[In the following essay, Koheil and Richardson present a reading of the Ring as “mythological psychology,” viewing Brünnhilde as the central protagonist of the operas as she undergoes the process of ego development and sacrifice.]

The source of The Ring is myth. This means that although both humans and gods are characters in the drama, the purposes of the gods govern the action. The human characters—Siegmund, Siegfried, Sieglinde, Gutrune, Gunther, etc.—act as instruments of the will of the gods. Failure to maintain this understanding of the opera-cycle as myth leads to a misinterpretation of its meaning.

For comparison's sake, consider another author-created myth: the Aeneid. In Virgil's story, the journey of the human hero, Aeneus, is governed by the will of the gods. His rescue from the burning city of Troy, his destiny to found Rome, his shipwreck and disastrous affair with Dido, his battle against Turnus, and his marriage to Lavinia, are all willed by the gods. Aeneus is a human hero, vested with all human virtues and desires, but he is still an instrument of the will of the gods.

The dramatic action in the Ring and in the Aeneid results from conflict between (or among) the gods. In the Aeneid, the conflict between Jupiter and Juno establishes the dramatic action. Jupiter's purpose, shared by Venus his daughter, is to bring Aeneus to Italy to found Rome, the “New Troy.” Juno seeks to thwart Jupiter's purpose in many ways, the most romantic of which is her attempt to hold Aeneas in Carthage by marrying him to Dido.

In the Aeneid, although Jupiter-Venus is the protagonist and Juno is the antagonist of the dramatic action, many other gods are enlisted on their opposing sides including Mercury and Poseidon.

In Wagner's Ring, the personae dramatis also include gods and humans. There are, of course, the sky gods: Wotan, Thor, Donner, Fricka, and Freia. But there is also Loge the fire god, Erda the earth goddess, and the Rhine, the primordial water goddess personified through the Rhinemaidens. They act on levels different from the sky gods and therefore they do not attain the same characterization as the sky gods who have personal egos.

In the Aeneid, Virgil's gods have all been appropriated into the sky god framework of Jupiter and therefore they all attain personification, all possessing speech and power to act. But in Wagner's Ring, the sky gods are still in conflict with the fire, earth, and water gods and therefore these latter have not been appropriated into the sky god structure of ego personification. They do not speak and act in the same way. Rather, Erda sleeps and dreams and that is the source of her unconscious power; and the Rhine does not even sleep because it is a totally impersonal force of nature (which Wagner expresses as the power of music itself through the D-minor note/chord).

The dramatic conflict among the Wagnerian gods cannot be between personal ego and purposes such as one finds in Virgil's Aeneus. Rather, the dramatic conflict in the Ring is among the several types of gods: the conscious ego of the sky gods, the dream sleep and dream consciousness of Erda and the Norns, the sheer unconsciousness of the Rhine, and the shape-shifting power seen in Loge. Therefore, Wagner's drama is, in modern terms, mythological psychology. It deals with the elemental forces of psychological life in the struggle to create, maintain, and finally to give up the ego. Therefore, the hero of the Ring must be one who undergoes all the stages of psychological development. That hero, as we shall see, is Brünnhilde.

II

The dramatic background of The Ring presents the conflict among gods who themselves represent different levels of psychological reality. Therefore, the drama cannot be a conflict on the level of a clash between conscious egos. Rather, the drama presents a conflict among ego consciousness, dream un/consciousness, total unconsciousness, and the trickster principle. The Ring's dramatic conflict, therefore, is not between Wotan and Alberich (or Wotan and any other personal character). Rather, the dramatic conflict is between Wotan and the Rhine, the ultimate water goddess. It is a conflict between ego consciousness and the unconscious.

In The Ring, Erda and Loge, earth and fire gods, are intermediate between the sky god and the water goddess. In the opera's dramatic development, Loge is closer to Wotan and Erda is closer to the Rhine. Therefore, Loge counsels Wotan how to gain the Rhinegold and Erda counsels him to give it up! Moreover, since the Rhine is total unconsciousness, its truth must be articulated by a voice of another type and Erda plays this role. Therefore the dramatic conflict in The Ring is between Wotan-Loge and the Rhine-Erda. Wagner's Ring, like Virgil's Aeneid, is a drama about the primordial conflict between the patriarchal and the matriarchal divine powers—though in Wagner's drama, the goddesses win.

