Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold

The name of this fairytale character translates “little rattle stilt” and refers to a poltergeist.  A poltergeist is a psychic content that “rattles and clanks” and causes mischief.  This slippery character is always spinning some intrigue, some malevolent plot to ensnare the woman — or the anima in a man, keeping her captive and the man immature.

Like all archetypal dynamisms of the unconscious psyche, Rumplestiltskin reveals different facets of the unconscious that vary depending upon the viewpoint of consciousness.  One can turn the symbols of the unconscious around to observe them from multiple angles — like looking into a crystal.  He is this — and this — and that — and that.  He cannot quite be pinned down.  And it is vital to the totality of the psyche that this aspect will always be rather a “slippery” character.  This ambivalence of this psychic content is described as gold (“Mr. Gold” in the TV series “Once Upon a Time”).  The fact that the ego cannot pin it down, cannot have the final word — therein lies the gold, the highest value for consciousness, for the ego is forced into humility, forced to develop a more comprehensive personality, forced to admit of an alternative viewpoint that would modify the hegemony of the ego.

The tale of Rumplestiltskin hinges upon the magical power of naming.  In primal cultures as well as in myths, legends, fairytales, and even in the Bible, knowing the name of the vengeful deity robs the deity of some of its destructive power.  The act of naming carries with it enormous value, for to name something confers power over the unconscious psychic content.  However limited the ego’s “power-over” is, that bit of human consciousness limits the field of operation of the unconscious content’s destructive activity.  The unconscious content cannot, then, inveigle itself into every nook and cranny and take over the personality.  Naming limits the damage that the psychic content can do and limits the havoc it can wreak on consciousness.  But the ego’s power is only marginal, only relative.  In the meeting between the unconscious and the ego, consciousness is by far the weaker entity.

My one cautionary note regarding “Once Upon a Time” is this:  that due to the profit motive of broadcasting companies, producers and directors of marketing, there is a contamination and a manipulation of the archetypal material by the needs of marketing and profitability.  In such a case, such a manipulative power attitude towards the unconscious would only result in constellating the Trickster.  In such a case, one will be “caught by the beard” — like certain dwarves in fairytales.  If one is too blithe, too arrogant, too power-oriented in relation to the unconscious a balancing power attitude is set up in the unconscious.  The minute one thinks “I’ve got the answer!” one hasn’t.  The moment one supposes to have boxed things up tidily, the unconscious will not stand for it, and the ego will be duped.  The moment that producers and marketers of the TV show “Once Upon a Time” try to make the show dance to their profit advantage or power-grabbing-ratings agendas, the show will become tainted.

Rumplestiltskin of the fairytale is a disagreeable dwarf.  Most dwarves in fairytales are positive figures and highly creative and skilled craftsmen, but Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin is the devil’s advocate.  He says, “I am difficult to love.”  He represents the woman’s “difficult”, destructive animus which, if it could become conscious, would produce the gold of creativity for the woman.  Left unconscious however, the animus becomes “small”, irritable, ungrateful, and power-driven.  Demanding and never satisfied, the dwarf represents that extremely annoying negative animus that sometimes shows itself in a woman’s personality.  The irritable animus loses its sense of proportion and entangles the woman in small-minded, idiotic, opinionated arguments and discussions.  When a woman’s personality lacks inner firmness, due probably to some lack of nurturance early on, she identifies with a too yielding, too compliant femininity as a defense.  Therefore, this one-sided, overly-sweet quality of her personality causes the unconscious to throw up this compensatory figure of the dwarf who is completely egotistical and nasty.  This figure has to come up first however in a woman’s psychological life before she can make her way to the positive, resourceful, aspect of the helpful animus that will be represented in the figure of a prince or a helpful hunter.  In the dialectic balancing act of unconscious dynamisms, the opposite attitude must first be developed as compensation before a middle, more human ground can be established that is neither too sweet nor too irritable, neither overly compliant nor power-driven.  The woman must suffer the ignominy of her “dwarfishness”; she must suffer this “disagreeable opposite” within herself before she can make her way to a more developed, more balanced personality.

Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin is also the devil’s advocate.  He is the shadow trickster, the Mephistophelean archetype of choice, that causes all the storm and fury and the conflict between Mary Margaret Blanchard and Regina who represent opposite polarities of the feminine (the anima) in a man.  The battleground is also within the woman, Emma Swan, who represents the attitude of female consciousness.  Mr. Gold is the psychic content that is forever spinning out some “deal” with consciousness.  The unconscious dynamism “wants” to become conscious and therefore it “needs” and seeks out the ego’s participation and engagement.  Thus, Mr. Gold is the pawn dealer who, like Rumplestiltskin in the fairytale, would trick the woman, steal her valuables until she has nothing left to offer except to pawn her future child, who represents the new consciousness waiting to be born.  In the fairytale of Rumplestiltskin, the girl is given three days to guess his name in order to ransom her own child.  In that tale, it is because the king was greedy and did not live up to his part of the bargain that the girl (the anima) was imprisoned by dominant consciousness.  The creative aspect of the feminine, the dwarf, Rumplestiltskin, comes into the story at that moment.

Dwarves represent the creative guardians of the treasures of darkness in caves, and underground caverns (i.e., in the womb of the mother, i.e., the feminine, i.e., the unconscious).  They represent impulses of pure nature, sometimes good, sometimes evil.  Rumplestiltskin has the ability to change something quite common, dross and ordinary (hay, in this instance) into gold — something which has the highest value.  In mythology, filth and excrement frequently have a correspondence with something of the highest value, gold.  This means that something that is consider filth and rejected by consciousness (the ego) is the very thing that can bring the highest value into the personality.

Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin represents the symbol-making, transcendent function of the psyche that comes and goes as it will (trickster like).  We are symbol-using, symbol-needing creatures.  These symbols that are appearing in current cultural manifestations of the dominant collective are replete with the symbols we need for developing greater consciousness.  These stories tell us that it is through the anima through the feminine that new consciousness comes to the man and the dominant collective.

Sources:  Marie Louise von Franz, "The Feminine in Fairytales" and "Shadow and Evil in Fairytales"; and Carl Jung, "Symbols of Transformation".