Vasilisa the Beautiful and the Symbolic Life

In the Russian fairy tale “Vasilisa the Wise,” a dying mother gives her little daughter a doll and tells the girl to turn to it for help and comfort. The doll’s guidance turns out to be essential, which raises the question: what is the doll?When C.G. Jung was a boy, he carved a little manikin out of wood, dressed it in a wool coat, and kept it in his pencil case. He developed a set of rituals around the doll and the thought of it comforted him. The manikin personified his secret connection to psyche and the life-force. Jung describes his experience in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. “No one could discover my secret and destroy it,” he writes. “I felt safe, and the tormenting sense of being at odds with myself was gone.”Jung’s experience and the tale of Vasilisa speak to the importance of the symbolic life, an imaginative connection to psyche that enables us to move forward in life. Maybe this story will motivate you to experiment with a “doll” of your own.Support the show