I wish this Dr. had been my Dr.!

I chose Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz to write about for my Women in Psychology paper for my History and Systems class and wouldn't you know it, but synchronicity popped up when I noticed that in writing the paper it was about the 10 year anniversary of her passing. I'm still studying Jung after all the twenty years have past since I was previously in college and now finding out Dr. von Franz is gone, I wish I had kept up on my readings in Analytical Psychology.

The Faerie Tale Life of Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz
Maurice S. Keating, Jr.
University of Phoenix

Abstract:
An essay introducing Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz’s early life and the events leading to her lifelong working relationship with Dr. Carl Gustav Jung and his depth psychology theories of Analytical Psychology.

The Faerie Tale Life of Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz

Once Upon A Time

Born of baronial Austrian ancestry in Munich, Germany on January 14, 1915 during the Great War and recently deceased on February 17th of 1998 at home in peaceful Kusnacht, Switzerland Marie-Louise von Franz lived between the unconsciousness of birth to the unconscious end of life, the story of a faerie tale princess living in a world of myth and dreams. Robert Mcg Thomas, Jr., states in Dr. von Franz’s obituary, “…there were those who hailed her as the queen of Jungian [analytical] psychology. She was an expert on fairy tales who had been both Carl Gustav Jung’s most brilliant and inspired disciple and the one who had done the most to illuminate the flame since his death in 1961” (Thomas, 1998, ¶ 2). She was certainly no stranger to dream’s, Dr. Marie-Louise analyzed and interpreted some 65,000 of them during her many years as an analyst and added quite a few of her own to that compendium. The life of Marie-Louise evolved from dreams and revolved in and around the dreamy depth psychology of her mentor, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, founder of the analytical psychology school of thought. Journey now into the mystical land of folklore, myth’s and dreams that comprise the passionate life work and world of Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, a woman who lived her dreams to make them come true.

An Awe Inspiring Early Dream

In his eulogy for Marie-Louise von Franz, Dr. Gotthilf Isler (2004, ¶ 5 and 6) relates an actual account of one of her childhood dreams she confided to him and his wife that was memorable enough for her to include in her article, “The Unknown Visitor.” Only about four years of age at the time of her dream, the dream more of a nightmare, an unconscious reconstruction of thoughts peaking into an unknown future, formed from the von Franz family’s flight from oncoming political persecution in Austria to the safety of Switzerland. Marie-Louise told this lucid tale:
I went with Father and Mother and my sister through the streets of a place where we were staying at an inn after our flight. Father held me by the hand. Suddenly in the distance an old man and a young man appeared in the street, approaching swiftly. My father, startled, shouted out. "There they are!" I asked, "Who?" "The Gods, the Examiners. Everyone has an iron tablet with his name and birth and death dates on it. The tablets must be preserved intact. Whoever's tablet is broken will fall under the power of the Gods."
We ran back into our room in the inn. Father opened the chest with the family silver in it and took out the tablets. They were of white enamel with black lettering. The enamel of my tablet was as if it had been fractured by a hammer blow. I was horribly frightened. The others shrank back from me. I stepped out of my body and hovered about the ceiling, where there was a bright, round light into which I went. From there I saw myself below as a little girl holding the tablet. I decided to go on living and returned to my body. I wanted to confront the Gods and went towards the doors. As I was about to open them, the bolt was drawn back from the outside. They had arrived! I woke up screaming.
Only such a vivid dream as this could last a lifetime and portend a future outlook on life as a guide in the manner that Marie-Louise kept this in her memory.

