Analytical Psychology and Literary Criticism

Author(s): Marie-Louise von Franz

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 12, No. 1, Psychology and Literature: Some Contemporary
Directions (Autumn, 1980), pp. 119-126
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
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 AnalyticalPsychologyand LiteraryCriticism

Marie-Louisevon Franz

IT IS INEVITABLE that psychologyshould deal withliterature,since

both spring fromthe same womb: the human psyche.The great
new discoveryin psychologyat the beginningof the centurywas
Sigmund Freud's discoveryof the unconscious, which, however, he
conceived as purely personal, belonging to the individual alone and
harboringrepressed,mostlysexual material.C. G. Jung added to this
discovery the detection of a still deeper layer of the unconscious,
which is transpersonal,common to whole groups of people or even
mankind in general. He called it the collective unconsciousor 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 re-
lationshipof psychologywithliterature.1Insofar as a greatamount of
literatureendeavors to describe the world of human passions, the
eternalexperiencesofjoy and sorrow,love, power,hate,intrigue,and
transcendence,itis psychology,and it oftendescribesthese realms of
the human lot so masterfullythatpsychologynot only has nothingto
add to it but can even learn fromit. Insofaras the writeror artistuses
his own conscious experience of human life in his work, he is in-
voluntarilyalso a psychologist;ifhe is a trulygiftedartist,he findsthe
best possibleexpression forwhat he wantsto say,and no psychologist,
therefore,can add much insightto it.2
The creativeprocess, however,is a great mysterywhichwe cannot
"explain." But we can describe certain of its features. What the
psychologistcan observe, if he has an opportunityto analyze a cre-
ative person, is that in most creativeachievementsan autonomous un-
consciouspsychic reality intervenes, unpredictably and as if from
nowhere,into the work. An unconscious dynamism,whichJung calls
the "objective spirit,"begins to influencethe writerand even often
imposes upon him formsof expression which he does not intend to
use consciously.This can happen in various degrees. Some artistsfeel
that theythemselvesmainlygive gestaltto what theywrite,that they
consciouslychoose every word, every turn of the story,drama, or
poem. Others feel that they are completelyunder the dictate of an
unknown force, and every word which they write is a surprise to
them. But thisis only how the writerhimselffeels; even in the former
case the unconscious factormay also have influencedthe work,only

Copyright©1980 byNew Literary

History,The Universityof Virginia

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120 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the writeracquiesced so completelyto it thathe did not experience it

as a "foreign"force.The more a workof art is dictateddirectlyby the
unconscious,the more it tends to take on a dreamlikeform,namelya
symbolic,visionarycharacter.And itis the latterwhichmostlycalls for
the psychologist's intervention, because it is generally not self-
evidentlyunderstandablebut puzzling and mysterious.As the science
of the depth psychologistdeals mostlywithexactlythese productsof
the unconscious psyche,the psychologistmay sometimesbe able to
help the reader to some betterunderstanding.Jung givesas examples
of this kind of visionarywriting:The Shepherdof Hermas,Dante, the
second part of Faust, Nietzsche's Zarathustraexperience, Wagner's
Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal, Spitteler's OlympianSpring, the Hyp-
nerotomachia of the monk Francesco Colonna,3E. T. A. Hoffman'stale
"Der goldene Topf,"4and, in a more restrictedform,Rider Haggard's
She and Ayesha,Benoit's Atlantide,Alfred Kubin's Die andere Seite,
Meyrink'sDas griineGesicht,Bruno Goetz's Das ReichohneRaum,5Bar-
lach's Der toteTag, JamesJoyce'sUlysses,and many others.
One could add that Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" was so completely
writtenfromthe unconscious thatwhen the author was disturbedhe
could nevercontinueor end it,and thatRobertLouis Stevenson"saw"
several scenes of hisDr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hydein a dream. Stevensonalso
knew consciously that he wrote from an inspirationof the uncon-
scious. In a letterhe writes:"I am stilla 'slow study'and sit fora long
while silenton myeggs. Unconscious thought, thereis the only method:
macerate your subject,let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look
in-and thereyour stuffis-good or bad."6 Barbara Hannah has also
shown that all the Brontes wrote from pure inspirationfrom the
unconscious. In her introductionto Emily'sworks,CharlotteBronte
says:

