Marie-Louise von Franz (4 January 1915 – 17 February 1998) was a German-born Swiss Jungian analyst and scholar, known for her psychological interpretations of fairy tales and of alchemical manuscripts. She worked and collaborated with Carl Jung from 1933, when she met him, until he died in 1961.
Early life and education Marie-Louise Ida Margareta von Franz was born in Munich, Germany, the daughter of a colonel in the Austrian army.
After World War I, in 1919, her family moved to Switzerland, near St. Gallen. From 1928 on, she lived in Zürich, together with her elder sister, so that both could attend a high school (gymnasium) in Zürich, specializing in languages and literature. Three years later, her parents moved to Zürich as well.
Meeting Carl Gustav Jung In Zürich, at the age of 18, in 1933, when about to finish secondary school, von Franz met the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung for the first time. Together with a classmate and nephew of Jung's assistant Toni Wolff, she and seven boys who she had befriended were invited by Jung to his Bollingen Tower near Zürich. For von Franz, this was a powerful and "decisive encounter of her life", as she told her sister later the same evening.
At the meeting, Jung and the pupils discussed psychology. When Jung commented on a "mentally ill woman, who [actually, not to be taken symbolically] lived on the moon" von Franz understood that there were two corresponding aspects of reality. The psychological, inner world, which contained dreams and myths, was as real as the outer, material world.Anne Maguire: "Marie-Louise von Franz. Doyenne", In James A. Hall and Daryl Sharp: Marie-Louise von Franz. The Classic Jungian and The Classic Jungian Tradition. Inner City Books, Toronto 2008, p. 36, .
Studies, lean times and private tutoring In 1933, at the University of Zurich, von Franz studied Classical philology and Classical languages (Latin and Greek) as major subjects and literature and ancient history as minor subjects.
Due to her father's major financial loss in the early 1930s as a result of the worldwide financial collapse, von Franz had to self-finance her tuition. She did this by giving private lessons as a tutor in Latin and Greek for gymnasium and university students. In the years after finishing her university studies, she continued to tutor in order to support herself financially, all the while working on fairy tale texts.
In addition to her university studies, von Franz occupied herself with Jungian psychology. She attended Jung's psychology lectures at the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School in Zürich (now the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich) and, in 1935 and thereafter, also attended his psychology seminars. In 1934, she started analytical training with Jung.
Collaboration with C. G. Jung In order to pay C.G. Jung for her training analysis, she translated works for him from Greek and Latin texts. Among others, she translated two major alchemical manuscripts: Aurora Consurgens, which has been attributed to Thomas Aquinas, and Musaeum Hermeticum. As many of its passages were of Islamic and Persian origin, von Franz took up Arabic as study subject at university.
This was the beginning of a long-standing collaboration with C.G. Jung, which continued until his death in 1961. Their collaboration was especially close in the field of alchemy. Not only did she translate works, she also commented on the origin and psychological meaning of Aurora Consurgens. She offered support for the theory that the Christian-alchemical text might have been dictated by Thomas Aquinas himself.See Introduction of Marie-Louise von Franz: Aurora Consurgens. A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy. A Companion Work to C.G. Jung's Mysterium Conjunctionis. Translated by R.F.C. Hull and A.S.B. Glover. (Studies in Jungian Psychology). Inner City Books, Toronto 2000, p. X-XI, 4, 429–430. IBN 0919123-90-2.
The experience that Jung termed "objective Psyche" or "collective unconscious" marked her life and work as well as her way of living. She worked to understand the reality of this autonomous psyche acting independently from consciousness.
Career Von Franz worked with Carl Jung, whom she met in 1933 and with whom she collaborated until his death in 1961.Isler says that Marie-Louise von Franz has probably been "the closest and most important collaborator of C.G. Jung in the last third of his life." See his German foreword in "Jungiana A, Vol. 2" (1990), p. 7. This issue was dedicated to von Franz.
From 1942 on until her death, Marie-Louise von Franz practised as an analyst, mainly in Küsnacht, Switzerland. In 1987, she claimed to have interpreted over 65,000 dreams.Boa, Frazer: The Way of the Dream. Windrose Films, Toronto 1988. .
She wrote more than 20 books on analytical psychology, most notably on fairy tales as they relate to archetypal psychology and depth psychology. She amplified the themes and characters of these tales and focused on subjects such as the problem of evil, the changing attitude towards the female archetype.Marie-Louise von Franz. Shadow and Evil in Fairytales. Spring Publications, Zürich, New York 1974 and Shambhala, Boston 1995. Marie-Louise von Franz. Problems of the Feminine in Fairytales. Spring Publications Zürich, New York 1972 and Boston, Shambhala 1993.
