Marie-Louise von Franz - The Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man

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The Golden Ass of Apuleius

THE LIBERATION OF THE FEMININE IN MAN

MARIE-LOUISE VON FRANZ

Revised Edition

SHAMBHALA
Boulder
2017

SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

4720 Walnut Street

Boulder, Colorado 80301

www.shambhala.com

1970, 1980, 1992 by Marie-Louise von Franz

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover art by Roberta Arenson

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Franz, Marie-Louise von, 1915

The golden ass of Apuleius: the liberation of the feminine in man I Marie-Louise von Franz.Rev. ed.

p. cm.

A C. G. Jung Foundation book.

eISBN 9780834840829

ISBN 9781570626111

1. Apuleius. Metamorphoses. 2. ApuleiusKnowledgePsychology. 3. Femininity (Psychology) in literature. 4. Archetype (Psychology) in literature. 5. Metamorphosis in literature. 6. Sex role in literature. 7. Men in literature. I. Title.

PA6217.F7 1990 89-43309

873.01dc20 CIP

BVG01

CONTENTS

This book is neither a historical nor a literary essay. It represents an attempt to elucidate and illustrate the problem of what C. G. Jung called the anima: that is, the feminine aspect of a mans psyche. The book originated in a series of lectures I gave at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1966. Instead of using case material, I chose this novel of an ancient author because it illustrated the anima problem in all its depth and in a way which is still valid for modern man.

The text of this book has almost suffered the fate of Lucius, the hero of Apuleiuss story. In the various former editions, well-meaning editors improved on the style so much that the meaning that I wanted to express got more and more obfuscated and even partly distorted. In this revised edition I have tried to restore the original text and enlarge it with some new passages. I want to express my thanks to Dr. Manolis Kennedy for having translated the additions made in the German edition and also to Miss Deirdre Bischofberger for the difficult typing. My greatest gratitude, however, goes to Dr. Vivienne Mackrell, without whose daily support and valued suggestions I could not have fulfilled my work.

This celebrated novel by Apuleius of Madaura has always been the object of contradictory evaluations. There are, we think, many different reasons for this: some are inherent in the composition and the sources of the work itself, while others come from the personality of the author.

This Latin text from the second century A.D. has baffled commentators, for it seems to have been written according to two plans. It tells one main story, that of Lucius and his transformations, interspersed with a number of tales which, from a purely rational and superficial point of view, do not appear to have much in common with the adventures of the hero. What we know of the novels background explains and confirms this impression of duality, for it is not an entirely personal creation. The author was inspired by a lost text attributed to Lucius of Patrai, and the text itself was taken from a destroyed original Greek text that had also served as a model for The Ass, a novel written by a pseudo-Lucian. There was thus a collection of novels by various authors which later disappeared and which are thought to have been in the style of Boccaccios Decameron or Chaucers Canterbury Tales. All these earlier collections contained neither the tale of Amor and Psyche nor the initiation into the Isis mysteries that are so important in Apuleiuss book. Apuleius has not only added two significant passages but has probably also transformed, at least partially, the original stories to adapt them to their new context. In spite of using many older stories, Apuleius has actually created a completely new book with a completely new inner message.

From a literary standpoint, one will notice that the work is complicated by its affected style and its many plays on words. Knowing nothing of its cultural background, one would think its language to be that of a neurotic, but it simply corresponds to the so-called Milesian style, which Apuleius probably acquired in the course of his studies. This seems to me to explain in part the conscious-unconscious duality of the composition.

This novel, as I have said, has had a considerable amount of commentary, ranging from extreme admiration to complete scorn. According to some authors, Apuleius does little more than compile a poor collection of anecdotes, already known for the most part, while the whole of the work seems to be no more than satire or frivolous amusement. It is to his credit that Karl Kernyi, who dedicated the major part of his study to the story of Amor and Psyche, Merkelbach, however, did not analyze the book in its entirety. One needs the key of Jungian psychology and knowledge of the unconscious in order to follow the inner process of psychic development which the author describes in his book. It then reveals itself to be a completely coherent whole.

In some older translations, a good number of the works erotic anecdotes are omitted. Some modern versions, on the other hand, have preserved the sexual passages but have suppressed the initiation mysteries, considering them to be a useless addition that does not correspond to the spirit of the rest of the work. Erudite authors have even attempted to prove that the last book, the eleventh, the initiation into the Isis mysteries, had been added perhaps by another author or by Apuleius himself in a later part of his life.

There we touch on the most difficult problem of the proximity of sexual passion and its accompanying spiritual, religious experience. On the one hand, many differentiated religions stress the contrast of sexuality and spirituality, as the existence of many ascetic and monastic institutions proves. On the other hand, however, the orgiastic character of numerous religious rituals proves that the deepest root of sexuality and religious ecstasy seems to be one. It is also well known that many Christian saints lived a riotous life before their conversion. Apuleiuss work contains both poles of these opposites and sheds new light on this fundamental problem.

Another source of difficulty which troubles most commentators is that, ignoring the psychology of the unconscious, they suppose that Apuleius consciously introduced all the symbolic allusions present in the novel. This, as I said earlier, does not seem probable. I am convinced that Apuleius intentionally slipped in many symbolic ideas, but that others flowed unconsciously from his pen. Where Apuleius consciously placed certain symbolic motifs in his story, one could be justified in treating them allegorically, in the Platonic sense of the term: as a profound philosophical significance hidden beneath the symbolic image. Such changes are abrupt only in appearance, and thanks to depth psychology, we can watch their preparation in the unconscious. It is a common occurrence in analytical practice to see the appearance in dreams of symbolic themes tending toward a psychic development often not realized for several months, or even years. In certain cases of neurotic psychic dissociation, it is common for a subject to lead two lives: the one conscious, on the surface, and another which is secretly developed on a deeper unconscious level. Conversion corresponds to the moment at which the two unite.