95. A Short Homage to Marie-Louise von Franz

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I have been away for a while, assembling my posts into a book shape – to offer a meaningful psychological journey through a spiritual landscape to bring a kind of direction with purpose, and for hope. Carl Jung said that spirituality had moved into psychology, and that has been my experience. I read Jung extensively but found his ideas more clearly described by others – Barbara Hannah, Jolanda Jacobi, Robert Johnson and Murray Stein for example, but none better than Marie-Louise von Franz the 20th-century Swiss Jungian Psychologist. As this has been my way, and she has described some of it so well, I dedicate this post to her.

Here are some quotes, written in her chapter: The Process of Individuation, in Man and His Symbols, conceived and edited but Carl Jung.

Note: Individuation – the conscious coming to terms with one’s own inner centre or Self – it is as I see it the Jungian name for the process of change one goes through on the psycho-spiritual journey. Later the term petrified is used, which I take to mean becoming stuck.

..perhaps everything seems outwardly all right, but beneath the surface a person is suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaningless and empty.

There is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what its secret aim is and what it means to you.

The hidden purpose of the oncoming darkness is generally something so unusual, so unique and unexpected, that as a rule one can find out what it is only by means of dreams and fantasies welling up from the unconscious.

Sometimes it first offers a series of painful realisations of what is wrong with oneself and one’s conscious attitudes. Then one must begin the process of swallowing all sorts of bitter truths.

Through dreams one becomes acquainted with aspects of one’s own personality that for various reasons one has preferred not to look at too closely.

Somewhere right at the bottom of one’s being one generally knows where to go and what one should do. But there are times when the clown we call “I” behaves in such a distracting fashion that the inner voice cannot make its pressure felt.

A man takes his moods fantasies, feelings, and expectations and fixes them, for example in writing, and then evaluates them ethically and intellectually with an evaluating feeling function. Working at this patiently and slowly, new unconscious material comes up. If practised with devotion over a long period, the individuation process happens – a single reality and can unfold in its true form.

The Self seems to come in many forms, typically an Old Man / Woman, sometimes an animal, and sometimes others.

If we pay attention to our dreams, instead of living in a cold, impersonal world of meaningless chance, we may begin to emerge into a world of our own, full of important and secretly ordered events.

In our civilised world, most dreams have to do with the development (by the ego) of the ‘right’ inner attitude toward the Self,…

The Royal represents a male and female union or wholeness. 

Dreams are about the development of the right attitude to the Self, less the adaptation to the outer world. Then one can hear the quiet voice of the inner Self. 

We have to live our own lives and not copy others. Not to imitate. It is time to listen within. That seems to go for meditation (which is a well-worn path than an individual one) too. 

One has to exist as an ordinary ego human while having too a sense of connection with all that greatness. 

Trying to give the living reality of the Self a constant amount of daily attention is like trying to live simultaneously on two levels or in two different worlds. One gives one’s mind to outer duties, but at the same time one remains alert for the things and signs both in dreams and external events that the Self uses to symbolise its intuitions, the direction in which the life-stream is moving. There are so many dead relics of the past in our present.

Time and again in all countries people have tried to copy in “outer” or ritualistic behaviour the original experiences of their great religious teachers – Christ or Buddha or some other master – and have therefore become “petrified”. To follow in the steps of a great spiritual leader does not mean that one should copy and act out the patterns of the individuation process made by his life. It means that we should try with a sincerity and devotion equal to his to live our own lives.

Thus an unconditional devotion to one’s own process of individuation also brings about the best possible social adaptation.

Fanatical political activity (but not the performance of essential duties) seems somehow incompatible with individuation.

The Self works in a hidden way to unite separate individuals who belong together. 

Throughout the ages, men have been intuitively aware of the existence of such an inner centre. The Greeks called it man’s inner Daimon; in Egypt, it was expressed by the concept of the Ba-soul; the Romans worshipped it as the “genius” native to each individual.

It is the ego that serves to light up the entire system, allowing it to become conscious and thus to be realised.

So, whatever form it takes, the function of the shadow is to represent the opposite side of the ego and to embody just those qualities that one dislikes most in other people.

The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood.

In the unconscious, one is unfortunately in the same situation as in a moonlit landscape. All the contents are blurred and merge into one another, and one never knows exactly what or where anything is, or where one thing begins and ends. (This is known as the “contamination” of the unconscious contents.)

I like to hear her talk of the shadow, the feminine in the man (anima) and the masculine in the woman (animus).

Whether your way has any resemblance to mine or not, dear reader, you might find that her work clarifies your experience.

Some more in her own words.