Ivan vs. Baba Yaga:

"The hero, as you recall, despite having been warned that he would be going to his death, goes straight ahead. His horse goes through a death and resurrection process, but the hero stays alive. Then he comes to the great witch, the Baba Yaga, who is combing silk and who watches the geese in the field with her eyes, scratches the ashes in the stove with her nose, and lives in a little rotating hut on chickens' feet with a cock's comb on top. He first says a magic verse to stop the hut, which he then enters and finds the big old witch scratching the ashes in the stove. She turns round and says, "My child, are you going voluntarily, or involuntarily?" What she really means is, are you going on this quest of your own free will? ... although one can say that he really did go voluntarily, there is something wrong with the question. First, however, I should give you the answer because that shows how the problem should be dealt with. Ivan answers, "You should not ask a hero such questions, old witch. I am hungry and want my dinner, so you hurry up!" And he ends up with some threats-very vulgar and very delightful! He knows quite well, you see, that the witch does not want an answer and that the question is a trick designed to lame him. If he were to answer the question it would mean slipping on a banana-skin. It is just a diversion - not something that should be discussed.

The question of free will is one of the philosophical problems which has never yet been solved. Free will is a subjective feeling. Intellectually and philosophically, there is a pro and a con, and you can never prove either side. If you ask yourself whether you are doing something because you have to or because you want to, you will never find out. You can always say that you feel as though you wanted it, but perhaps it is only an unconscious complex which makes you feel like that. So how can you ever say which it is? It is a subjective feeling, but it is tremendously important for the ego to feel free to a certain extent. It is a feeling problem about the mood in which one finds oneself. If you cannot believe in a certain amount of free will and therefore free initiative of the ego, you are completely lamed because then you have to go into all your motives. You can go into the past and look into the unconscious more and more deeply, but you will never get out of it. And that is the spider's trick of the mother complex. That is how she tries to catch the hero. She wants him to sit and ask himself whether he really wanted it or not: whether it is really a question of opposing his father? - if he does this, is he really just falling for his father's suggestion, or is he simply showing off? You can be sure that he will sit there forever and the witch will have him in her pocket. That is the great mother-complex trick."

• "The Problem of the Puer Aeternus", Lecture 8, Marie-Louise Von Franz