“Jung says that women with a negative mother-complex often miss the first half of their lives, they walk past it in a dream. Life for them is a constant source of annoyance and irritation.
But if they can overcome this negative mother complex, they have a good chance in the second half of life of rediscovering life with the youthful spontaneity missed in the first half. For though, as Jung says in the last paragraph, part of life has been lost, its meaning has been saved.
That is the tragedy of such women, but they can get to the turning point and in the second half of life have their hands healed and stretch them out for what they want – not out of animus or from the ego, but according to nature, simply stretch out their hands for something they love.
Though it is infinitely simple, it is extremely difficult for it is the one that a woman cannot do; it needs God’s help. Even the analyst cannot help her – it must one day just happen, and this is generally when there has been sufficient suffering.
One cannot escape one’s fate; the whole pain of it must be accepted, and one day the infinitely simple solution will come.“
Marie Louise von Franz, “The Feminine in Fairy Tales” – The Handless Maiden
