You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Verena Kast obtained her degree in philosophy, psychology and literature in Zurich in 1943 and, after study and training at the C. G. Jung Institute there, qualified and became a lecturer in psychology at the Institute and also at Zurich University. She is a training analyst and president of the Swiss Association of Analytical Psychology, and is in private practice in St. Gallen. She has written and published much.
Märchen als Therapie (‘Fairy—tales as Therapy’) is the last of a series of five volumes published by Walter on the use of fairy—tales in the field of analysis and psychotherapy. Volume one, Wege aus Angst und Symbiose, is about anxious patients; the following three volumes are concerned respectively with the significance of man and woman in fairy tales, with family conflicts in fairy tales, and with the quest for autonomy. The volume reviewed here shows the use of a variety of tales in different situations which are temporarily frustrating, blocking or arresting the journey towards selfhood.
Each example, carefully illustrated and annotated by the use of transcribed tapes, is evidence of the author's insight and skill in the art of amplification. The introduction makes it clear that amplification is a tool to be used only when and where indicated. For instance, an assessment should first be made of the patient's capacity to avoid inflation while utilising the material. This tool is part of our toolkit, but I have not seen anywhere such careful, disciplined and creative use of it in, to me, accessible literature. I have greatly enjoyed the whole book, but was particularly impressed by the last but one chapter, the content of which I shall give in some detail below.
The structure of the book is simple. The preface is followed by introductory comments stressing the universality of the essential content of this form of creative literature, and its relevance to the concepts of analytical psychology—the collective unconscious and the archetypes or archetypal proce