• Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.31-66
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• 2015

A study on a Russian fairy tale entitled "Seven Stars" was conducted from the perspective of analytical psychology. The plot goes as follows. Once upon a time, a village in Russia was suffering from severe drought. Villagers were dying of thirst, and crops were withering day by day. One night, a little girl left their house carrying a wooden dipper to find water for her sick mother by herself. However, water was nowhere to be found. She felt tired and fell asleep. When she woke up, the moon was already over her head, and the dipper had been filled with water. On her way home to give the water to her mother, she found a dog lying on the ground. The dog was also dying of excessive thirst, so she gave the dog a handful of water. Then the wooden dipper suddenly turned into a silver dipper. When she had finally arrived home and her mother has drunk the water, the silver dipper changed into a golden dipper. At that moment, an old man showed up and asked for water. The little girl gave him water. When the old man stared at the water, she realized that there were seven diamonds twinkling like stars in the dipper. The water never ran out. Surprisingly enough, the seven diamonds suddenly soared up into the sky and eventually formed a constellation of the Big Dipper. The water was shared with the other villagers who, then, recovered their strength. The severe drought came to an end, and the villagers danced together with joy. In this fairy tale, the severe drought symbolizes devastation caused by a unidirectional stream of consciousness while the little girl represents a new function, which shows the value of women who can heal and restore from that devastation. Symbolized in a fairy tale character such as 'a daughter' or 'a little girl', the new function eventually reaches up to the value which leads and affects the group as well as individuals. To conclude, this new function represents the unconscious process whose role is to revitalize the maternity and resolve the problems posed to a group as well as individuals.