Marrying Mr. Rochester: Redeeming the Negative Father Complex

Injurious childhood experiences with one's personal father form the psychic bedrock of a negative father complex: never good enough. This complex has a part that is exciting and uses hope as its hook, and a part that disappoints and persecutes. The negative father complex can be imaged as the ghostly lover, as depicted in the fairy tale “The Singing, Springing Lark” and in Charlotte Brontë's life and famous novel, Jane Eyre. The ghostly lover holds a woman's creative energies hostage to the tantalizing possibility of being the special one who can redeem the negative masculine and win his love.

To heal a complex, its contents must be personified, or imaged, so that an individual can come into conscious relationship with it. The tale of the “Singing, Springing Lark” illustrates collective roots and images of healing a wounded relationship with the masculine. Charlotte Brontë transformed her relationship with the ghostly lover through her novel Jane Eyre, with Mr. Rochester as the image of her own wounded, bewitching masculine energy. Brontë herself was subsequently able to marry, despite her father's objection, overcoming her negative father complex. The fairy tale, novel, and Brontë's life show that several attempts are usually necessary to bring the complex to light. Although consciousness seeks redemption through its pursuit of the masculine, the complex also—mysteriously—seeks its own transformation. Ego alone cannot fulfill the mission of individuation; the Self must aid the process.