Young Marie-Louise and Jung

Chance and circumstance, or synchronicity it may be, led to a casual encounter between young Marie-Louise at 18 and the then aged 58 years, Dr. Carl G. Jung, in 1933 (Thomas, 1998, ¶ 9). Marie-Louise was yet still a high school student in Zurich, but would soon afterwards begin working closely with him in what would become a lifelong relationship (Isler, 2004, ¶ 15). Analysand and ardent student, an analyst later herself and the first to replace Dr. Carl Jung after his death, as Director of the Jungian Analytical Psychology Institute in Zurich, Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz’s life became enmeshed with Dr. Jung’s own life and theories. At Dr. Jung’s suggestion from an interpretation of her dreams, she went on to study classical languages, earning her doctorate at the University of Zurich, a much needed talent Dr. Jung used in his own work, especially in the translations of ancient texts for his works in medieval alchemy as related to psychology of unconscious projection (Thomas, 1998, ¶ 14 and 15). Dr’s. Jung and von Franz were even travelling companions for lectures at Universities, and other excursions to meet with shamans, Buddhist Monk’s, medicine men and other such purveyors of unconscious wisdom. Dr. Gotthilf Isler (2004, ¶ 17), also reveals a secret meeting Marie-Louise and Carl Jung had with an African oracle that had summarily told her:
At the end, the highest judge will come - this would be an unheard of fortune, and as a matter of fact she experienced many amazing things; many of them had to be kept secret, so she couldn't relate them to me. But then later would come an "after-judge." This would be a great misfortune. This would be her present [Parkinson’s] illness. But she was happy that she had consulted this oracle, because she knew that this misfortune was a part of her fate!
A part of Jung’s belief in unconscious determinism became her own through this experience and was reinforced further in future synchronistic occurrences.

Dream Analyst and Interpreter of Faerie Tales and Physics

Card and Morariu (1998) note that some two years before his death, Jung bequeathed to Marie-Louise the beginnings of his notes on the mathematical properties of the first four integers, indicating his aging inability to accomplish a work of them, and his wishes for her to carry on his work. Dr. von Franz already had begun as a co-author with his final book; “Man and His Symbols,” and hoped to find someone else to complete this new task. Later, after Jung’s passing, Dr. von Franz took it upon herself to investigate, research Jung’s ideas with the help of one of his collaborators, Nobel laureate in quantum physics, Wolfgang Pauli, and finish a remarkable book on the archetypal significances and related synchronistic phenomenon of numbers as related to depth psychology and physics, called: “Number and Time” (¶ 3 and 4). Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz had already begun her remarkable career as an analytical psychologist writer of myths, legends and fairy tales, revealing the archetypal structures of their unconscious origins and the significance of their role in the development of consciousness in the history of humankind, when Number and Time was finally published in 1974. Her work continued as a writer, analyst and training analyst, Director of the C. G. Jung Analytical Psychology Institute in Zurich, and worldwide lecturer, publishing some 40 plus papers, books and even films, before Marie-Louise von Franz finally completed her journey back into the realm of the unconscious, her date with death on February 17, 1998.

In Memoriam

So deeply involved in revealing the mysteries of the unconscious was Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz that she dared take on writing a book called; “On Dreams and Death: A Jungian Interpretation,” published in 1986 and during the writing of which she developed Parkinson’s disease. Her friend and student, Remo Roth remembers that; “After this, she told me several times that she had the distinct feeling that the illness was the direct effect of writing this book” (Roth, 1998, ¶ 2). Dr. Roth continues, saying Marie-Louise remained intellectually active and concerned with the main topic of her book about individuation and the development of alchemy’s subtle body, that which survives and continues on after death; “the diamond body in eastern mysticism” (Roth, 1998, ¶ 3). Dr. Isler notes that Marie-Louise told him of a dream she had after Jung’s passing in which she saw a precious Chinese frog carved of stone that she had given to her mentor as a lifetime gift, but that he found to be too precious to keep, determining that it be returned to her upon his death, and in the dream she saw the frog waving to her. “For her, this was a sign that Jung was still living, and she died with this frog in her hand. The frog is a symbol of resurrection.” (Isler, 1998, ¶ 39). Marie-Louise von Franz has finished her work, yet much remains to be done.

References:

Card, C. R. And Morariu, V. V. (1998). “In Remembrance Of Marie-Louise Von Franz.” Retrieved February 24, 2008, from http://www.geocities.com/paideusis/n1cm.html

Isler, G. (1998, February, 17). Journeys newsletter. “And Her Spirit Lives On…” Retrieved February 23, 2008 from http://journeyintowholeness.org/news/nl/v12n3/eulogy.shtm

Roth, R. F. (1998). “My Personal Memories of Marie-Louise von Franz.” Retrieved February 22, 2008, from http://www.psychovision.ch/rfr/mlvf_nachruf_e.htm

Thomas, R M (March 23, 1998). Marie-Louise von Franz, 83, A Jungian Legend, Is Dead. The New York Times, p.NA. Retrieved February 23, 2008, from General OneFile via Gale:http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS