Marie-Louise von Franz: Analytical Psychology and Literary Criticism
IT IS INEVITABLE that psychologys hould deal withl iterature,s ince
both spring from the same womb: the human psyche.
The great new discoveryi n psychologya t the beginningo f the centuryw as
Sigmund Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, which, however, he
conceived as purely personal, belonging to the individual alone and
harboringr epressed,m ostlys exual material.
C . G. Jung added to this discovery the detection of a still deeper layer of the unconscious, which is transpersonal,c ommon to whole groups of people or even mankind in general.
He called it the collectivue nconsciouos r objective psyche.I will concentrate in this paper on the role of the latter in literature.
Jung himself has dealt in several lectures with the relationship of psychologyw ithl iterature.1In sofar as a great amount of
literature endeavors to describe the world of human passions, the
eternale xperiences ofj oy and sorrow,l ove, power, hate, intrigue,a nd
transcendence,i t is psychology,a nd it oftend escribes these realms of
the human lot so masterfullyt hat psychologyn ot only has nothingt o
add to it but can even learn fromi t.
Insofar as the writero r artistu ses his own conscious experience of human life in his work, he is involuntarilya lso a psychologisti; f he is a trulyg ifteda rtist,h e findst he best possible expression for what he wants to say, and no psychologist, therefore,c an add much insightt o it.
The creative process, however,i s a great mysteryw hich we cannot “explain.”
But we can describe certain of its features.
What the psychologistc an observe, if he has an opportunityt o analyze a creative person, is that in most creative achievementsa n autonomouus nconscious psychic reality intervenes, unpredictably and as if from
nowhere,i nto the work.
An unconscious dynamism,w hichJ ung calls the “objective spirit,” begins to influence the writer and even often imposes upon him forms of expression which he does not intend to use consciously.T his can happen in various degrees.
Some artistsf eel that they themselvesm ainlyg ive gestaltt o what they write,t hat they consciously choose every word, every turn of the story, drama, or poem.
Others feel that they are completely under the dictate of an
unknown force, and every word which they write is a surprise to
them.
But thisi s only how the writerh imselff eels; even in the former
case the unconscious factor may also have influenced the work, only
the writera cquiesced so completelyt o it that he did not experience it
as a “foreign”f orce.
T he more a worko f art is dictatedd irectlyb y the unconscious,t he more it tends to take on a dreamlike form,n amelya symbolic,v isionaryc haracter.
A nd it is the latterw hichm ostlyc alls for the psychologist’s intervention, because it is generally not selfevidentlyu nderstandableb ut puzzling and mysterious
A. s the science of the depth psychologistd eals mostlyw ithe xactlyt hese productso f the unconscious psyche, the psychologistm ay sometimesb e able to help the reader to some betteru nderstanding
Jung givesa s examples of this kind of visionaryw riting:T he Shepherdo f Hermas,D ante, the second part of Faust, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra experience, Wagner’s Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal, Spitteler’s Olympian Spring, the Hypnerotomachoiaf the monk Francesco Colonna,3E .
T. A. Hoffman’st ale “Der goldene Topf,”4a nd, in a more restrictedf orm,R ider Haggard’s She and Ayesha,B enoit’s Atlantide,A lfred Kubin’s Die andere Seite, Meyrink’sD as griineG esichtB, runo Goetz’s Das Reicho hneR aum,5B arlach’s Der toteT ag, James Joyce’s Ulyssesa,n d many others.
One could add that Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” was so completely
writtenf romt he unconscious thatw hen the author was disturbedh e
could never continue or end it, and that Robert Louis Stevenson “saw”
several scenes of hisD r.
Jekylaln d Mr. Hydei n a dream. Stevensona lso knew consciously that he wrote from an inspiration of the unconscious.
In a letterh e writes:”
I am stilla ‘slow study’a nd sit for a long while silento n mye ggs.
Unconscioutsh oughtt,h ere is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look in-and there your stuffi s-good or bad.”
Barbara Hannah has also shown that all the Brontes wrote from pure inspiration from the unconscious. In her introductiont o Emily’sw orks,C harlotteB ronte says:
The writerw hop ossessest hec reativeg ifto wnss omethinogf whichh e is not alwaysm aster-somethintgh at,a t timess, trangelwy illsa nd worksf ori tself.
He mayl ayd ownr ulesa nd devisep rinciple.s.. and then,h aplyw, ithouatn y
warningo f revolt,t herec omes a timew hen it will no longerc onsentt o
“harrowt hev alleyso,r be boundw itha band in thef urrow”-when.. . its ets
to worko n statueh ewinga, nd you havea Plutoo r a Jove,a Tisiphoneo r a
Psychea, Mermaido r a Madonna,a s Fateo r Inspirationd irectB. e thew ork
grimo r glorious,d read or divine,y ou have littlec hoicel eftb ut quiescent
adoption
.A s fory ou-the nominala rtist-yours harei n it has been to work
passivelyu nder dictatesy ou neitherd eliveredn or could question-that
would not be uttereda t yourp rayern, or suppressedn or changeda t your
caprice.
I f ther esultb e attractivteh eW orldw illp raisey ou,w hol ittled eserve
praise;i fi t b repulsivet,h es ameW orldw illb lamey ou,w hoa lmosta s little
deserveb lame.
Some writers change from one type of writing to the other.
Goethe’s Faust, as Jung points out, is in its firstp art psychologically
understandablea nd needs no commenti n thisr espect,b ut the second
is “visionary”a nd describes thingsf romt he “nightsideo f life” which
are normallyc oncealed from us and which we fear and by which we
are fascinated.
W e also find such a combination of both kinds in Apuleius’s MetamorphoseIsn. this work there is a psychologicaln ovel tellingt he fateo f the hero Lucius, who becomes an ass, and then there is a series of inserted tales (for instance, that of Amor and Psyche) which reveal the compensatory process or development in the collective unconscious.
Both strands culminate and become one in Lucius’s great final visionarye xperience of the goddess Isis at the end of the
novel.
These visionaryi nsertsh int at the greater hidden world behind
our everydayl ife.J ung writes:”
The poet now and then catches sighto f the figurest hat people the night-world-spiritsd, emons, and gods; he feels the secret quickening of human fate by a suprahuman design, and has a presentimento f incomprehensibleh appenings in the pleroma.”
InBruno Goetz’s Das Reicho hneR aum, firstp ublished in 1933, the world catastrophe caused by the German mass psychosis is anticipated in all its details.
It is already clear from the few titles noted that the psychologist does not necessarilyc oncern himselfw ith the artisticq ualityo f some workso f art.
This concern he has to leave to literaryc riticismF. or him even mere trashs ometimesc ontainsi nterestings ymbolicm otifsw hich point to unconscious collective processes.
Criminal stories andnowadays-science fiction are often a rich ore for the psychologist, who finds in them indications of what is going on in the psychic underground of our society.
In his paper “Flying Saucers,” Jung analyzes a trashy story (of a flying saucer landing) by an obscure and very naive Italian writer, Angelucci, side by side with the remarkable science fiction story of Fred Hoyle, “The Black Cloud.”1
In spite of all the differencesb etween them, both stories deal with despair and the feeling of impending catastrophe under which we live nowadays, desperately looking out for some extraterrestriaslo lution to come to us.
Discerningb etween seeminglyc onscious psychologicalw ritinga nd
visionarya rt is only a preliminarys tep. Closer investigations hows that many seeminglyp urely personal psychologicaln ovels or dramas are in fact also inspired by the unconscious.
When the writer naively surrendersc ompletelyt o the latter,h e does not always feel a friction with that other power which makes the decisions. In such cases his work has a kind of double nature: psychologicallyt,h ere is an immediately comprehensible surface, a perfect drama of human passions
and experiences, but underneath one can detect an archetypal pattern
as well, a dimension in depth which reaches into the realm of the
eternal,n uminous, foreverm ysteriousp owers. Shakespeare’s work is
an example of thisk ind of writingT. his double layeri s most perceptible
in A MidsummeNri ght’sD ream,b ut it existsa lso in his otherd ramas.
The reverse can also be true. Joyce’s Ulyssesi s seeminglym ostly
visionary,b ut a nihilisticb ias flowst hrough it as well which is partly
due to a conscious trendi n the writer’sp ersonality
B. ut thisn ihilismi s
not only the “theatricalg esture of a Herostratusb urning down temples,
but an earnest endeavour to rub the noses of our contemporaries
in the shadow-sideo f reality.
“T he “atrophyo f feeling”i s compensatoryt o too much false feeling in the society.
S ince Jung wrote this (September 1932), the present bloodshed in Ireland shows that in fact a beastlyb rutalitys tilll ives under our idealistica ttitudes,a nd not only in Ireland. More recentG erman literaturei s also fullo f such workso f ruthless coldness-they want to wake us up to see our true shadow.
In speaking of the contribution of the unconscious to literary works,w e must point out a definited ifferenceo f approach between the Freudian and Jungians chools of psychologyB. oth schools deal, in contrast to other schools (for instance, behaviorism, sociological psychologies,e tc.), witht he phenomenon of the unconscioups sycheo f man.
But according to Sigmund Freud the unconscious processes in
the psyche and their symbolicm anifestationsu ltimatelyp oint to the
personal problemso f the writer,t o his Oedipus complex, fori nstance
(Leonardo da Vinci), or even to some neurotic problem.
According to
C. G. Jung all trulyc reative products stem, on the contrary,f rom a
transpersonall ayer of the unconscious (which he called the collective
unconscious or the objective psyche) and therefore express a collective
problem of a whole group of people.
The artist himself may be sound, neurotic,e ven psychotic( Nietzsche!), a bourgeois, a rebel, or whatevere lse he chooses to be, but if he is a true artisti t is nott hatt hat he writes about; he expresses hidden processes in the collective psyche.
Those processes are generally compensatortyo some ruling
collective attitudes and are meant-as dreams are meant-to have a
healing effecto n the society.( In primitives ocieties the storytelleris
therefore also often the shaman or medicine man of his tribe-
still another connectionb etween literaturea nd psychology.)
T he healing effectm ighta lso consist in calling one’s attentiont o dangerous, sick constellationsi n the unconscious.J usta s the individual ften needs a psychologistt o help him or her understand his or her dreams, the osychologistm ightb e useful by interpretings uch collectives ymbolic
dreams which some artist has expressed and formed but not explained.
Sometimes an artistm ighte ven have such resistancest o the
contento f his own product that he rejects its psychologicali nterpretation,
and the psychologist must dig up the gold in his product against the artist’so wn wish. But more frequentlyt he artists implyh as no idea himselfo f what has been said throughh im and is relieved and
impressed if one can show it to him.
What the psychologistd oes is a k nd of hermeneuticsw hich can naturallyb e deep or shallow, to the point or beside it.
If it is good, it will help the artist’s work get its message over to the public and in thisw ay,r emainingt actfullyin the background, promote its healing impact.
Jung compared the creative process to a plant which is growing
autonomously,u sing the artist’sp ersonalitya s its soil.
This creative growtho ftena bsorbs so much psychice nergyt hatt he individual does not have enough strengthl eftf or his own lifea nd development
.T his causes many artistst o be childish,e ccentric,o r even autistici n their
personal lives, but, as Jung shows, it would be wrong to condemn
these traitsi n him; theya re the price he has to pay forb eing creative,
being the instrumento f a spiritw hich reaches beyond himself.
T he Greek archetypal figure of the artist is the limping, wounded
Hephaistos, who is laughed at by all the other Olympians. His suffering,
w hichm akes him more human than the other gods, is symbolico f what all truly creative people know: the woundedness of their soul through the creative impulse.
The other archetypal cripple in the society of gods is the “wounded healer”-Paieon, Machaon, Chiron, etc.13-again an example of a certain parallelism between the artist and the healer. Both in their own ways take upon themselves the sufferingo f their group and create an answer for it.
According to the Jungian outlook we have to distinguish clearly
between the personal makeup of an artist-his personal life and his
problems or neurosis (if he has one)-and his creation.
If the latter is neurotico r has a more destructivec haracter,t hiss hould not be reckoned as the artist’sp roblem only. If his work is widelyr ead, one can
safely conclude that he descr ibes a collective illness, lifts it into the realm of general conscious awareness, which is the firsts tep toward discoveringa solution.W hen the symbolicc reationo f an artists prings
up from an especially deep layer of the collective unconscious, it may
not be understandable at all to the contemporary public.
Certain changes, constellations,d isappearances, and reconstellationso f archetypal symbolic contents in the collective unconscious take hundreds
of years to reach public conscious understanding.
That is why some such creations have no success in the artist’sl ifetimea nd are only discovered later, when the message which they contain has come
closer to general consciousness. In every period one may also discover in such works a “new” meaning, one which was not seen before the time was ripe. Such art is often in a true sense prophetic.
Sometimes one can never discovere xactlyw hat the visiono f the artistw as pointing at, as in the case of the fourthe clogue of Vergil,w here the birtho f
a child, or savior of the world, is predicted.
Was it an allusion to contemporaryp olitical constellations,o r was it a prediction of the birth of Christ?
The philologists never came to a clear conclusion.
Viewed fromt he standpointo f depth psychology,i t was neithera nd both. It was a visionw hichi s typicalf ort imeso f disorder and general distress and confusion, a sudden glimpse that a healing content, or new god-image, was preparing its appearance in the depths of the human psyche. Vergil probably saw or feltt his himself,w ithouth aving a definite real person in mind.
Interestinglye nough, this image of a divine child or godchild as savior also appears sometimes in the visionary stories of modern writers,f ori nstance,i n Le petitP rinceo f St. Exupery or in the mysterious boy called “Fo” in the novel of Goetz.
In both cases, however, this symbolicf igureo f a puera eternuslu res the author or hero of the story intod eath.T his means that a rebirtho f the god-image does not happen.
The godchild figure even becomes obstructivei n the second example.15
I t is remarkable that both works were writtenb efore the Second World War; it is as if there was an attempt in the collective unconscious of that time toward an inner renewal, which became abortivea nd ended in destruction.T he healing image or impulse was not strong enough to come through.
n analyzing such products of literature,p sychology,f romi ts field
of knowledge,c an thus render some ancillarys ervice to literaryc riticism.
A practicingp sychotherapistis daily confrontedw ith human
problems and most often with human tragedies (or comedies, for that
matter)
. In time he acquires a very broad view or spectrum of human
situations. In the Jungian approach he does not apply any external
means to help or heal his client but looks out for healing processes in
the depths of his patient’s unconscious, mainly by means of his
dreams
. This method could be compared with internal medicine, which uses no surgical interferenceb ut only supports the existing natural healing tendencies in the body. In his practical efforts to interpretd ream images, the Jungian psychologistf irsta sks for the associationso f the dreamer,a nd ift hese are nonexistento r meager he adds the “associations of mankind” to the image, i.e., known similar mythologicala nd religious images.
This proceeding is called amplification.
In fact it is not differentf rom what many writerso f the visionary type also do.
In order to give form to the numinous but mostlyd im and amorphous firsti ntuition which grips theiri magination, they add to it, i.e., associate with it, all they know from literature, many of them being very well read.
Thus “Dante decks out his experience in all the imagery of heaven, purgatory, and hell; Goethe brings in the Blocksberg and the Greek underworld;
Wagner needs the whole corpus of Nordic myth, including the Parsifal saga;
Nietzsche resortst o the hieratics tyleo f the bard and legendary seer; Blake presses into his servicet he phantasmagoricw orld of India, the Old Testament and the Apocalypse.”‘
In using the method of amplification,t he psychologists implyj oins his effortst o those of the creative person by possiblya dding further,e lucidating material.
But then comes the second step, which he does alone: the specific psychological interpretation,w hich consists in extractingf rom the
amplifiedm ateriala newm eaning,a formulationo r translation of the
imageryi nto specific, knowable,p sychologicalt erms.
If he succeeds in doing this well, it evokes in the patient (or, when interpretinga rt, in the reader) a vivifying” Ah ha!” reaction. It is as if two electricc urrents meet and create light.
The danger of such a procedure is that the illusion may sneak in thato ne’s interpretationis definitivea nd the only true one.
It never is, for as Jung has pointed out in great detail in PsychologicaTly pes,a symbol” is the best possible expression forw hat is still unknown”; it shapes and “formulates an essential unconscious factor,a nd the more widespread thisf actori s, the more general is the effect of the symbol, for it touches a corresponding chord in everypsyche.”1
t provokes unconscious participation,a nd in order to be effectivei t must embrace and contain that which relates to a considerable group of men. It then has a redeeming effect.
T herefore any psychological interpretation can only be an “as if.” It can never exhaust and in this way “kill” the product of art, but it can help to
keep it alive and filledw ithe ver-newm eaning by reconnectingi t with
the spirito f a changing world, where art products oftenb ecome outdated
because the reader can no longer make a connection between its
symbolicc ontenta nd his own life problems.
T
he word hermeneuticcosm es from Hermes, the name of the messenger
who commutes between the world of the gods (the archetypes of the collective unconscious) and the world of man.
He is forever versatile and a master of the word (logos). He quarrels and makes friendsw ithh is brotherA pollo, the god of art (and of medicine),a nd
is, like Apollo, the “musagetes,” the lover of the muses.
The artist’s eternal but heavy task is to bring into form that which assaults him fromt he depths of the psyche. Hermes, the herald, helps the artistt o
communicate it to all men.
That is how I see the possible collaboration of depth psychology and writing.
s for its relationship to literary criticism,i t is clear that psychologyc an only provide the latterw ith certain informationa nd experiences which the literaryc riticm ostly
does not have, but it can never replace his painstakings cientificin vestigations or aesthetic evaluations.
These things the psychologist is rarelyc apable of doing, because his taski s to help people, which takes most of his time and energy.
Neither of these fields of knowledge has, in my opinion, the last word.
This remains with the artist, and, looked at more closely, not even with him, but with his unconscious, autonomous genius.
JUNG INSTITUTE, KUSNACHT
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