In both The Ring and The Aeneid, the chief sky god has a daughter who is the instrument of his purposes. In the Aeneid, Jupiter acts through Venus. In the Ring Wotan acts through Brünnhilde. However, Venus remains true to Jupiter's purpose throughout the Aeneid. In The Ring, the dramatic action reverses itself when Brünnhilde disobeys Wotan's command by invoking the psychological insight that what Wotan truly wants is different from what he thinks he wants.

Brünnhilde's disobedience to Wotan originates in the fact that her mother is Erda, the goddess of sleep and the unconscious. Brünnhilde is closer in her being to the wholeness which Wotan sacrificed when he gave up one eye in order to gain the power of the spear: justice, covenant, consciousness, and reason. Brünnhilde, raised by her father in the sphere of one-eyed ego consciousness, is at first only able to act on the basis of this way of thinking. She is, Wotan believes, only his will. But, as the drama progresses, Brünnhilde becomes increasingly aware of the realm of unconscious desires, the realm of her mother. She is then able to discern in Wotan what he himself does not know about himself: that he also has unconscious desires.

In The Ring, the unconscious desire of Wotan (of which he is unaware) is manifested in a compulsive trait: his wandering. Wotan's wandering, like the ancient Celtic questing, is a search for wisdom. In his search for wisdom, Wotan seeks out Erda, the goddess of the earth. From this love, Brünnhilde is born. Fricka, the wife of Wotan's rational consciousness, attempts to stop Wotan's wandering and confine him to the realm of sheer rational consciousness by building him a house, Valhalla, so he will stay “home.” Brünnhilde, as the daughter and central reminder of Wotan's continuing preoccupation with woman-wisdom-wholeness, is Fricka's enemy because Brünnhilde knows what Fricka can never know, namely, what Wotan truly desires.

After Brünnhilde's disobedience to Wotan's conscious will, Wotan casts her out of the realm of the sky gods, depriving her of her immortality. But, at this point, Brünnhilde ceases to act within the sphere of “patriarchal consciousness” and becomes, instead, an agent of “matriarchal consciousness.” She now is linked with the purposes of her mother Erda. Her mother's purpose, we recall, is that Wotan give back the ring! In Götterdämmerung this is exactly what Brünnhilde shall accomplish.

In The Ring, therefore, the course of action “reverses” when the patriarchal father-daughter pair is supplanted by matriarchal mother-daughter pair. In the Aeneid, Venus remains the agent of Jupiter's will to the end—and thus accomplishes his purpose. But in The Ring, Brünnhilde's disobedience and Wotan's depriving her of the immortality of the sky gods, results in her shifting sides. She is “condemned” to sleep (i.e., to join her sleeping-dreaming mother). When she is wakened from sleep by the love of her hero (just as Erda was wakened from sleep by the love of Wotan), Brünnhilde is able to be what neither her father nor her mother were able to be alone: the conscious agent of the unconscious. Brünnhilde will choose to return the ring to the Rhine. With her aid, the heroic task is reversed and the hero “sacrifices the other eye”: the ego attains not its own glory but its annihilation. Brünnhilde is the instrument of the Earth-Rhine goddesses.

III

My argument is threefold. (1) The Ring dramatizes a mythological psychology where the basic conflict is between the ego-conscious sky gods and the goddesses of the unconscious: Erda and the Rhine. (2) The dramatic action of The Ring “reverses” when Brünnhilde, the daughter-agent of the will of the god(esses), switches sides. From this point, the goal of the action is no longer the accomplishment of glorious deeds by a (patriarchal) hero; rather it is the defeat of the (woman) hero, or her self-abnegation, in her acceptance of love-and-death. (3) The dramatic action of The Ring can take place only through the psychological development of its “hero,” and this hero is Brünnhilde. She is, in fact, the only character in the opera who truly undergoes psychological development. Therefore, a key to understanding The Ring is to understand Brünnhilde's psychological development. We will, therefore, turn to this topic.

We already have outlined the basic categories of the mythological psychology utilized by Wagner in The Ring. The non-conscious life force of the Rhine, the water goddesses; the unconscious realm of sleep-and-dreams of Erda, the earth goddess; the realm of Ego-consciousness of the sky gods; and the shape-shifting trickster Loge who moves from realm to realm (who can, for example, lead Wotan the sky god into the bowels of the Earth and trick the god of justice into committing an unjust act).

