Bewitchment

Bewitchment occupies a singular position in the depth-psychological corpus: it names the condition in which an individual — or, crucially, an analyst — falls under the compulsive spell of autonomous psychic contents, losing the capacity to perceive what stands plainly before consciousness. The concept spans several registers. In von Franz’s fairy-tale hermeneutics, bewitchment is the structural condition that precedes transformation; the hero or heroine must pass through enchantment by a transpersonal figure before redemption becomes possible. Kalsched sharpens this into a clinical thesis: for traumatized patients, the first stage of the two-stage healing process is precisely bewitchment by the negative, daimonic side of the numinous, and the self-care system exerts its most tenacious resistance through a seductive ‘enchantment’ that holds the injured self captive. Von Franz adds a counter-transference dimension entirely her own — that unconscious complexes in a patient can ‘bewitch’ the analyst, inducing a drowsiness that prevents the therapist from seeing what is directly before them. Woodman extends the metaphor into somatic symptomatology, reading compulsive eating as a form of bewitchment by the repressed Dionysian. Otto locates the concept in the religious-phenomenological encounter with the numinous deity, where horror and bewitchment are simultaneous responses to Dionysiac epiphany. Wittgenstein, cited by McGilchrist, gives the term its epistemological valence: philosophy itself is a battle against the bewitchment of intellect by language. Across all these positions the tension is consistent: bewitchment is simultaneously pathology and threshold, entrapment and the precondition of deeper initiation.

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the negative, daimonic side of the numinous is experienced first (as bewitchment) and that only later, after the secret daimonic element in the self-care system has been unmasked and confronted, can the positive numinous dimension of life enter a relationship with the ego.

Kalsched argues that bewitchment is the necessary first stage of a two-stage healing process for traumatized patients, in which the daimonic face of the numinous must be fully encountered before genuine transformation becomes possible.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis

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the answer offered by fairy tales to the split between human and divine is a dramatic story which usually moves from innocence or sterile misery through bewitchment and a struggle with dark powers, to transformation of the ego and the constellation of the positive side of the numinous.

Kalsched establishes bewitchment as the central mediating term in the fairy-tale’s structural arc, positioned between an initial condition of sterile innocence and the eventual integration of the numinous.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis

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the part addicted to the witch, to a life of ‘bewitchment.’ I think the power of this negative enchantment is the most powerful resistance that therapists confront with Rapunzel patients.

Kalsched identifies the patient’s addiction to bewitchment — the captivating pull of an enchanted inner world — as the single most formidable clinical resistance in trauma work.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996thesis

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only after the event, if you do wake up, do you discover that you too have been bewitched. You say, ‘But why didn’t I see that before?’ And then you realize that a kind of drowsiness in which the patient lives had spread like a cloud over you.

Von Franz demonstrates that a patient’s unconscious complex can inductively bewitch the analyst, producing a counter-transferential blindness that mirrors the patient’s own captivation by unresolved psychic contents.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis

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the daughter who is identified with the father’s unconscious (often his unconscious misery) is lost to her own life… falls into the father’s bewitchment and is lost to her own life.

Kalsched applies bewitchment to the father-daughter dynamic, showing how identificatory entanglement with the idealized adult constitutes a form of enchantment that extinguishes the daughter’s autonomous existence.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting

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With the horror which is at the same time bewitchment, with the ecstasy which is like paralysis, overpowering all natural and habitual sense perceptions, The Dreadful suddenly springs into being.

Otto locates bewitchment in the phenomenology of Dionysiac religious encounter, identifying it as the paradoxical fusion of terror and fascination that characterises the eruption of the numinous.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965supporting

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The Dionysian ‘madness’ inherent in compulsive eating may be a modern expression of what was earlier known as ‘possession’ and in more recent years as ‘hysteria.’ As I have suggested, it may also be seen as a form of bewitchment.

Woodman proposes that compulsive eating disorders are a somatic-psychological manifestation of bewitchment, the contemporary equivalent of archaic possession by a repressed divine force.

Woodman, Marion, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine: a Psychological Study, 1980supporting

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everything was veiled in black as a sign of mourning for the princess, who was bewitched by an evil mountain spirit. She put three riddles to each one of her suitors, and if he failed to guess every one, she killed him.

Von Franz presents the bewitched princess motif as the paradigmatic fairy-tale figure in which the anima is captured by a negative spirit, requiring a hero’s ordeal of riddle-solving for her — and his — redemption.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, 1970supporting

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the two sisters become the link between the encapsulated world of the wizard’s life and the third daughter, still in the bewitched mansion of the wizard.

Kalsched reads the bewitched mansion as a symbol of the sealed-off inner world maintained by the self-care system, from which liberation requires the patient forging links between encapsulated and outer-relational dimensions of the psyche.

Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting

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Ninety per cent of the essence of archaic witch work and curses that made people ill was made up of the same kind of activity… the illnesses were produced by either needlelike thorns or pointed stones or anything shaped so that it could be used for pricking.

Von Franz traces bewitchment to its archaic root in projective magic, where illness is understood as the penetration of the body by a psychically charged object sent by a hostile will.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997supporting

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This tale shows the dangerous spell that the anima casts on a man whose ego and willpower are frail. To yield to her means losing human contact and going completely wild, while to repress her means a loss of spirit and of energy.

Von Franz frames the anima’s enchantment as a double bind — surrender leads to dissolution of ego, repression leads to psychic depletion — positioning bewitchment as the crisis-point of masculine individuation.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, 1970aside

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In cases where you can watch the effect of witchcraft, you can see that there are exteriorized destructive effects, but more than that, it harms the person who does it, making him even more unconscious.

Von Franz argues that the mechanism underlying bewitchment rebounds on its agent, rendering the witch-worker increasingly unconscious — a dynamic structurally identical to the patient’s self-entrapping complex.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974aside

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