jungian's Podcast

JUNG PODCAST #15 – FAIRY TALES 2In this episode we continue with Luthi’s analysis of the European Folk Tale. In the previous episode we dealt with the one-dimensionality and the abstract nature of the fairy tale. In this episode, Luthi’s ideas about the depthlessness of the fairy tale is reviewed. These three issues of fairy tales – one-dimensionality, abstractness and depthlessness are all critical aspects in dealing with a Jungian interpretation of the fairy tale. We also deal with why the fairy tale is so important to interpret from a Jungian perspective, primarily because it offers the purest example of the collective unconscious and also gives us a detailed sense of the process of individuation of the human psyche. Finally, this episode has a reading of the text of the classic Grimm’s tale of “The Nixie of the Mill-Pond?, the tale we’ll use as a basis for our first interpretation.