Coming into Being …

'The right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a longissima via, not straight but snakelike … a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors’.

My fateful detour came between Winter Solstice and Christmas Eve three years ago, an auspicious, but busy time. A voicemail from a friend/colleague said, 'Please call me, I have an acting opportunity for you’. My colleague's scheduling conflict became my chance to play Marie Louise von Franz in The Women: Our Psychoanalytic Mothers. This staged reading was conceived and created by Louise DeCosta and featured five female psychoanalysts who changed the face of analytic history. Each of the actors, except one, was an analyst and educator, and all had researched and written their respective parts. The shared mission was twofold: to bring awareness and understanding to the role these women played in the development of early psychoanalysis, and to encourage conversation and community amongst the various psychoanalytic camps … I was excited about the mission, intrigued by the concept and subject matter, hungry for collaborative process, and terrified by the thought of acting again! It had been over 30 years since my last professional acting job, with many years of heartache following the via longissima from that career to my present work as a Jungian analyst, a process that required rebuilding my identity in order to create a new and full professional life.

After reading the script, I agreed to participate, with the understanding that I could research, write, and create my own Marie-Louise von Franz. Then I had a lot of catching-up to do. I wrote and rewrote, refining, learning an Austrian/Swiss accent and immersing myself in YouTube videos of Marie-Louise von Franz. I studied her mannerisms and read everything that I could find, by and about her. I heard first-hand accounts of others' encounters with the legendary, brilliant and often cant