The writer whopossessesthecreativegiftownssomething of whichhe is not

alwaysmaster-something that,at times,strangely willsand worksforitself.
He maylaydownrulesand deviseprinciples ... and then,haply,without any
warningof revolt,therecomes a timewhen it will no longerconsentto
"harrowthevalleys, or be boundwitha bandinthefurrow"-when ... itsets
to workon statuehewing,and you havea Plutoor a Jove,a Tisiphoneor a
Psyche,a Mermaidor a Madonna,as Fateor Inspiration direct.Be thework
or
grim glorious, dread or divine,you have little
choice leftbut quiescent
adoption.As foryou-the nominalartist-yoursharein ithas been to work
passivelyunder dictatesyou neitherdeliverednor could question-that
wouldnotbe utteredat yourprayer,nor suppressednor changedat your
theWorldwillpraiseyou,wholittledeserve
caprice.If theresultbe attractive
praise;ifitbe repulsive,thesameWorldwillblameyou,whoalmostas little
deserveblame.7

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ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND LITERARY CRITICISM 121

Some writers change from one type of writing to the other.

Goethe's Faust, as Jung points out, is in its firstpart psychologically
understandableand needs no commentin thisrespect,but the second
is "visionary"and describes thingsfromthe "nightsideof life"which
are normallyconcealed fromus and whichwe fear and by which we
are fascinated.8We also find such a combination of both kinds in
Apuleius's Metamorphoses. In this work there is a psychologicalnovel
telling the fate of the hero Lucius, who becomes an ass, and thenthere
is a series of inserted tales (for instance,that of Amor and Psyche)
whichreveal the compensatoryprocess or developmentin the collec-
tiveunconscious. Both strandsculminateand become one in Lucius's
great final visionaryexperience of the goddess Isis at the end of the
novel.9These visionaryinsertshint at the greater hidden world be-
hind our everydaylife.Jung writes:"The poet now and then catches
sightof the figuresthatpeople the night-world-spirits,demons, and
gods; he feels the secretquickeningof human fate by a suprahuman
design, and has a presentimentof incomprehensiblehappenings in
the pleroma."10In Bruno Goetz's Das ReichohneRaum, firstpublished
in 1933, the world catastrophecaused by the German mass psychosis
is anticipatedin all its details.
It is already clear from the few titlesnoted that the psychologist
does not necessarilyconcern himselfwith the artisticqualityof some
worksof art.This concern he has to leave to literarycriticism.For him
even mere trashsometimescontainsinterestingsymbolicmotifswhich
point to unconscious collective processes. Criminal stories and-
nowadays-science fictionare 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 trashystory(of a
flyingsaucer landing) by an obscure and very naive Italian writer,
Angelucci, side by side with the remarkable science fictionstoryof
Fred Hoyle, "The Black Cloud."1 In spite of all the differencesbe-
tween them, both stories deal with despair and the feeling of im-
pending catastrophe under which we live nowadays, desperately
looking out for some extraterrestrial solution to come to us.
Discerning between seemingly conscious psychologicalwritingand
visionary art is a
only preliminarystep. Closer investigationshowsthat
many seeminglypurely personal psychologicalnovels or dramas are
in fact also inspired by the unconscious. When the writernaively
surrenderscompletelyto the latter,he 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: psychologically,there is an imme-
diatelycomprehensiblesurface,a perfectdrama of human passions

