THROUGH EMOTIONS TO MATURITY Psychological Readings of Fairy Tales VERENA KAST Translated by Douglas W hitcher with Susan C. Roberts tI i FROMM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING CORPORATION TraniUtion Copyright <0 1993 Fromm Intematonal Pubhshng Corporation. N ew York Originally published m 1982 as Wege ous Angst und Symbiose; M o rd ien pychologisch gedeuret Copyright © 1982 Walter-Veriag AG. Often, Switzerland AM nghts reserved N o p * l o f th * book may be reproduced o r U t**ed m any term o r by any m e # * ete<Von< o r m echan*al ■nciudng photocopying re co rd *^ , o r by any mtem aoon storage and retntvei system, without pem m on in Mibrig 9om the Pub'isher Inquiries should be addressed to Fiomm international Pub'nh.ng C o rp o ra to r. 560 U » n g to n Avenue. N ew Y o rk N Y 10022 Manufactured m the United States o f America Pnnted on aod-free. recycled paper Test U S Edrt<on LiBAaiiy o r CoaGMSS CataiOCinc-in-Pia iiCatkm Data K a$t V e re n a. 1943- fVVege aus Angst un d S jm b io ie . Engksh] TVough emotions to matunty; psychok^cai read^tgs o f fairy tales / Verena Kast p cm . Includes bibliographical references IS B N 0»86064>205'X (doth : alcpaper): $ 19.9S. IS B N 0-88064206-8 (pbk: a *. paper): $11.9S I. Fairy tales—kkstory and criticism. 2. ftychoaoalys* and feldore 3 Anxiety. 4. Symbiosis (ftychology) l Tide. CBSS0K384I3 1993 390.21—dc20 93-33193 CIP CONTENTS v FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION i FOREWORD TO THE GERMAN EDITION vH GETTING THROUGH ANXIETY INTRODUCTION ) THE LAD WHO FEARED NOTHING 2 To Be Human Is to Have Fear THE GOOSE MAID 2 4 Fear in Separating from the Mother GRATCOAT 4 6 Fear in Separating from the Father NIXIE IN THE POND 6 3 Fear of Overwhelming Emotions GETTING THROUGH SYMBIOSIS INTRODUCTION 85 JOURNEY TO THE UNDERWORLD 100 THROUGH THE HELLISH WHIRLPOOL OF FAFA Contending with the Devouring Primal Ground REDHAIR GREENEYES 120 A Way out of Father-boundedness THE DAUGHTER OF THE LEMON TREE 140 A Way out of Overprotection JOR1NDA AND JOR1NGEL 160 A Way out o f Infatuation into Relationship CONCLUDING REMARKS 168 NOTES 173 BIBLIOGRAPHY 175 ■ Foreword to the English Edition BY DOUGLAS WHITCHER This book i$ another stepping stone for English-speaking readers toward greater familiarity with the thought of Verena Kast. Until now we have become acquainted with Kast as a psychologist of the mourning process (1988). a mythographer o f relationship (1986), a theorist and practi­ tioner of depth crisis intervention (1990), a Dionysian philosopher o f joy (1991), a Sisyphusian mid-life counselor (1991), an educator who is able and willing to readably summarize the state o f the art o f contemporary Jungian psy­ chotherapy (1992), and an initiator into the world o f Active Imagination (1993). Recently, a publication appeared together with the authors Ingrid Riedel and Mario Jacoby in which we were offered a sample o f Kast as an interpreter of folktales (1992). The present volume is the first to appear in English that is devoted exclusively to her reflections on folk­ tales. Fromm Internationa] will bring us in time all six of Kast’s books on folktales. If her publishing history in Ger­ man is any indication, we may predict that Verena Kast’s thought will soon become well known to her English-speak­ ing audience as well. Kast's popularity has been held against her. How can any­ thing be profound that is popular? And yet Jungian psychol­ ogy itself provides the answer to this apparent riddle: If archetypal images express dilemmas that are common to most if not all of humanity, and if folktales are an expressive medium through which these images are entertainingly THROUGH EMOTIONS TO MATURITY • VI passed along, (hen it should com e as no surprise that a therapist who writes a great deal about folktales would sell a great many books, provided she can write in a way that does not bore her audience. O f course not everyone can write about folktales without boring their audiences. To my mind, one o f Kast's unique gifts is her ability to spring deftly from folktale to therapy and back again. Sometimes one hardly notices the transition because Iter parallels arc anything but contrived. We do not read about dreams reproducing secret chapters from the history of the human spirit; we hear how a folktale image motivated a client to change. I was introduced to the present book by an