplified story into psychological language” (p.
31) in an attempt to bring forth the meaning of the images and the plot of the
fairytale.
Von Franz (1970) posited that translating
the fairytale into psychological language, “brings one into peace with one’s
unconscious instinctive substratum” (p. 32). As people translate the fairytale
within their own psychological framework, she said, they gain a better
understanding of whether their own personal story fits with the archetypal
story of the fairytale (p. 32). According to storyteller and Jungian analyst
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (1992),
Fairy
tales, myths, and stories provide understandings which sharpen our sight so that
we can pick out and pick up the path. . . . The instruction found in story reassures
us that the path has not run out, but still leads . . . [people] deeper, and
more deeply still, into their own knowing. The tracks we all are following are
those of the wild and innate instinctual Self. (pp. 4-5)
Summary
This chapter explored the human psyche; the
process of psychological development and individuation; and how mythology,
fairytales, and archetypal stories provide individuals with a means of
reconnecting with the Self. The next chapter demonstrates the connection
between mythology, fairytales, and the human psyche by presenting a detailed
heuristic interpretation of Andersen’s (1872/1974) fairytale, The Little
Mermaid.
Chapter III
Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid:
A Depth Psychological
Interpretation
Fascinated by the romanticized
feature-film version of The Little
Mermaid (Clements & Musker, 1989) as a child and deeply moved by the
archetypal significance of the original tale later on in life, I was inspired
to delve into the fairytale wholeheartedly for the purposes of this thesis. In
this chapter, in an attempt to show how archetypal stories can help one on the
path to individuation, I present my interpretation of this tale from a depth
psychological perspective and show how it has informed and instructed my own
path in life. This analysis illustrates my own journey toward self-realization
as an individuation process and indicates how this tale relates to all of
humanity. Lastly, Chapter III provides a commentary on the clinical
applications of The Little Mermaid and
fairy tales in general in the fields of counseling psychology and depth
psychology.
Dramatic Aspects of The Little Mermaid
Andersen’s (1872/1974) The Little Mermaid is a story about a
young mermaid. For the purposes of this thesis, I offer an abridged version of
a summary of Andersen’s fairytale provided by psychologist and activist Dorothy
Dinnerstein (1967), which reveals the basic archetypal pattern and elements of
the fairytale. The succeeding psychological analysis includes extracts from
Erik Christian Haugaard’s translation of The
Little Mermaid (Andersen, 1872/1974) to augment the abridged version.
Haugaard’s full translation of the tale can be found in the appendix. In
Dinnerstein’s (1967) summary, the fairytale goes like this:
The little
mermaid, youngest of six
sisters, lives in a magically beautiful underwater palace with her father, the
Sea King, and . . . her queenly grandmother. She looks forward passionately to
being allowed (as each sister is allowed on her fifteenth birthday and
thereafter) to rise to the surface of the sea and experience the sun, the open
air, land, and human beings. Meanwhile she cultivates her garden at the sea's
bottom, which (unlike the gardens of her sisters) consists simply of a round
bed of red flowers, . . . a statue of a human boy taken from a shipwrecked
ship, and a red weeping-willow tree.
When the long-awaited day arrives she
swims eagerly up and out into the open, sunlit world. . . . She falls in love
with a human prince whom she sees through the lighted window of his ship at
night and who resembles the statue in her garden. When the ship is wrecked she
saves his life, carrying him unconscious to shore and leaving him to be found
by some humans whom she sees approaching. Thereafter, she no longer feels at
home underseas, longing only for the world of humans and union with the prince.
She learns that humans have immortal souls, unlike mermaids, who turn to foam after living three hundred years, and
she feels she would trade her whole mermaid
life for a single day of human existence followed by this spiritual
immortality.
One night, she . . . [attends] a
court ball, at which she is acclaimed for possessing the most beautiful singing
voice on earth or sea, and makes her way through a monstrously ugly underwater
wilderness to the home of a hideous old witch whose magic aid she implores. The
witch offers her a potion, which will turn her fishtail into human legs and
give her a chance to win the prince's love; if he marries her, she will get an
immortal soul; if not, she will die heartbroken and turn to foam on the dawn
following his wedding night. The price for this potion is the little mermaid's tongue. The mermaid
lets the witch cut out her tongue, then swims to the surface, sorrowfully
abandoning her home and family, and drinks the potion on the shore, whereupon
she feels cleft in two as by a sword and finds herself equipped with lovely
white legs. Each step she takes on these legs—a fact of which the witch has
warned her—hurts as if knives were piercing her delicate feet.
The prince finds her, and adopts and
grows fond of this mute foundling. . . . The prince, however, . . . decides to
marry a princess from a neighboring kingdom, a girl with whom he first fell in
love, mistaking her for his savior, when he opened his eyes and saw her on the
shore after being rescued from drowning by the mermaid. The mermaid,
at their shipboard wedding, carries the bride's train, and laughs and dances
all night with death in her heart. Just before dawn, standing on the deck of
the ship, she is greeted by her sisters, who rise to the surface, their
beautiful long hair shorn off. They have given it to the witch, they say, in
exchange for a magic knife with which, if she will plunge it into the prince's
heart quickly, before dawn, she can save herself and console her grieving
family, returning to her mermaid
state and the joys of a three-hundred-year sea-life.
She
takes the knife, enters the prince's wedding tent where he lies asleep with his
bride's head on his breast, and kisses his forehead. The dawn brightens and the
knife quivers in her hand, but she flings it into the sea, jumps overboard and
feels herself dissolving into foam. . . . [She survives, however,] she becomes
a daughter of the air, one of those spirits who float between heaven and earth,
waiting three hundred years for . . . [an immortal soul], which they earn by
good deeds to mankind. Their waiting time, moreover[,] . . . is shortened by
each smile they smile when, looking down to earth, they see a good child, and
lengthened by each tear they shed when they see a child who is naughty. (pp.
104-112)
Analysis of The Little Mermaid
Reflecting
the method of fairytale interpretation offered by von Franz (1970), the
fairytale is divided here into its various dramatic aspects: exposition,
complication, climax, resolution, and denouement. Within the various phases of
the story, the images are amplified to direct the reader to the fairytale’s
symbolism, the tale is translated into psychological language, and the
fairytale’s impersonal and personal significance is discussed.
The
exposition. Like the
beginning of many archetypal stories, Andersen (1872/1974) located the
fairytale in a distant, far off place. As translated by Haugaard, the tale
begins:
Far,
far from the land, where the waters are as blue as the petals of the cornflower
and as clear as glass, there, where no anchor can reach the bottom, live the
mer-people. So deep is this part of the sea that you would have to pile many
church towers on top of each other before one of them emerged above the
surface. (p. 57)
Von
Franz (2006) said, “The sea is the symbol of the unfathomable depth of the
unconscious, or in mystical language, of the depth of the Godhead” (p. 155).
This deep and sacred realm alludes to the psychic area of the collective
unconscious, in which resides the archetype of the Self, and its various
manifestations (Franz, 1970, p. 27). Womblike, it is the fluid containment from
which life emerges and is therefore a representation of the Great Mother
archetype (“Ocean,” 2010, p. 36). Representing the unconscious, the mother
archetype embodies both its destructive and creative aspects. According to The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, “the
sea is a symbol of the dynamism of life. Everything comes from the sea and
everything returns back to it. It is a place of birth, transformation and
rebirth” (“Sea,” 1986, p. 838). Likewise, Hollis (1995) associated the Great
Mother archetype with the life-death-rebirth cycle that is characteristic of
the cosmic drama (pp. 53-55). By beginning the fairytale in the deep primordial
sea, Andersen (1872/1974.) situated the story in the realm of the collective
unconscious, the chaotic phase of the
cosmic drama, from which the whole story can unfold.
