telling tales...
After making a cheap crack at his expense in a previous entry, i decided to pull down Jung's Memories, Dreams and Reflections from the shelf last night, and - just to rub his synchronous point home to me - what do i find?
a story i've been piling through sundry volumes elsewhere trying to locate!
the story in question turns out to be contained in a case history that i had woefully forgotten:
an anonymous fifteen year old girl becomes mute and is sent to a sanatorium, under Jung's treatment she gradually begins to communicate and tells him the following tale of her experiences...
The girl had been to the moon, she explains, it was a beautiful place but the men she found there hurried her underground to a shelter reserved for women and children.
And for why? Because a giant vampire from the moon's high mountains was picking off all the women and children and the moon-people were therefore edging towards extinction.
Well enough with the hiding already, thought the girl - and decided to take the vampire out. A special tower was constructed which she climbed, waiting in anticipation there, knife in hand, like a proto-Buffy.
The vampire swooped down from far off, a black figure fluttering in a giant cloak that up-close turned out to be made of many feathers. The girl couldn't see the thing for all the feathers and when it landed she had to fight through them to get to the creature beneath.
Finally she managed to push through and discovered the creature to have a face of unnatural beauty - her will became useless under the gaze of the lustrous eyes and flinging its cloak once more about her the creature flew off with her in its arms.
What happened next? Nobody's telling but apparently the girl was angry at Jung for bringing her back to Earth and away from the moon and the fate of its people.
Jung draws various conclusions about her and her life and records that she went on to do just fine - bar the slight shooting of a Doctor foolish enough to make a pass at her!
She also gave a gun to Jung on the last day of treatment, much to his surprise since he had no idea she was always armed. "Oh yes," the girl replied, "and if you had failed me i would have shot you down."
So it goes notes Mr Jung, with just a hint of Roald Dahl type amusement at this real life Red Riding Hood with a pistol in her knickers.
What i find striking, apart from the parallels with Buffy, are, well...
for one thing; think of Bergman's Persona the film about the willfully mute patient who is treated by a psychiatric nurse and which contains dark vampiric imagery on the back of his previous films such as Through a Glass Darkly which dealt with the schizophrenic Karin and her obsession with an oncoming black spider-god.
Secondly, Jung's patient is actually detailing the reverse of the 'classic' (i.e. oft noted) schizophrenic experience where great quasi-religious anticipation gives in to panic, fear and horror.
Thirdly - what a story! Jung remarks on the depth and meaning to the mute girl's inner life, and fair enough, but what moved me was thinking about the writer she might have made... Vampires were hardly common currency in 1912, (i deduce, Jung is deliberately vague) and moreover, what the girl describes is SCIENCE FICTION. That was why i kept hunting through book after book trying to find a story i thought must be post-Ursula Le Guin, 1960s (ish).
It seems i still haven't learned the lesson that there were more women science fiction writers in the 19th and early 20th Century than meets the contemporary eye. Alas it also demonstrates just how much luck is involved in getting creativity out and into the world.
As for the psychology of the whole thing, ach, that's an argument for another day.
a story i've been piling through sundry volumes elsewhere trying to locate!
the story in question turns out to be contained in a case history that i had woefully forgotten:
an anonymous fifteen year old girl becomes mute and is sent to a sanatorium, under Jung's treatment she gradually begins to communicate and tells him the following tale of her experiences...
The girl had been to the moon, she explains, it was a beautiful place but the men she found there hurried her underground to a shelter reserved for women and children.
And for why? Because a giant vampire from the moon's high mountains was picking off all the women and children and the moon-people were therefore edging towards extinction.
Well enough with the hiding already, thought the girl - and decided to take the vampire out. A special tower was constructed which she climbed, waiting in anticipation there, knife in hand, like a proto-Buffy.
The vampire swooped down from far off, a black figure fluttering in a giant cloak that up-close turned out to be made of many feathers. The girl couldn't see the thing for all the feathers and when it landed she had to fight through them to get to the creature beneath.
Finally she managed to push through and discovered the creature to have a face of unnatural beauty - her will became useless under the gaze of the lustrous eyes and flinging its cloak once more about her the creature flew off with her in its arms.
What happened next? Nobody's telling but apparently the girl was angry at Jung for bringing her back to Earth and away from the moon and the fate of its people.
Jung draws various conclusions about her and her life and records that she went on to do just fine - bar the slight shooting of a Doctor foolish enough to make a pass at her!
She also gave a gun to Jung on the last day of treatment, much to his surprise since he had no idea she was always armed. "Oh yes," the girl replied, "and if you had failed me i would have shot you down."
So it goes notes Mr Jung, with just a hint of Roald Dahl type amusement at this real life Red Riding Hood with a pistol in her knickers.
What i find striking, apart from the parallels with Buffy, are, well...
for one thing; think of Bergman's Persona the film about the willfully mute patient who is treated by a psychiatric nurse and which contains dark vampiric imagery on the back of his previous films such as Through a Glass Darkly which dealt with the schizophrenic Karin and her obsession with an oncoming black spider-god.
Secondly, Jung's patient is actually detailing the reverse of the 'classic' (i.e. oft noted) schizophrenic experience where great quasi-religious anticipation gives in to panic, fear and horror.
Thirdly - what a story! Jung remarks on the depth and meaning to the mute girl's inner life, and fair enough, but what moved me was thinking about the writer she might have made... Vampires were hardly common currency in 1912, (i deduce, Jung is deliberately vague) and moreover, what the girl describes is SCIENCE FICTION. That was why i kept hunting through book after book trying to find a story i thought must be post-Ursula Le Guin, 1960s (ish).
It seems i still haven't learned the lesson that there were more women science fiction writers in the 19th and early 20th Century than meets the contemporary eye. Alas it also demonstrates just how much luck is involved in getting creativity out and into the world.
As for the psychology of the whole thing, ach, that's an argument for another day.