Metamorphosis
Shape-shifting
Changed into another form, and changed back.
Metamorphosis: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Transformation of form is the oldest picture of psychic change. Marie-Louise von Franz read Apuleius’ Golden Ass, in which Lucius is turned into an ass by his curiosity and restored at last by Isis, as the story of a man’s transformation through suffering. The enchanted animal of the tales, waiting to be redeemed into human form, belongs to the same pattern.
Metamorphosis: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the frog prince, Beauty and the Beast, the swan maidens, Kafka’s Gregor Samsa.
From the Sources
Ovid opens the Metamorphoses by announcing his subject as forms changed into new bodies, and asks the gods, who changed them, to favour the telling from the beginning of the world to his own times.
“My design leads me to speak of forms changed into new bodies. Ye Gods, (for you it was who changed them,) favor my attempts, and bring down the lengthened narrative from the very beginning of the world”
Ovid, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII, Book I, "The Argument" [I.1-4]. Translator: Henry T. Riley (Project Gutenberg eBook #21765). The text, read in part
In Ovid's last book Pythagoras teaches that nature re-forms one shape from another, and that in so vast a universe nothing perishes, but only varies and changes its appearance.
“…and nature, the renewer of all things, re-forms one shape from another. And, believe me, in this universe so vast, nothing perishes; but it varies and changes its appearance”
Ovid, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books VIII-XV, Book XV, the speech of Pythagoras. Henry T. Riley's translation, e-text based on the 1893 George Bell reprint (Project Gutenberg eBook #26073). The text, read in part
At the end of 'Jorinda and Jorindel' the young man touches the caged birds with the flower, so that they all take their old forms again.
“Then he touched all the other birds with the flower, so that they all took their old forms again; and he took Jorinda home, where they were married, and lived happily together many years”
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales, "Jorinda and Jorindel" (the ending). Text based on translations from the Grimms' Kinder und Hausmärchen by Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Marie-Louise von Franz, The Golden Ass of Apuleius (1970; rev. 1980)
- Symbols of Transformation, CW 5
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Unions, Spells, and Changes
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“Metamorphosis.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/metamorphosis.
Nearby in the alphabet: Melusine: The water-woman with a serpent’s tail. Mercury: The quicksilver spirit, the elusive heart of the work. The Miraculous Birth: Born another way, and so not wholly of this world. The Mirror: Reflection, and the truth one would rather not see.