Held within the motherly sea are the
merpeople—mermen and mermaids. Taking on both masculine and feminine forms,
these beings are half human and half fish. According to depth psychologist
Gillian Pothier (2011), the merpeople live between two worlds, embodying a
bipolar dynamic structure—both human and fish—that connects the upper body of
spirit and consciousness with the lower body of the soul and the unconscious
(pp. 21-30). Fish have also been said to symbolize human’s “lost participation
in the archaic, unconscious world” (“Fish,” 2010, p. 202). As integrated beings
that fuse consciousness and the unconscious, mermaids thus participate in both
the external and internal worlds, and symbolizing this paradoxical unity and
wholeness, they are associated with the coming together of the disparate
elements of the self. Pothier (2011) proposed that “the symbol of the mermaid
remains an essentially unwavering mythological, intrapsychic, and cultural
figure precisely because she carries transcendent meaning” (p. 33). She added
that the transcendent meaning of the mermaid is shown in how she unites the
dual aspects of the Self, essentially acting as a bridge between consciousness
and the unconscious (p. 36).
In the process of psychological
development, ideally, uniting opposing elements or forces in the psyche is the
goal (Edinger, 1972, pp. 3-7 ). Notably, however, the merpeople in The Little Mermaid do not have souls
(Dinnerstein, 1967, p. 105), which suggests at the onset, at least in this
story, that the merpeople are incomplete and not whole. According to von Franz
(1970), it is important to take into account who or what is missing in the
exposition of a fairy tale, because it offers the opening psychological
situation (p. 36). This missing piece of the self, the soul, is one thing that
must be redeemed in the story.
In the exposition of The Little Mermaid, the merpeople include the Sea King, his six
daughters, and the grandmother who takes care of them. The Sea King, the king
of all merpeople, is the “dominant ‘spiritual’ content in the collective
psyche” (Birkhauser-Oeri, 1988, p. 60). He is a widower, which suggests that
although the daughters are held by the Great Mother, symbolized by the ocean,
they are lacking a personal mother and a queen. Because the story is missing a
mother and queen, which is not representative of the complete fairytale family
(p. 36), it can be assumed that the story revolves around redeeming the female
principles represented by these archetypes.
According to Jungian analyst Sibylle
Birkhauser-Oeri (1988), the archetypal mother in both her light and dark
aspects, ultimately represents the urge toward transformation within the psyche
(p. 47). In her positive aspect, she represents the principle of eros, or
transcendental love, which has the ability to join what is divided within the
psyche and therefore make it whole (p. 122). Birkhauser-Oeri explained, “Eros,
the connecting principle, is the basic principle of the mother, that is, of the
unconscious. Not only does it connect a person with others, it also connects
one with oneself” (p. 134). Along with her life-enhancing qualities, the
archetypal mother also represents the destructive aspects of the self that aim
to compensate for imbalances within the psyche. Jung explained the dark aspect
of the mother archetype as “‘anything secret, hidden, dark; the abyss, the
world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces, and poisons, that is terrifying
and inescapable like fate’” (as cited in Birkhauser-Oeri, 1988, p. 27). In many
fairytales, as is the case in The Little
Mermaid, the dark mother is presented as a witch (von Franz, 1977, p. 30).
The mother archetype, as both a life-enhancing and destructive force within the
psyche, is the root of all change and growth. In the exposition of a fairytale,
a figure lacking a personal mother suggests that these archetypal qualities
have not been integrated into the psyche.
Another archetypal quality is also
missing in the exposition of The Little
Mermaid—that of the queen. According to von Franz (1970), “if we take the
king as representing a central and dominant symbolic content of collective
consciousness, then the queen would be its accompanying feminine element” (p.
39). As Birkhauser-Oeri (1988) suggested, the queen, as the personification of
eros, or true love, embodies “a supreme suprapersonal inner value capable of
unifying and controlling the chaos of the psyche (p. 38). The missing queen within
the story, then, suggests that the principle of eros, which is also the
positive aspect of the mother, has been lost. Associated with spontaneity,
feeling, instinct, and intuition, according to Jungian analysts Anne Baring and
Jules Cashford (1991, p. xii), this lost feminine principle keeps the little
mermaid from developing a relationship between consciousness and the
unconscious.
The Sea King, without the feminine ruling
principle of the queen, rules the kingdom of the merpeople alone. Von Franz
(1970) posited that the fact that the kingdom is ruled solely by the masculine
spiritual principle refers “to a situation where the collective consciousness
has become petrified and has stiffened into doctrines and formulas” (p. 108).
