That was before she came to appreciate that to Jung dreams, like myths, fantasies and fairy tales are as real as the world itself - and that a problem exists when somebody has trouble telling the two levels of reality apart. When Jung replied that no, the woman really did live on the moon, Miss Franz, she later recalled, ''went away thinking that either he was crazy or I was.''
Invited by a friend to meet the great man, she was so disconcerted when Jung mentioned a patient who lived on the moon that the brash young woman piped up and said surely he meant the woman acted ''as if'' she lived on the moon. Among them were ''An Introduction to the Psychology of Fairy Tales,'' ''Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales,'' ''Creation Myths,'' ''Redemption Motifs,'' ''Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales,'' and ''Problems of the Feminine in Fairy Tales.''Īs Jung had sensed, along the way she found too many common themes and symbols in too many isolated cultures for the similarities to be dismissed as mere coincidence. von Franz conducted a worldwide study of fairy tales and turned out a stream of rigorously researched and influential books on this subject. In Jungian theory, those primordial stories provide compelling evidence of his central notion that all humanity shares a collective unconscious of genetically replicated archetypal forms reflecting and embodying the entire spectrum of human aspirations, feelings, fears and frustrations.įor those who doubted, Dr. For it was Freud, after all, who regarded religion as poppycock while Jung embraced religion as every bit as authentic as fairy tales themselves.