Foreword by Marie-Louise von Franz
This unique book impressively illustrates how the mother archetype acts on both the society and the psyche of the individual. On the basis of classic fairy tales – Snow White, Jorinda and Joringel, Rapunzel and others – the positive and the negative aspects of the mother complex are described and provided with context. This is the first publication in English of this book in its original and unabridged form.
Sibylle Birkhäuser’s book “compares processes taking place in the unconscious with their aura in the mythic images of fairy tales, in order to elucidate things that are hard to understand. It is the distillation of many years’ experience and psychological questioning in her work as an analyst. … It could serve as a light to people in an area in which darkness, apprehension and even threat seem continually to loom out of the ‘realm of the Mothers’ by illuminating its obscurity with the ‘light of nature’, the light from within.”
– From the Foreword by Marie-Louise von Franz
Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri was a prominent Jungian analyst in Basel until her death in 1971. She was the wife of the painter Peter Birkhäuser.