Missing the mother and queen within the fairytale, then, suggests that the
feminine principle in its entirety has not been integrated in the story. The
opening psychological situation thus suggests that The Little Mermaid is a story about redeeming the feminine
principle and the soul.
Because the archetypes of the Great
Mother (the Sea) and Father (the Sea King) give birth to the divine child
archetype (Hollis, 1995, p. 60), all of the mermaid sisters can be considered
divine. Also, the number of mermaid daughters, six, is considered a sacred and
perfect number, because it parallels the structure of God’s Creation in Genesis
(“Number symbolism: 6,” 2014, p. 3). Of the
six mermaids, the protagonist is the youngest, and as a divine child that lives
in the depths of the collective unconscious, she represents the archetype of
the self that will be undergoing the process of individuation (Kalsched, 2013,
p. 56). According to Jung and classical philologist Carl Kerenyi (1949/1963),
“the various ‘child’-fates may be regarded as illustrating the kind of psychic
events that occur in the . . . genesis of the self” (p. 85) and are connected
with the archetype of the child-hero. The little mermaid, a symbol of the unity
of consciousness and the unconscious, is therefore, the child-hero of the story
who undergoes the process of self-realization.
This young female mermaid is very happy
tending her garden, which was round “like the sun” (Andersen, 1872/1974, p. 58)
and held a red weeping willow and a marble statue of a boy that was cut out of
stone. The garden, especially a round one, can be considered “the imagined
locus of our beginning and end, the original matrix and mandala of life, fed by
underground sources of living waters” (“Garden,” 2010, p. 146). The Garden of
Eden, the Elysian Fields, the Pure Land or Western Paradise of Buddhism, and
the Garden of the Hesperides all represent sacred enclosed spaces that reflect
“an idealized inner space of potential wholeness and hidden design” (“Garden,”
2010,
p. 146). According to Birkhauser-Oeri (1988), the garden, with its round
mandala-like shape is a symbol for the self (p. 54). In addition, she noted
that the little mermaid has planted red flowers in it so it will look like the
sun (p. 58), which alludes to the little mermaid’s longing for consciousness
(p. 114). By tending to her underwater mandala-like garden, the little mermaid
is symbolically longing for consciousness of the Self.
Significantly, within the garden stand a
red weeping willow tree and a stone statue of a boy. According to Birkhauser-Oeri,
the tree is a symbol for a higher version of the mother or female principle (p.
143). Jung said that the tree also symbolizes the Self in that it “signifies a
psychic center beyond the ego reconciling such opposites as above and below, or
heaven and earth; its branches reach into the sky and its roots penetrate deep
into the earth” (as cited in Birkhauser-Oeri, 1988, p. 144). The fact that the
tree is a willow tree is also significant. Alisoun Gardner-Medwin (1991), a
Scottish literature scholar, claimed that the willow tree and the
weeping-willow, in particular, are associated with water, tears, and sorrow,
“specifically for lost love” (pp. 240-241). Tears, said von Franz (1997),
represent a redeeming and healing effect (p. 86), and connect us with a
long-repressed loss or discontent (“Tears,” 2010, p. 356). The weeping-willow
tree, then, can be considered a symbol of the Self that is essentially mourning
the loss of the feminine principle. It also suggests that redeeming the
feminine element of eros may require suffering, and the healing element of
tears and water.
A marble statue of a boy that was cut out
of transparently clear stone also stands in the garden (Andersen, 1872/1974, p.
58). Sandra Burke (2006), a clinical psychologist well-versed in the depth
tradition, found this statue to be a representation of the internal masculine
principle (p. 117) that, according to Jung, carries the internal masculine
spirit of the self that “gives to woman’s consciousness a capacity for
reflection, deliberation, and self-knowledge” (as cited in Burke, 2006, p. 113).
The statue of the boy is the image or face of the mermaid’s internal male
counterpart because, as a female, “her unconscious has, so to speak, a
masculine imprint” (p. 111). Utilizing the symbols of the garden, the red
weeping willow tree, and the marble statue of the boy, Andersen’s (1872/1974.)
tale suggests that wholeness may be attained by tending to the lost feminine
principle and by redeeming the soul, which, in the little mermaid’s situation,
is personified by the internal masculine principle and is represented by the
statue.