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122 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

and experiences, but underneath one can detect an archetypalpat-

ternas well,a dimensionin depth whichreaches intothe realm of the
eternal,numinous,forevermysteriouspowers. Shakespeare's workis
an example of thiskind of writing.This double layeris mostpercepti-
ble inA Midsummer Night'sDream,but itexistsalso in his otherdramas.
The reverse can also be true. Joyce's Ulyssesis seeminglymostly
visionary,but a nihilisticbias flowsthroughit as well which is partly
due to a conscious trendin the writer'spersonality.But thisnihilismis
not only the "theatricalgestureof a Herostratusburningdown tem-
ples, but an earnestendeavour to rub the noses of our contemporaries
in the shadow-sideof reality."The "atrophyof feeling"is compensa-
toryto too much false feelingin the society.12Since Jung wrote this
(September 1932), the presentbloodshed in Ireland showsthatin fact
a beastlybrutalitystilllivesunder our idealisticattitudes,and not only
in Ireland. More recentGerman literatureis also fullof such worksof
ruthlesscoldness-they want to wake us up to see our true shadow.
In speaking of the contribution of the unconscious to literary
works,we must point out a definitedifferenceof approach between
the Freudian and Jungianschools of psychology.Both schools deal, in
contrast to other schools (for instance, behaviorism, sociological
psychologies,etc.), withthe phenomenon of the unconscious psycheof
man. But according to Sigmund Freud the unconscious processes in
the psyche and theirsymbolicmanifestationsultimatelypoint to the
personal problemsof the writer,to his Oedipus complex, forinstance
(Leonardo da Vinci),or even to some neuroticproblem.Accordingto
C. G. Jung all trulycreative products stem,on the contrary,froma
transpersonallayerof the unconscious (which he called the collective
unconscious or the objective psyche) and thereforeexpress a collec-
tive problem of a whole group of people. The artisthimselfmay be
sound, neurotic,even psychotic(Nietzsche!), a bourgeois, a rebel, or
whateverelse he chooses to be, but ifhe is a trueartistitis notthatthat
he writes about; he expresses hidden processes in the collective
psyche. Those processes are generallycompensatory to some ruling
collectiveattitudesand are meant-as dreams are meant-to have a
healing effecton the society.(In primitivesocietiesthe storytelleris
thereforealso often the shaman or medicine man of his tribe-still
another connectionbetween literatureand psychology.)The healing
effectmightalso consist in calling one's attentionto dangerous, sick
constellationsin the unconscious.Justas the individualoftenneeds a
psychologistto help him or her understand his or her dreams, the
psychologistmightbe useful by interpretingsuch collectivesymbolic
dreams which some artist has expressed and formed but not ex-
plained. Sometimes an artistmighteven have such resistancesto the

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ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND LITERARY CRITICISM 123

contentof his own product that he rejectsits psychologicalinterpre-

tation, and the psychologistmust dig up the gold in his product
againstthe artist'sown wish. But more frequentlythe artistsimplyhas
no idea himselfof what has been said throughhim and is relievedand
impressed if one can show it to him. What the psychologistdoes is a
kind of hermeneuticswhich can naturallybe deep or shallow, to the
point or beside it. If it is good, it will help the artist'swork get its
message over to the public and in thisway,remainingtactfullyin the
background, promote its healing impact.
Jung compared the creative process to a plant which is growing
autonomously,using the artist'spersonalityas its soil. This creative
growthoftenabsorbs so much psychicenergythatthe individualdoes
not have enough strengthleftforhis own lifeand development.This
causes many artiststo be childish,eccentric,or even autisticin their
personal lives, but, as Jung shows, it would be wrong to condemn
these traitsin him; theyare the price he has to pay forbeing creative,
being the instrumentof a spiritwhich reaches beyond himself.The
Greek archetypal figure of the artist is the limping, wounded
Hephaistos, who is laughed at by all the other Olympians. His suffer-
ing,whichmakes him more human than the othergods, is symbolicof
what all trulycreative people know: the woundedness of their soul
through the creative impulse. The other archetypalcripple in the
societyof 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 themselvesthe
sufferingof theirgroup and create an answer for it.
According to the Jungian outlook we have to distinguishclearly
between the personal makeup of an artist-his personal life and his
problemsor neurosis (if he has one)-and his creation. If the latteris
neuroticor has a more destructivecharacter,thisshould not be reck-
oned as the artist'sproblem only. If his work is widelyread, one can
safelyconclude that he describes a collectiveillness, liftsit into the
realm of general conscious awareness, which is the firststep toward
discoveringa solution.When the symboliccreationof an artistsprings
up froman especiallydeep layerof the collectiveunconscious,it may
not be understandable at all to the contemporarypublic. Certain
changes, constellations,disappearances, and reconstellationsof ar-
chetypal symboliccontents in the collective unconscious take hun-
dreds of years to reach public conscious understanding.That is why
some such creations have no success in the artist'slifetimeand are
only discovered later,when the message whichtheycontain has come
closer to general consciousness.In everyperiod one mayalso discover
in such works a "new" meaning, one which was not seen before the

