Marie-Louise von Franz (4 January 1915 – 17 February 1998) was a Swiss Jungian psychologist and scholar, known for her psychological interpretations of fairy tales and of alchemical manuscripts.

Marie-Louise Ida Margareta von Franz was born in Munich, Germany, the daughter of a colonel in the Austrian army.

When Jung commented on a "mentally ill woman, who [actually, not to be taken symbolically] lived on the moon"[4]: 18  M.-L. von Franz understood, that there are two levels of reality.

Due to her father's major financial loss in the early 1930s, she had to self-finance her tuition,[3]: 135  by giving private lessons as a tutor in Latin and Greek for gymnasium and university students.

[1] Among others, she translated two major alchemical manuscripts: Aurora Consurgens, which has been attributed to Thomas Aquinas, and Musaeum Hermeticum.

[6] The experience that Jung termed "objective Psyche" or "collective unconscious" marked her life and work as well as her way of living.

She amplified the themes and characters of these tales and focused on subjects such as the problem of evil, the changing attitude towards the female archetype.

During her last years of life, she commented on the Arabic alchemical manuscript of Muḥammad Ibn Umail Hal ar-Rumuz (Solving the Symbols).

[14] Another basic concern throughout many of her works was how the collective unconscious compensates for the one-sidedness of Christianity and its ruling god image, via fairy tales and alchemy.

In the visions of Swiss Saint Nikolaus von Flüe [17] she dealt with the aspects of the dark and evil as well as the cosmic side as part of a more holistic image of god.

[18] In addition to her many books, von Franz made a series of films in 1987 titled The Way of the Dream, along with her student, Fraser Boa.

In 1974, von Franz together with some of her pupils (René Malamud, Willi Obrist, Alfred Ribi, and Paul Walder) founded the "Stiftung für Jung'sche Psychologie" (Foundation for Jungian Psychology).

Alfred Ribi says, that von Franz might well be understood as the first to discover and demonstrate the psychological wisdom of fairy tales.

[...] Every fairy tale is a relatively closed system compounding one essential psychological meaning which is expressed in a series of symbolical pictures and events and is discoverable in these".

"The hero restores to healthy, normal functioning a situation in which all egos of that tribe or nation are deviating from their instinctive basic totality pattern.

[23]: 21–45 (chapter4) G. Isler explains further, "The figure of the hero as well as the whole story compensate what initially was an insufficient or wrong attitude of consciousness.

This corresponds to a renewal of the ruling consciousness (expressed e.g. in the young king), being oriented towards psychic wholeness and totality in a way that is more appropriate" to the demands of the Self, than before.

In contrast to personalistic-subjective ways of interpretation, the fate of the hero is not understood as individual neurosis, but as difficulties and dangers, being imposed on man by nature.

[24] Jung encouraged von Franz to live with fellow Jungian analyst Barbara Hannah, who was 23 years older than she was.

Von Franz had a lengthy exchange of letters with Wolfgang Pauli, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics.

On Pauli's death, his widow Franca deliberately destroyed all the letters von Franz had sent to her husband, and which he had kept locked inside his writing desk.

There she felt "in tune with the spirit of nature" and wrote many of the books that she had planned early on in her life, and which she realised one after the other throughout the decades.

Barbara Davies stated that she took only a minimum of medicine, so that she was increasingly physically affected by her illness until death, but could keep a clear mind and consciousness.

On January 4, 2021, on the 106th anniversary of the author's birth, Chiron Publications began publishing a new translation in English of the 28 volumes that make up her Collected Works, estimating a 10-year period for completion.