The
complication. On her
15th birthday, the little mermaid rises to the surface of the water to see the
human world she so yearns to see. The number 15 is associated with the
Mesopotamian goddess Inanna (“Number symbolism: 15,” 2014, p. 5). Mythologist
Susan Rowland (2014, lecture) stated that the myth of Inanna, the earliest
written myth in human history, offers a narrative for the process of
individuation. The myth in its entirety presents a life-death-rebirth cycle
(Perera, 1981, p. 47) and therefore suggests that at the ripe age of 15, the
little mermaid is ready to undergo the process of transformation that leads one
on the path to individuation.
Rising to the surface of the water, the
little mermaid sees a handsome young prince on a ship, who reminds her of the
marble statue she has in her garden, and she falls in love with him. The prince
is the princess’s counterpart, and according to Birkhauser-Oeri (1988), he represents
the positive male counterpart to the feminine eros principle
(p. 39). She posited that “he embodies a new, liberating, spiritual attitude to
life, embracing thoughtfulness, religious seriousness, courage and a genuine
understanding of one’s own and others’ natures” (p. 40). The encounter with the
prince, said Birkauser-Oeri (1988) suggests that the little mermaid “has made
contact with a spiritual impulse” (p. 89). The fact that he looks like the
marble statue in her garden alludes to the idea that the little mermaid’s
attraction to him is based on projection, a psychological term which, according
to Jung (1983), means that the inner masculine spiritual principle has been
cast upon an external male object (p. 92), namely the prince. Jung said, “Projections
change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face” (p. 92).
Birkhauser-Oeri (1988) posited that the mother archetype produces projections
in the human psyche, thus the little mermaid’s attraction to the prince is an
unconscious means by which the internal feminine principle seeks totality (p.
61). The little mermaid, then, falls in love with her own internal image, the
masculine image of her soul, which has been projected onto the prince.
Symbolizing a conflict within the story,
a storm begins after the mermaid sets eyes on the prince. Rowland (2014)
claimed that Inanna is associated with rain and storms; therefore, this
conflict in the story represents a symbolic means by which the little mermaid
begins her eternal-return cycle. A storm is a “natural metaphor for spontaneous
upheaval in the ordinary affairs of life that can be annihilating or
transformative” (“Storm,” 2010, p. 66). The projection that the little mermaid
makes on the prince, then, is symbolically what causes the storm in the story,
and it is yet to be revealed if it is annihilating or transformative for her.
After this incident, during which the
little mermaid saves the prince from drowning, she cannot focus on anything
else but going to the human world so that she can be with the prince. She lets
her garden turn wild and dark, which suggests that she has given up tending to
her Self in order to chase the projection of her soul. The little mermaid,
yearning to live beyond the soulless world that mermaids are resigned to, essentially
decides to give her self up in order to attain the prince’s love and earn an
immortal soul.
Realizing that human beings find
mermaids’ fishtails ugly, she laments the fact that she does not have legs.
According to Pothier (2011), the tail represents the shadow, or unintegrated,
aspects of the self (p. 27) and alludes to the primitive feminine realm of the
unconscious (pp. 27-28). Along with the dark and shadowy aspects of the tail,
the fishtail, as an aspect of the fish, is “a revealer of wisdom” (Franz, 1977,
p. 150); therefore, the fishtail can be seen as the unconscious aspect of the
Self that, like the shadow, offers wisdom.
Another source of unconscious wisdom
comes from the mermaid’s voice. Her singing voice, as the most beautiful of
all, can be considered the wind of the soul. The utterance of sound can be seen
as “the sounding of the cosmos into being” (“Neck/Throat,” 2010, p. 376). Von
Franz (1997), who described the tongue as “the instrument with which we form
words” (p. 137), also suggested that voice and song represent the meaningful
utterance of the unconscious and those parts of the self that are worth
bringing into the world. When the little mermaid trades her voice and tongue to
the sea witch in order to obtain legs, she can be seen as essentially giving up
both of her ties to her unconscious self. In order to take a stand in the
world, literally and figuratively, the little mermaid gives up a significant
part of herself.
The sea witch, willing to take away the
mermaid’s tail and voice, represents the negative aspect of the mother that
attempts to destroy the Self. According to von Franz (1997), the witch often
emerges in fairy tales to replace a missing or dead parent within the story (p.
128). Essentially, the mother figure in the little mermaid has died, which
signifies that the positive mother aspect of the maternal archetype has moved
into the unconscious, and her absence in consciousness activates a negative
figure to take her place (pp. 128-129). Birkhauser-Oeri (1988) proposed that
the mother image, whether positive or negative, alludes to the physical and
instinctual experiences of the unconscious, and the way the image manifests
relates to how a person or character relates to that part of his or her psyche
(p. 15). Although she was afraid of the witch, the little mermaid went to her
willingly, which suggests that the little mermaid is both afraid of her own
physical and instinctual experience, but also drawn to it. Also, her
willingness to go to the negative mother suggests that the little mermaid is
capable of bringing the negative aspects of the mother to consciousness.
The sea witch lives in a strange forest,
and according Birkhauser-Oeri (1988), the forest symbolizes an untamed, natural
place where one may meet terrifying things like evil and uncontrolled drives
(p. 130); however, as a symbol of the unconscious, to which the positive
feminine principle has retreated, the forest also carries the lost positive
aspects of the self that can produce a life-enhancing effect for the little
mermaid (p. 134). Going into the forest to meet the sea witch, then, is “both
an opportunity and a time of danger” (p. 91).
In Andersen’s (1872/1974) tale, the sea
witch gives the little mermaid a draught that will make her human so she will
have the chance to make the prince fall in love with and marry her. If he does
not fall in love with the little mermaid but decides to marry another, her
heart will break, and she will become foam on the ocean (p. 69). By trading
essential aspects of herself to the sea witch in order to win the prince’s
love, the little mermaid buys into the negative aspect of the mother archetype,
which is destructive and dangerous. Even though the little mermaid can walk and
dance more gracefully than any person on earth (p. 68), the sea witch robs her
of her wholeness. Lacking wholeness, the little mermaid lives on land, in great
pain.
Although the little mermaid would be able
to take a stand in the world and be the most beautiful of all humans, no matter
how hard she tries, she cannot make the prince fall in love with her. With
every step she takes, and every dance she dances, she is thus in terrible pain.
Just as the witch warned, “every step felt as though she were walking on sharp
knives. But she suffered it gladly” (Andersen, 1872/1974, p. 70). This
suffering suggests that the little mermaid had been willing to make a great
sacrifice to earn the prince’s love, but the prince, being merely a projection
of her own soul and therefore not her soul itself, cannot truly love her. Her
love has been in vain, for even though he thought she had “’the kindest heart
of them all” (p. 72), she could not make him love her. In summary, the
complication arises because the little mermaid, having lost the feminine
principle within, enlists the sea witch’s help to attain the prince’s love and
an immortal soul. Driven by the negative aspect of the mother, and lacking the
eros principle, she cannot make the prince fall in love with her.
The
climax. The prince falls
in love with another, whom he thought had saved him, and decided to marry her.
Although the little mermaid has saved the prince from the storm, it is to the
woman from the holy temple, the future queen, that the prince exclaims, “You
are the one who saved me, when I lay half dead on the beach!” (Andersen,
1872/1974, p. 73). He was essentially half dead until he found his other half,
the queen. Even though the prince did not marry the little mermaid, it must be
noted that a marriage between the prince and a holy princess occurs in the fairytale.
Birkhauser-Oeri (1988) observed that marriage symbolizes the union of
opposites, male and female (p. 39) and alluded to the fact that the missing
eros principle has been revived within the story
(p. 93). Even so, it seems as though the little mermaid cannot earn an immortal
soul.
In an attempt to save the little mermaid
from the death that the marriage would bring, her sisters visit the sea witch
and trade their hair for a knife. According to Birkhauser-Oeri (1988), hair is
symbolic of one’s unconscious thoughts and fantasies
(p. 37), and the knife is symbolic of the capacity for discrimination and
judgment and acts as an instrument of liberation (pp. 104-105). However,
because the knife was offered by the sea witch, it can be considered a means by
which the little mermaid continues to be trapped by the negative mother. The
shadow quality of the knife represents an internal masculine principle that
discriminates and judges oneself incessantly. According to Marion Woodman
(1982), the witch sets this type of self-judgment in motion, and the only way
to get rid of the attachment to the negative mother is to disappoint the witch
herself (p. 68). The little mermaid does this by ridding herself of the knife
within the tale, which allows her to relinquish her bond to the sea witch.