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124 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

time was ripe. Such art is oftenin a true sense prophetic.Sometimes

one can never discoverexactlywhat the visionof the artistwas point-
ing at, as in the case of the fourtheclogue of Vergil,where the birthof
a child, or savior of the world, is predicted. Was it an allusion to
contemporarypolitical constellations,or was it a prediction of the
birth of Christ? The philologistsnever came to a clear conclusion.
Viewed fromthe standpointof depth psychology,it was neitherand
both. It was a visionwhichis typicalfortimesof disorderand general
distressand confusion,a sudden glimpse that a healing content,or
new god-image, was preparing its appearance in the depths of the
human psyche.Vergil probablysaw or feltthishimself,withouthav-
ing a definitereal person in mind.14
Interestinglyenough, this image of a divine child or godchild as
savior also appears sometimes in the visionarystories of modern
writers,forinstance,in Le petitPrinceof St. Exupery or in the mysteri-
ous boy called "Fo" in the novel of Goetz. In both cases, however,this
symbolicfigureof a pueraeternuslures the author or hero of the story
intodeath.This means that a rebirthof the god-image does not hap-
pen. The godchild figure even becomes obstructivein the second
example.15It is remarkable that both workswere writtenbefore the
Second World War; it is as if there was an attemptin the collective
unconscious of that time toward an inner renewal, which became
abortiveand ended in destruction.The healing image or impulse was
not strongenough to come through.
In analyzingsuch productsof literature,psychology,fromits field
of knowledge,can thus render some ancillaryserviceto literarycrit-
icism. A practicingpsychotherapistis daily confrontedwith human
problemsand mostoftenwithhuman tragedies(or comedies, forthat
matter).In timehe acquires a verybroad viewor spectrumof human
situations.In the Jungian approach he does not apply any external
means to help or heal his clientbut 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 interferencebut only supports the existing
natural healing tendencies in the body. In his practical effortsto
interpretdream images, the Jungian psychologistfirstasks for the
associationsof the dreamer,and iftheseare nonexistentor meager he
adds the "associationsof mankind" to the image, i.e., known similar
mythologicaland religiousimages. This proceeding is called amplifi-
cation. In fact it is not differentfromwhat many writersof the vi-
sionary type also do. In order to give form to the numinous but
mostlydim and amorphous firstintuitionwhich grips theirimagina-
tion,theyadd to it,i.e., associate withit,all theyknow fromliterature,

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ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND LITERARY CRITICISM 125

