Keys to the Fisherman's Wife

and a demi-hero of the day?

So if you read my version or another version or simply remember the tale of the Fisherman’s wife, you might be interested in my take on this puzzlingly durable story. Maybe in parts it’s the visual images that have been translated by many children’s book illustrators. I have an indelible one of that golden fish wearing a crown while negotiating his release from the fisherman’s grasp at the back of my memory vault. Who knows why? Carl Jung, that deep archetypalist would point to the fact that the princely fish is an archetype of the Self. And, as the Self is the innermost part of our psyche, where the universal merges with the individual in all its power, I guess I agree with him. So here goes:

The Fish is our most authentic and expansive self (Self), replete with the power to lift us up or cast us down, depending on whether or not we honor and free it from the net of our fight or flight instinct to survive, which depends for its life on our sense of weakness, poverty and isolation. So he helps when he is helped and for some time thereafter until he is dishonored so often that he returns the fisherman to his former status as an impoverished ‘loser’ unable to see his own worth, much less any possibility of improving his outlook. Capsice?

So that takes care of the fish and in part the fisherman of the title. He reminds me personally of a person who not only underestimates himself and his connection to the creative powers he is heir to (co-creatively, if you will, with ‘god’ as source and resource), but is in thrall to his pathologically narcissistic wife. Sort of like those dimwits surrounding our pathologically narcissistic POTUS, who shall, for the duration of this post, remain otherwise unnamed. He cedes to her his power in the desperate hope that if he accedes to her every whim, even if this means betraying his Self, he won’t feel abandoned and alone, small and rejected. More’s the pity, as the story clearly indicates. The wife is a classically hollow narcissist, with little or no sense of what she really needs and a bottomless pit of neediness. She could care less about offending the Fish, and what the consequences of that might be, she just wants more and more and MORE, because, like the addict she is, she can never be satisfied and must up the ante of her demands to the point of no return.

But she, and he, are returned to their original cut-off and out-cast positions. Or at least so we assume, as we don’t really know what else might have happened to the Wife. Did she die of apoplexy at the recognition of her loss? Did she collapse in a heap of deep, dark, depression? Did she possibly swallow some shells in an attempt to erase her sense of shame? The story never says. I think this dangling thread is an invitation for us to “dream the dream on” in our own minds, as Dr. Jung recommended we do in the case of one of our vivid dreams which ends too abruptly when the alarm clock goes off. As in, finish the story by sitting with it for awhile and seeing what comes up?

If you are a fan of happy endings, you might imagine the fisherman and his wife, having been introduced to a wider and richer sort of life across quite a few versions of it, might start to work out a way to create one, via entrepreneurship, or joining a fishing co-op, or some such. Meditating on their possibilities and taking appropriate steps. If you favor the noir, you might imagine the worst. In either case, it is up to you to decide. Which is the moral of the tail.

Let me know what you think. This is only me talking.

THE HERO: Senator Padilla? Sure, his unexpected entry into the Hall of the ICE Princess had an element of showmanship to it, but since his brief and ignoble detention he has made the most of it by creating within himself an Icon of pride and resistance, based on the love of his constituents and his heritage. Not too shabby IMHO.

With love and respect,

Leigh Horne, LICSW, LCSW, LCSW-C (that’s licensed in 3 states, in case you were wondering.)