Instead of plunging the knife into the prince’s heart to kill him, which would
allow her to live the rest of her life as a mermaid, she tosses the knife into
the sea. Even though she knows she will die as a result, the little mermaid
decides to sacrifice herself instead of taking the prince’s life. According to
Woodman (1982), sacrificing herself in this way is essentially sacrificing the
aspect of the Self that has been tied to the witch (p. 161). By sacrificing
herself instead of killing the prince, the little mermaid symbolically kills
the projection she has had on the prince. In doing so, she allows the holy
marriage and the eros principle that it embodies to remain. By surrendering to
her imagined death in the ocean, she essentially sacrifices herself in the name
of love.
Returning to the watery realms of the
unconscious, the little mermaid feels as though she is dying and turning into
foam. Having relinquished her attachment to the sea witch and withdrawn her
projection on the prince, however, the little mermaid is able to reconnect with
the positive aspects of the mother. Finding herself once again in the womb of
the Great Mother, the little mermaid can accept the grief of losing her stand
in the world, and reconnect with her instincts. Woodman (1982) described this
process beautifully:
Jumping
into water releases the instincts: they swiftly rise to the surface…where [they
cease] to be rigid and [begin] to flow, as if in the depths of the waters of
the unconscious the answer resides (p. 75)
By
willfully returning to the waters of the mother, the little mermaid essentially
becomes conscious of the positive mother, and within the Great Mother’s womb,
she can be purified for rebirth. This sentiment can be understood in the Christian
tradition as the idea of redemption. According to minister Stephen Hinerman
(2014, sermon), the sacrifice to God is one’s broken spirit or broken contrite
heart, and if one is willing to turn around and come home to oneself, as the
little mermaid did, one will be redeemed and transformed by the hand of God. By
reconnecting with the deep interiority of the self in the unconscious waters of
the motherly womb, the little mermaid can be redeemed and transformed. Von
Franz (1992) explained this transformation:
One
must only adhere firmly to one’s own inner experience, without exteriorizing it
uselessly, and also without denying it. If this numinous experience is accepted
with sincerity, genuineness, and courage, it will bring forth a conversion, a
“metamorphosis,” a profound transformation of one’s entire being. (p. 196)
True
to this sentiment, the little mermaid rises up from the ocean, reminiscent of
the Greek goddess, Aphrodite, being birthed from the sea foam representing a
reincarnation of the mother goddess and eros principle. Baring and Cashford (1991)
described this rebirth:
Aphrodite
is then the daughter of Heaven and Sea—the original mother goddess in many
traditions—and the first fruit of the separation of heaven and earth carrying
as her birthright, as it were, the memory of their union…Aphrodite is no longer
the one Great Mother Goddess who is the origin of all things, but, as daughter
of the sea, she is the child of the beginning. Consequently, she is the figure
who, in the likeness of the original goddess, brings back the separate forms of
her creation. In this sense, Aphrodite is ‘born’ when people joyfully remember,
as a distinct and sacred reality, the bonds that exist between human beings and
animals and, indeed, the whole nature of being. Union is then reunion, for love
that begets life resounds with the mystery of life itself. (p. 353)
Like Aphrodite, the little mermaid is
reborn from the sea as the “child of the beginning.” Remembering the wholeness
of being, which occurred through the life-death-rebirth cycle, the little
mermaid has been reborn with a divine purpose, the seed of individuation.
The
resolution. According to
the fairytale, because she had a pure heart, the little mermaid finds herself
up in the clouds among the daughters of the air (Andersen, 1872/1974, p. 75).