In The Ring, Wagner also explicitly spells out a theory of psychological development. Wagner's theory is articulated by the Norns at the beginning of Götterdämmerung. They tell how, in the beginning, there was a World Ash Tree which was rooted in a spring from which the waters of wisdom flowed. In this stage, there was perfect unity, holy wisdom, and only song. This primordial basis of psychological development is presented in The Ring by the first song of the Rhinemaidens.

The next step, according to Wagner, is when a brave god came to drink wisdom from the spring. The price he had to pay was the loss of one eye. But, by so doing he was able to break a branch from the Ash Tree and carve from it a “Spear of Holy Laws and Covenants” through which he was able to create the political world of the human family.

The long-term consequence of Wotan's act, however, was that the World Ash Tree began to die. The loss of the branch “slowly weakened the tree: dry leafless and barren.” The waters themselves began to fail and their song became sorrowful.

At this point, a hero appeared to do battle with the god's spear and overthrew all those laws and covenants sustained through its power. The world created by Wotan, the god who gained power at the price of wisdom (sacrificing one eye and ripping a branch from the World Ash Tree), was at an end. So Wotan commanded all his “immortals” to chop up the dead Ash Tree and to pile it as kindling around Valhalla, which will be their funeral pyre.

Next, according to the Norns, Wotan will take the splinters of his shattered spear, thrust it into Loge the god of fire, and light the wood piled around Valhalla. The rule of the gods will end and darkness will fall upon them.

With this story, the Norns describe the elements of Wagner's theory of psychological development: the god (ego) establishes itself through an act of self-defilement which chooses action and power within the realm of law and covenant (politics) in preference to wholeness and harmony with nature. That choice cuts the god (ego) off from the sources of life so that, eventually, a hero must come who will destroy the spear, the power of law and political society. Once this occurs, all that remains is death.

We should, at this point, recall that Wagner's original understanding of this process was negative. Inspired by the anarchism of the political revolution of 1848, Wagner saw the destruction of society as the only way to free man as an individual. But after reading Schopenhauer, Wagner saw that this destruction could also be interpreted positively and “religiously”—as a reintegration of the person, through loss of ego, with the unity of nature—Nirvana! This positive interpretation changed Wagner's original conception of the Götterdämmerung into the full four music-dramas that we have today. In this positive interpretation, the final act of Brünnhilde in returning the ring to the Rhine is not an act of suicidal self-destruction. Rather it is an act of self-transcendence and renewal. In this latter interpretation, Wagner has moved beyond his earlier materialistic ego-psychology towards a wholistic self-psychology. For this reason, it is not inappropriate to suggest there are certain affinities between Wagner's later myth-psychology and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung. In our analysis of Brünnhilde's psychological development, we shall, therefore, also draw on Jungian concepts.

IV

What distinguishes Jungian psychology is the notion that the development of the person takes place through a shift from an identity centered upon an ego to an identity centered upon the self. In the course of life, this shift takes place through an “interaction between an actualized personality in the ego and a potential wholeness centered on the Self.”¹ In this view, psychological development presupposes an ego-centered person, but goes beyond this to appropriate the larger potentialities of the self. Under optimum conditions, says Whitmont, the “I” is first experienced as protected, nourished, and enclosed by the mother, and later challenged, driven and directed toward ideals by the father. This is exactly the situation of Brünnhilde, daughter of the Earth goddess Erda, and Wotan, the god of Justice (Laws) and Ideals. Thus, according to Jungian theory, Brünnhilde was conceived and birthed into optimum conditions for ego-development.

Of course, Brünnhilde is raised away from her mother, Erda. Living in the masculine world of Valhalla, as her Father's favorite, Brünnhilde is a Valkyrie. The Valkyrie is representative of the Amazon type of personality, which has a nonpersonal orientation and an objective attitude not directed towards personal involvement.² In Valhalla, Brünnhilde wholly identifies with her Father's masculine will (like Athena!) and has no will of her own. Thus, when she first appears in The Ring, Brünnhilde is in a state of undeveloped ego. Her will and being are not differentiated from that of her Father and his environment.

BRüNNHILDE:
To Wotan's will you're speaking;
You can say what you will;
What am I,
if not your will alone?

As the action develops, however, Brünnhilde begins to separate her own will from the will of her Father. She does this through the act of saying “No.” Her disobedience to Wotan is crucially important to the development of her ego. Yet, in the beginning, Brünnhilde must argue that in disobeying Wotan, she is still actually obeying his “true will.”

BRüNNHILDE:
When Fricka had made you
change your decision;
and when her words conquered your will,
you were false to yourself.

Yet even in this instance, Brünnhilde agrees to obey Wotan's “false will.” In turmoil, she goes forth determined to fulfill Wotan's command to allow Siegmund to die. Though she now is aware of a “split” between her (i.e. Wotan's) professed will and his true will, she is still able to dominate and to control this split. Something else must occur before Brünnhilde is able actually to disobey her Father. This something else is Brünnhilde's encounter with Siegmund and her experience of love.

BRüNNHILDE:
In my ears it rang,
My eyes were dazzled
My mind was troubled,
A new emotion stole through my heart.
Shy, astonished
I stood ashamed
How could I help him,
How could I save him?
Victory or death
with Siegmund I'd share it!

Brünnhilde experiences “new feelings,” falls in love with Siegmund, and chooses for love rather than laws. This choice puts her in conflict with Wotan's command which was based on laws; that is, she now has her own experiences of right and wrong.

When confronted by Wotan's anger at her effort to save Siegmund, Brünnhilde still argues that she did not truly disobey Wotan. Wotan, she says, inspired her love for Siegmund. Therefore, “You were not betrayed—though I broke your command.” But Wotan sees the matter altogether differently. “So you would attempt what I hoped so dearly to do, but which cruel fate forbade me to achieve?” That is, Wotan is still able to dominate the split in his will and maintain his covenants of law and duty. He does not agree that Brünnhilde has obeyed his “true will.” In fact, what she has done is obey his “false will.” She has yielded to what he has conquered: the feelings of love. Therefore, Wotan condemns her to what she herself has chosen: love and mortality. Wotan removes her immortality and casts her into the sleep which is the realm of Erda: birth, life, and death. This is now Brünnhilde's fate.

V

To progress from one life stage to the next, a crisis situation is necessary to precipitate the movement. In addition, consequent to the crisis event, there is usually a transition period in which events and movement occur that facilitate entrance to the next life stage. Though the borders of crisis and transition are not always clearly defined, Brünnhilde's sleep on the mountain is her symbolic transition from unconscious to conscious state.

When Brünnhilde is awakened from her sleep by Siegfried's kiss (an oral sexual experience that keeps her at the same level of early sexual awareness), she first experiences the dualistic state of ego development in which one must deal both with problems of sexuality and also accommodation to society. The demand for a widening of horizons is often vigorously resisted by someone who clings to the childhood level of consciousness.³ This is exactly what Brünnhilde does. When Siegfried awakens her, his passion flares but Brünnhilde vigorously resists him. She is in great distress at having to separate from her former state and move into a new one.

BRüNNHILDE:
No god dared to come near!
The heroes bowed
and knelt to the maiden:
holy he came to Walhall.
Sorrow! Sorrow!
Woe for my shame,
How keen my disgrace!
And he who wakes me
deals me the wound!
He has broken breastplate and helm:
Brünnhilde am I no more!

Though Siegfried shocks Brünnhilde with his advance, she realizes that those things which belonged to her former state (her breastplate and helmet) have been destroyed in Siegfried's act of awakening her, that is, in her becoming conscious. She then expresses terror at being overcome by “darkness and gloom.” Siegfried says he'll protect her. Because Siegfried's ardor is infectious, Brünnhilde's resistance weakens, her passion is enflamed, and the opera ends with the consummation of the relationship a foregone conclusion. Brünnhilde has fully made the transition from unconscious to conscious state, as symbolized in her sexual relationship with a mortal man. She abandons her childhood Amazon state and leaves her divine family.

BRüNNHILDE:
Farewell, Walhall's
bright glittering world!
Your glorious halls
now may fall to dust!
Farewell, proud, radiant,
godly race!
End in joy
you eternal clan!

Now Brünnhilde and Siegfried essentially become one person. In effect, Siegfried is Brünnhilde's animus, the term used by Jung to designate the masculine component of a woman.⁴ The animus is often represented by the Hero image. When it is in a positive integrated relationship with the woman, the animus enters into situations which require initiative, aggressiveness, and action. Such is the case with Brünnhilde and Siegfried.

SIEGFRIED:
So by your daring I am fired
and all my deeds shall be your deeds!
All my battles you will chose,
all my victories you shall achieve …
BRüNNHILDE:
Then you are Siegfried and Brünnhilde!
SIEGFRIED:
Where I am, both are united.

On his journey down the Rhine, Siegfried visits the land of the Gibichung. Here he is given a potion of forgetfulness so he will not remember Brünnhilde and will marry king Gunther's sister, Gutrune. In this state of forgetfulness he agrees to conquer Brünnhilde on the fire mountain and make her Gunther's bride. Siegfried succeeds in tricking Brünnhilde by using the magic tarnhelm to disguise himself as Gunther. In this form he takes the ring from Brünnhilde and puts it on his own finger. Brünnhilde faces a major ego-adaptation problem: she has been conquered not only by Siegfried but also by a supposed stranger. This situation forms the crisis which enables movement to be made towards the final stage of ego development.

Brünnhilde travels to Gibichung where her confusion over being conquered by a hero other than Siegfried is resolved; she sees the ring on Siegfried's hand, not Gunther's, and realizes she has been betrayed by her lover. She is now acutely aware of the subject-object split, and so relationship problems with Siegfried, Gunther, Gutrune, and Hagen begin to unfold.

Brünnhilde is experiencing a typical pattern in ego development: the clash between collectivity and individuality. She is compelled to obey societal mores and marry Gunther while her individuality rebels, causing feelings of frustration, anger, and vengeance. Jung uses the term persona to express the drive towards adaptation to the external environment and collectivity. The persona represents the role a person plays in society. Because the ego and the persona are not the same, a differentiation between the two must occur for adequate psychological development.⁵ This conflict is evident in Brünnhilde who is struggling with having to play a part in society that does not match her ego purposes.

VI

Before Brünnhilde can reach her final stage of psychological development in The Ring, the sacrifice of the ego to the self, it is necessary that her ego be strong enough and able to face the self.⁶ The crisis event which facilitates this final movement is Siegfried's death. Hagen gives Siegfried a drink which restores his memory and encourages him to recount his adventures up to and including his marriage to Brünnhilde. Siegfried is then killed by Hagen, but his act of recalling his adventures so reunites him with Brünnhilde that they are spiritually one again. Moreover, as Siegfried's dying speech suggests, this act is a symbolic freeing of Brünnhilde.

SIEGFRIED:
Your bridegroom came
to kiss you awake
he frees you, again
breaking your fetters,
He lives in Brünnhilde's love!

This freeing of, and reunion with, Brünnhilde allows her to move forward to the next stage of psychological development.

Jung states that “life is (the) story of the self-realization of the unconscious.”⁷ Siegfried's death is also the shock which allows Brünnhilde to realize what to do.

BRüNNHILDE:
He, truest of all men,
betrayed me,
that I in grief might grow wise!
Now I know what must be.
All things, all things,
all I know now;
All to me is revealed!

Brünnhilde awakens to her unconscious self—the will of the Earth-Rhine goddesses and the “true will” of Wotan. She determines to do what Wotan “both feared and desired”: return the ring to the Rhine.

Brünnhilde removes the ring from Siegfried and places it on her own hand. She tells the Rhinemaidens to retrieve it from her ashes. She then rides Grane, the horse both she and Siegfried shared, into Siegfried's flaming funeral pyre. This act completes Brünnhilde's psychological development. She is whole not only because she is reunited with Siegfried, but also because she realizes her personality's potential. The ego, purified by the fire, is reunited to the self in this conscious sacrifice.

VII

Brünnhilde's sacrifice is a victory of the unconscious of the Earth-Rhine goddesses (the self) over the ego-consciousness of the sky gods. In carrying out the task of returning the ring to the Rhine, Brünnhilde has been the instrument of the Earth-Rhine goddesses. She has been the conscious agent of the unconscious.

Brünnhilde's psychological development is essential to the dramatic action of The Ring because it leads to the ultimate reversal of the heroic task of the opera drama. Siegfried is able to complete part of the task—the retrieval of the ring. However, owing to the potion of forgetfulness, he is unable to complete the entire task. Brünnhilde must do this! It is therefore vital that Brünnhilde become mortal and undergo ego development to a stage where sacrifice of the ego to the self is possible. In this way, Brünnhilde becomes the true hero of the Ring cycle.

Notes

1. E. C. Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1978), p. 265.

2. Whitmont, p. 180.

3. C. G. Jung, The Stages of Life from The Portable Jung, ed. J. Campbell (Penguin Books, 1985), p. 9.

4. R. Donnington, Wagner's “Ring” and Its Symbols (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), p. 213.

5. Whitmont, p. 106.

6. Whitmont, p. 266.

7. C. G. Jung, Memories Dreams, Reflections from The Portable Jung, p. 3.