Rapunzel's Encapsulation

Rapunzel’s tower experience begins when she is 12 years old. That is the age at which the sorceress decides to place the girl in the tower with “neither doors nor stairs.” Because of her age at the time of her imprisonment, this fairy tale is often interpreted as a delay in the individuation-separation process, a putting off of adulthood and the growing biological impulse of sexuality.

Rapunzel’s tower experience can also be a sort of encapsulation. I began writing about this yesterday. What does this mean? It can mean one of two things. I have known individuals in whom social contact is painful, in whom venturing out of the solitude of themselves to make contact with others elicits great anxiety. Its not that they don’t desire contact, only the anxiety keeps them away from relationship. Interestingly, I find that these people are often quite sensitive and warm in a psychotherapeutic relationship.

The other meaning of encapsulation, Rapunzel’s tower experience, is about the difficulty we have as individuals of being whole, and the locking away of parts of ourselves. In our present culture, the most notable part of ourselves that is imprisoned in a tower is the feeling life. Our feeling life, like Rapunzel, can be placed in the tower by a wicked queen, or in this case, by a sorceress. This is essentially the same as saying that some of us are taught that feelings aren’t very important, and one must be governed by logic, rationality, etc. Freeing Rapunzel would thus come to mean the freeing of some part of ourselves that has been locked up because at some point in our lives she was deemed unacceptable.

Rapunzel's Tower

I have towers on my mind and am naturally drawn to the story of Rapunzel. In this Grimm’s fairy tale, Rapunzel “when she was twelve years old, the sorceress locked her in a tower that was in a forest. It had neither door nor stairs, only a little window high above…”

This “Tower” is a psychological space. To say of someone, she is in the tower is to say she is currently inhabiting a certain psychological space, living a certain kind of human experience. What is this experience like?

The experience is one of solitude, and of being alone with oneself. This reminds me of Carl Jung’s tower, Bollingen, which I visited a few years ago. Jung built his tower himself on the shores of the upper lake of Zurich. This was a place that Jung often retreated to and where he spent much time in solitude, working and resting. Jung says: “Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.”

Jung’s tower, however, is different to Rapunzel’s “Tower” experience. Jung also occasionally accepted visitors at his Tower, and then he had his other home in Kusnacht where he lived with his family, saw patients, and other friends and visitors. He could come and go into his tower, while Rapunzel’s tower has “neither doors nor stairs.” It is an experience of imprisonment, there is no coming and going freely, one is trapped. This is the experience of encapsulation where one cannot interact and is only free to look out the “little window” at the world going by…