Being a daughter of the air, or an air spirit with an ethereal body (and no
tail), the little mermaid finds herself among the clouds. Flying between heaven
and earth, like angels do, she can earn an immortal soul by doing good deeds
(p. 76). She can “fly to the warm countries, where the heavy air of the plague
rests, and blow cool winds to spread it . . . [and] carry the smell of flowers
that refresh and heal the sick” (Andersen, 1872/1974, p. 76). Like angels, the
daughters of the air bring relief to people on earth “by evoking uncompromising
adherence to divine law” (“Angel,” 2010, p. 683). Blowing cool winds refers to
their ability to “[disperse] seeds of transformation and growth,” and influence
the course of human lives” (“Wind,” 2010, p. 60). The little mermaid can
therefore earn a human soul not from something or someone external, but from
the love she now finds internally, and that she can offer to the world. As a
child of the air, she is essentially the divine child that can undergo the
process of individuation and help heal the world around her. By redeeming the
feminine principle within herself, and offering her love to the world, the
little mermaid can earn her immortal soul.
The
denouement. The
fairytale ends on a hopeful but cautionary note—the little mermaid’s time of
trial, or the time it would take her to earn an immortal soul, would be
shortened if she encountered a good child in the homes of human beings, and it
would be lengthened if she encountered a bad child in the homes of human beings
(Andersen, 1872/1974, p. 76). Andersen’s (1872/1974) ending the story in the
human realm suggests that it is the human being’s duty to heed the call of
individuation. Having been reborn in the womb of the Great Mother, a good child
would follow the path that is represented by the hero’s journey. According to
Birkhauser-Oeri (1988), however, the heroic child, the one that undergoes the
process of individuation, is always in danger because it embodies a new way of
being in the world (p. 85). Therefore, it is a human being’s choice that
shortens or prolongs the attainment of an immortal soul.
Psychological
Interpretation of The Little Mermaid
Von Franz (1970) indicated that fairy
tales provide a variety of typical scenarios of different phases of the
individuation journey (p. 20). Andersen’s (1872/1974) The Little Mermaid can be considered a tale of individuation that
illustrates the life-death-rebirth process that people may need to undertake
before they undergo the hero’s quest, or the process of individuation.
The story, in its most basic form,
illustrates the process of psychological maturation and transformation that
begins the path to Selfhood. Reflecting on the process of psychological
maturation outlined earlier, in this chapter, the little mermaid’s journey is
traced as she moved from psychological immaturity to psychological maturity.
The fairytale begins with the little mermaid in the watery realm of the Great
Mother, which is synonymous with the psychological state of the ego being
completely merged with the Self and represents the original psychic state
present in infants and young children (Edinger, 1972, p. 6). In order for
children to develop psychologically, they must emerge from this identification
with the Self and adapt to the world around them. Like the little mermaid,
adapting to the world requires the child to lose contact with aspects of the
Self. These aspects of the Self sink into the unconscious and must be redeemed
if the child is to continue the process of individuation. In order to redeem
them, the individual, like the little mermaid, must sacrifice his or her
conscious standing in the world so that the totality of the self can be
realized. Only then can he or she be reborn psychologically with a sense of
true meaning and purpose and the ability to undertake the hero’s quest.
Essential
aspects of the individuation process. Consistent
with the archetypal journey of the little mermaid, the process of individuation
requires that the ego and Self form a lasting relationship with one another.
According to Woodman (1982), this dialogue is essentially what allows people to
live soulful lives; without the ego-Self connection, people, like the little
mermaid, essentially live without a soul (p. 127).
Developing the ego-Self connection
requires that one be able to integrate the conscious and unconscious aspects of
the Self. Like the little mermaid, people can redeem lost aspects of the Self
by willingly surrendering to the motherly womb of the unconscious, and by
redeeming the feminine principles of spontaneity, feeling, instinct, and
intuition (Baring & Cashford, 1992, p. xii). Integrating the feminine
principle requires that people look at the shadow aspects of the themselves,
both positive and negative; that they cut ties with the negative mother; that
they remove their projections from the external world; and that they stay true
to the divine child within themselves. Awakening the eros principle within,
which unites the aspects of the psyche that have become disintegrated, people
can align their own creed with that of the Self. Following God’s guidance, they
can undertake the hero’s quest so that the God within them can be realized on
earth. Andersen’s (1872/1874) The Little
Mermaid has shown us the way.
