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Birkhäuser died in 1971 when she was in the process of reviewing the text of this book, which was first published in German in 1977, edited by Marie-Louise von Franz. The focus is the mother archetype, and the stated aim is ‘to investigate the psychological meaning of mother figures in fairy tales’. In her foreword, von Franz elucidates another aim: ‘with the help of Jungian psychology this book is designed to offer many women an illuminating perspective on their problems’.
There are two introductory chapters, in which Birkhauser gives us a bird's-eye view of her Weltanschauung in the context of Jung's ideas. For her it is the healing potential in the collective unconscious which is central. She understands fairy tales as compensatory to our one-sided Christian consciousness; analysis and interpretation of their imagery and motifs provide a means of bridging the gap between our conscious and unconscious attitudes. She defines interpretations in the following ways: first, ‘in order to satisfy the needs of the conscious intellect and its abstractions, an image expressed in a fairy tale must be presented in psychological terms’ (p. 10); second, ‘In the sense we are using the term, interpretation means trying to point out the astonishingly profound and striking messages hidden beneath the surface by making comparisons with similar stories, with myths, religious ideas and dreams. Pointing out really means pointing to something modern individuals often fail to see’ (I bid.); third, ‘I see interpretation as a kind of translation … The more carefully one translates, the more amazing are the things one discovers.’ (p. 11)
She touches on the psychological concepts relating to the archetype, but mainly amplifies its meaning with descriptive metaphors—’Mother nature’ and ‘earth mother’. Nature is a central theme; for example, she writes: ‘the mother principle is primarily on the side of nature in the sense of the instincts, the physical drives’ (p. 14). The term instinct remains