analysand in Zurich who was caught in a symbiotic lie with his mother. He was her pride and glory— when he succeeded in the things she thought were most important— and her shame and undoing when he failed. At the time, he was failing in a big way— as far as she was concerned. Now that I have actually read the book myself. I realize that by telling me about this book he was trying to tell me that his failings in one department might yet lead to development in another. Perhaps he would have to subject her to an undoing in order to do something for himself. From Kast's perspective, undoing himself from her would be doing her a favor as well. I suspect that the analysis would have been helped along if 1 had actually read Kast’s book. Perhaps then we could have talked about the boy in "The Daughter of the Lemon Tree” who was so spoiled that there was nothing he seemed to be able to accom­ plish on his own, about how it was only through his careless games and passive aggression that he smashed an old lady's cooking pot, and that it was only by means o f his old lady's frustration and curse that he was able to discover his own stead­ fast will. Kast may not resemble such an old lady by her outward appearance, but her advice to the young man reminds me of VII • F O R E W O R D what 1 could imagine her telling a young man in therapy whose dreams are not bothered much by reality: He needs to trudge about in iron shoes for no less than three years. This may sound like an odd and impractical sentence, but it may be the only way to ground someone to the soil from which his personal identity will eventually grow, if only he can stick to it long enough. Or we could have talked about the young man in “Redhair Greeneyes" who went ahead and did the one thing his tired-out old father told him not to do. The young man in analysis was still desperately trying to please a father that he imagined for himself out of the whole cloth of his disappointments. He believed that his fathers alcoholic ruin translated into the advice. “Whatever you do, don’t do what 1 did.” And yet by try­ ing to avoid the various apples o f temptation that presented themselves along his walk through life, he walked right into the same old traps of self-destruction— unconsciously, unlike the protagonists o f the folktales that Dr. (Cast has interpreted for us here. Rather than avoiding the demon that had ruined his father’s life, he would have done well to “hire” his father’s devil, like the young man in the folktale. Then he would have taken the path o f risk, the only path that could lead him through the perils that had stopped his life dead in its tracks. He could have applied a bit of poison to his mindset with the aim of killing off his self-castrating expectations. It is o f course false to say that the young merchant “hired” his father’s devil, for this devil told the youth what to do at every turn. And yet, neither would it be correct to say that the devil took possession o f the young man. At the very end o f the talc, we learn that this demon was actually a shade the young man had ransomed, the shadow that his father had never allowed to enter his own life. The possibility o f redeeming one’s father’s shadow is good news for young men in analysis these days. “Good news” indeed. There are those who would object to Kast’s optimistic reading of psychology through the lens of THROUGH EMOTIONS TO MATURITY • viii folktales: it reminds them o f some "happy ending** Gospel. What does this gospel have to do with Jung’s vision of a wrenching clash o f opposites that never finds an end but only winds its way towards new heights of tragic conflict, they ask. Is Kast suggesting that problems can actually be solved, that folk- tales can provide us with maps for finding our way through emotions to maturity, as the title suggests? Kast‘s “belief.” however outlandish or optimistic, is never­ theless critical and psychological, namely, that relationships become diseased, stunted in their growth, packed full o f unreal­ istic expectations, and that it is the job of the psychotherapist schooled in folklore to unravel the eerie images that implicate themselves in such relationships. The only way out o f the image is through the image, just as the only way out of symbiosis is through symbiosis, the only way out o f anxiety through anxiety. This may sound like a recipe— the client, like the protago­ nist.