manyof them being verywell read. Thus "Dante decks out his expe-
rience in all the imagery of heaven, purgatory,and hell; Goethe
bringsin the Blocksbergand the Greek underworld; Wagner needs
the whole corpus of Nordic myth, including the Parsifal saga;
Nietzsche resortsto the hieraticstyleof the bard and legendaryseer;
Blake presses into his servicethe phantasmagoricworld of India, the
Old Testament and the Apocalypse."'6 In using the method of
amplification,the psychologistsimplyjoins his effortsto those of the
creativeperson by possiblyadding further,elucidatingmaterial.But
then comes the second step, which he does alone: the specific
psychologicalinterpretation,which consists in extractingfrom the
amplifiedmateriala newmeaning,a formulationor translationof the
imageryintospecific,knowable,psychologicalterms.If he succeeds in
doing thiswell, it evokes in the patient(or, when interpretingart, in
the reader) a vivifying"Ah ha!" reaction. It is as if two electriccur-
rentsmeet and create light.The danger of such a procedure is that
the illusionmaysneak in thatone's interpretationis definitiveand the
onlytrueone. It never is, foras Junghas pointed out in greatdetail in
Psychological Types,a symbol"is the best possibleexpressionforwhatis
still unknown"; it shapes and "formulatesan essential unconscious
factor,and the more widespread thisfactoris, the more general is the
effectof the symbol,for it touches a correspondingchord in every
psyche."17It provokes unconscious participation,and in order to be
effectiveit must embrace and contain thatwhich relates to a consid-
erable group of men. It then has a redeeming effect.Therefore any
psychological interpretationcan 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 filledwithever-newmeaning by reconnectingit with
the spiritof a changing world,where art productsoftenbecome out-
dated because the reader can no longermake a connectionbetweenits
symboliccontentand his own life problems.
The word hermeneutics comes from Hermes, the name of the mes-
senger who commutes between the world of the gods (the archetypes
of the collectiveunconscious) and the world of man. He is forever
versatileand a master of the word (logos). He quarrels and makes
friendswithhis brotherApollo, the god of art (and of medicine),and
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
fromthe depths of the psyche. Hermes, the herald, helps the artistto
communicateit to all men. That is how I see the possiblecollaboration
of depth psychologyand writing.As for its relationshipto literary
criticism,it is clear that psychologycan only provide the latterwith
certain informationand experiences which the literarycriticmostly

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126 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

does not have, but itcan never replace his painstakingscientificinves-

tigationsor aesthetic evaluations. These things the psychologistis
rarelycapable of doing, because his taskis to help people, whichtakes
most of his time and energy. Neither of these fields of knowledge
has, in my opinion, the last word. This remains withthe artist,and,
looked at more closely,not even withhim, but withhis unconscious,
autonomous genius.

JUNG INSTITUTE,
KUSNACHT

NOTES

1 "On the Relation of AnalyticalPsychologyto Poetry"and "Psychologyand Litera-

ture,"both in The Spiritin Man, Artand Literature, tr. R. F. C. Hull, Vol. XV of Collected
Works,ed. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler (New York and
Princeton,N.J., 1953-), pp. 65-83, 84-105.
2 Examples, forinstance,would be Thomas Mann's Magic Mountainand Buddenbrooks,
the novels of Balzac, Victor Hugo, Stendahl, etc.
3 A Jungian interpretationhas been writtenby Linda Fierz, "Le songe de Poliphile"
(1952), multigraphed.
4 Interpretedby A. Jaffein C. G. Jung,Gestaltungen des Unbewussten (Zurich, 1950).
See also her excellentinterpretationof Hermann Broch's The Deathof Vergilin Studien
zur AnalytischenPsychologie,2 vols. (Zurich, 1955), II, 288 ff.
5 Interpretedby M.-L. von Franz in BrunoGoetz,Das ReichohneRaum (Zurich, 1962).
6 Barbara Hannah, StrivingtowardsWholeness(New York, 1971), pp. 40 ff.
7 Ibid., pp. 195-96.
8 Cf. Jung,"Psychologyand Literature,"pp. 95-96.
9 Cf. M.-L. von Franz, The GoldenAss (New York, 1970).
10 I.e., in the collectiveunconscious.Jung,"Psychologyand Literature,"pp. 95-96.
11 Civilization tr. R. F. C. Hull, Vol. X of Collected
in Transition, Works,pp. 311 ff.,418
ff.,426 ff.
12 Cf.Jung," 'Ulysses': A Monologue," in CollectedWorks,XV, 109 ff.,119-20, 122.
13 KarolyKerenyi,Asklepios, tr.Ralph Manheim (London, 1960), pp. 76-86,96-99.
14 Cf. E. Norden,Die GeburtdesKindes(Darmstadt, 1958). Norden rightlyproves that
thischild means no definitereal person.
15 Cf. my forthcomingPuer Aeternus.For Goetz, see Frank F. Eaton, "Der Dichter
Bruno Goetz," Rice University Studies,57, No. 4 (Fall 1971), 33-37.
16 Jung, "Psychologyand Literature,"p. 97.
17 Psychological Types,rev. tr.R. F. C. Hull, Vol. VI of CollectedWorks,pp. 473 ff.,477.

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