The Golden Ass of Apuleius. Psychological Interpretation

Maria-Louisa von Franz is perhaps the most famous of Carl Gustav Jung's students. A devoted follower of Jungian psychology, von Franz, relying on her teacher's ideas, managed to form her own individual and recognizable style, gaining wide recognition as a... key pioneer in the method of psychological interpretation of folk and mythological narratives. The fundamental idea of Jungianism, which consists of distinguishing between the collective and individual unconscious, as well as establishing a parallel between them, serves as a support for von Franz's research method, who regards folk material as a product of the collective unconscious and draws an analogy between allegorical images and plots, on one hand, and problems familiar to us from actual experience, on the other. One of the key issues that occupied her scholarly interests was related to the process of personal development (the so-called "initiation process"), as well as the role of love in this process. This question becomes central in the course of lectures devoted to the work of the late antique writer Apuleius of Madaura, "The Golden Ass", which was read by M.-L. von Franz at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1966 and on the basis of which the text of this book is built.
Written in bright, colorful language, this text will undoubtedly be of interest not only to specialists and students but also to a wide range of readers.