Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

11
True and False Brides/Bridegrooms
The truth of yesterday must be set aside for what is now
the truth of one’s psychic life. 32
A dominant but inappropriate anima-image in a man’s psyche is
characterized in fairy tales as a false bride. It is the hero’s task to
find the true one. The essential difference between the two, psychologically,
is captured in the above observation.
True and false brides don’t come labeled. Much depends on a
man’s age, his position in life and how much work he has done on
himself—particularly the extent to which he has differentiated his
soul-image from the other complexes teeming in his psyche.
Theoretically there are two basic types of false bride. One is an
anima figure—or an actual woman—who leads a man into the fantasy
realm, away from timely responsibilities in the outside world.
The other is an inner voice—or again a real woman—that would tie
a man to his persona when his real task is to turn inward, to find
himself behind the face he shows others.
The first type is commonly associated with the attitudes of a
younger man: idealism, the disinclination to compromise, a rigid
response to the reality of everyday life. The second type of false
bride is associated with regressive tendencies in later life, such as
feverish efforts to mask one’s age or reclaim a lost youth through
younger companions, face lifts, hair transplants and so on.
There is no hard and fast rule, however. An older man with too
much unlived life may have to descend into the whore’s cellar, so
to speak, as part of his individuation process. The younger man
with no ideals may be obliged to develop some.
As happens with any psychological content, the bride of either
32 Marie-Louise von Franz, Redemption Motifs in Fairy Tales, p. 85.
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