Another field of interest and writing was alchemy, which von Franz discussed from the Jungian psychological perspective. She edited, translated and commented on Aurora Consurgens, attributed to Thomas Aquinas, on the problem of opposites in alchemy. During her last years of life, she commented on the Arabic alchemical manuscript of Muḥammad Ibn Umayl Hal ar-Rumuz (Solving the Symbols).Marie-Louise von Franz: Book of the Explanation of the Symbols. Kitāb Ḥall ar-Rumūz by Muḥammad Ibn Umail. Psychological Commentary by Marie-Louise von Franz (= Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum. Vol. I A). Translated by Salwa Fuat and Theodor Abt, edited by Theodor Abt. Living Human Heritage Publications, Zürich 2006, . For alchemists, imaginatio vera was an important approach to matter. It resembles in many aspects the active imagination discovered by C. G. Jung. Marie-Louise von Franz lectured in 1969 about active imagination and alchemyMarie-Louise von Franz: Alchemical Active Imagination, Spring Publ., Texas 1979. and also wrote about it in Man and His Symbols. Active imagination may be described as conscious dreaming. In Man and His Symbols she wrote:
A third field of interest and research was synchronicity, psyche and matter, and numbers. It seems to have been triggered by Jung, whose research had led him to the hypothesis about the unity of the psychic and material worlds—that they are one and the same, just different manifestations. He also believed that this concept of the unus mundus could be investigated by means of researching archetypes. Due to his advanced age, he turned the problem over to von Franz.Marie-Louise von Franz Number and Time (Northwestern, 1974) ix. Two of her books, Number and Time and Psyche and Matter, deal with this research.
Von Franz believed that a synchronistic event is one in which there is an acausal correspondence between the internal state of an individual and an externally related event, but it is necessary that the individual perceives this personal meaning, or else there is no synchronicity, just a similarity. Regarding number, von Franz claims that the union between symmetrical internal psychological experience and external material processes may be formally represented by number. This numerical basis as the correspondence between psyche and matter functioned as von Franz's logic in suggesting why synchronicities could occur–there was a uniting principle between the expression of inner and outer realms, which were rooted in the same substance. She also believed that life itself, through its sequences, could be given a numerical quality, like the chapters in a book, and that by the end we have an opportunity to reach a complete work, or whole story. In Number and Time, she claims that numbers in dreams are expressed qualitatively, where numbers are “structural characteristics of the Self symbol.”
In 1968, von Franz was the first to argue that the mathematical structure of DNA is analogous to that of the I Ching. She cited the I Ching in an essay, "Symbols of the Unus Mundus", published in her book Psyche and Matter.Marie-Louise von Franz Psyche and Matter (Shambhala, 1992) p. 39–62. The reference is cited on page 44; she cites the reference as number 16 of the article: Dialog über den Menschen: Eine Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Wilhelm Bitter (Klett. Stuttgart, 1968).
Another basic concern throughout many of her works was how the collective unconscious compensates for the one-sidedness of Christianity and its ruling god image, via fairy tales and alchemy. In an analysis of the visions of Saint Perpetua, a martyr,Meria-Louise von Franz. The Passion of Perpetua. A psychological interpretation of Her Visions.. The Jungian Classical Series. Spring Publ. Dallas 1980. . Reprint: Inner City books, Toronto 2004. she writes that such visions enable us to gain a deep insight into the unconscious spiritual situation of the time. They show the deep conflict of that time, the transition from Paganism to Christianity. "The martyrs appear in many respects as the tragic, unconscious victims of the transformation which was then being fulfilled deep down in the collective stratum of the human soul: the transformation of the image of God" Another compensatory motif is the symbolism of the vessel of the holy grail in The Grail legend.Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail legend. With Emma Jung. Putnam's sons/C.G. Jung Foundation, New York 1970. In this book she discusses the psychological symbolism of the documented legends of the Holy Grail. It evolved out of the completion of Emma Jung's unfinished research, which Marie-Louise von Franz had been asked to take over and publish after Emma Jung's death.
In the visions of Swiss Saint Nikolaus von Flüe Not yet translated into English. she dealt with the aspects of the dark and evil as well as the cosmic side as part of a more holistic image of god. Von Franz says that the visions reveal basic tendencies of collective unconscious that seem to strive to further develop the Christian symbolism and by that giving points of orientation, showing where the unconscious psyche wants to let us notice and understand the problem of opposites and by that to bring us to more closeness and fear of God.Marie-Louise von Franz, Die Visionen des Niklaus von Flüe. Daimon, 1980 (first edition), 1991 (fourth edition), p. 129f. .
Films In addition to her many books, von Franz made a series of films in 1987 titled The Way of the Dream, along with her student, Fraser Boa. In The Wisdom of the Dream, a channel 4 television series, London 1989, von Franz was interviewed. Text of the film is printed in: Seegaller, S. and Berger, M: Jung – the Wisdom of the Dream. London 1989.
Lectures In 1941–1944 von Franz was an associate member of the Psychological Club, Zürich. There she first lectured on the visions of Perpetua on June 7, 1941, which later was expanded and published as her first book The Visions of Perpetua. In the following years, she held many lectures at the Zürich Psychological Club. They constituted the basis of many of her books.
Between 1942 and 1952 she acted as its librarian.Emmanuel Kennedy-Xypolitas. "Introduction", In Emmanuel Kennedy-Xypolitas (ed.), The Fountain of the Love of Wisdom. An homage to Marie-Louise von Franz, Chiron Publications Wilmette, Illinois 2006, p. xxxii, footnote 2.
In 1944 she became one of its full members.
In 1948, she was a co-founder of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich.