Biography:
Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri was born in 1914 in Riehen near Basel, Switzerland. She was the daughter of the leading Swiss journalist and politician Albert Oeri and of Hanna Preiswerk.

In her early years, Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri realised her creative talent as a dressmaker. Sibylle married Peter Birkhäuser in 1939 and they had two children. She then developed her spiritual interests through her studies at the C. G. Jung Institute and in her Jungian analysis with Marie-Louise von Franz. From the early 1960s onwards Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri worked as a Jungian analyst in her own practice and was very active at the Psychological Society of Basel. Her main interest was in fairytales and particularly the mother figures and witches. Quietly, whilst keeping a house hold, a practice and giving her husband a lot of support in his paintng, she wrote articles and gave lots of talks and lectures on the subject of the mother archetype. These were collected into her book "The Mother in the Fairy Tale" which was posthumously published by Marie-Louise von Franz after 57-year-old Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri unexpectedly died in 1971. Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri would probably be surprised to hear that her book would find so many grateful readers and be translated in other languages in ever new editions as the interest is still there.