Reassembling the Real Person: A Jungian and Mythical–Dramatistic Approach to Human Development

The Mythical

Behind Jung’s characterization of the various stages of self-realization lies a Gnostic–Manichean myth of creation. This account explains how the original person became disintegrated in the first place, and identifies the practical steps for reassembly. It is important to note that Jung does not necessarily present these myths as literal accounts of creation, nor is he offering a theological or religious testament. He simply finds these narratives to be useful explanatory devices to illuminate certain universal psychological and existential truths.

As Wink (2001) notes, the “Primal Man,” what I will refer to here as the “Primal Person,” is the human being in its perfect, original state. The Primal Person is the ideal, the way human beings were created to be. Jung (1939/1969b) refers to this Primal Person in various places as the Anthropos, the homunculus, the First Man, the Original Man, Nous, chen-yen, or as the perfect man from Chinese alchemy (p. 293). In many creation myths, the Primal Person is seen to exist on a purely spiritual plane, whole and complete, before the material world as we know it was formed (Sandars, 1971). Depending on the specific story, a battle ensues, and the Primal Person is violently dismembered or explosively dispersed into the world of matter (e.g., Tiamat in the Enuma Elish, or Anthropos in the Manichean creation story). In other accounts, there is an error in the creation of the universe, and the pure spiritual person is mistakenly mixed with the material order (Plato, 389 B.C.E./1965).

In most Gnostic philosophies, the purpose of life is to free the trapped spiritual principle from the world of matter through some type of special knowledge and/or spiritual practice. Jung (1946/1966d) claims that the medieval alchemists were trying to do just this in their own esoteric opus (p. 246). Regardless of the particular story or tradition, the important points for our purposes here are the concepts of material dispersal, and the subsequent need for liberation, resuscitation, and reassembly of the fragmented Primal Person.

The Dramatistic

At several places in his work, Jung explicitly alludes to this Gnostic creation myth as illuminating the self-realization process he seeks to scientifically and phenomenologically describe. Referring to the undivided First Man, Jung (1946/1966d) notes, “Originally he fell into the clutches of Physis [matter], but now [through alchemy] he rises again, freed from the prison of the mortal body” (p. 272). To his credit, Jung avoids what I regard as an unfortunate view in some Gnostic spiritualities that to achieve wholeness, the sprit must transcend matter and the body completely. Jung holds to the more humanistic notion that the Primal Person desires instead to take on a physical body in time rather than transcend the temporal and material order. For Jung, the creation of the material universe is thus not the result of a lost battle, a mistake, or a fall from spiritual grace or glory, but was intended all along as a necessary part of the full self-realization of the human being.

What the Primal Person ultimately “seeks” is to reawaken and reassemble itself into a full, integrated personality with a material body and an individual consciousness. To achieve this, it needs an ego. The story of the fall and reassembly of the Primal Person thus plays out in the life of every individual person. The birth of each new human being begins a cosmic dance between ego and unconscious, that is, the process of self-realization itself, “our relationship to that inner friend of the soul into whom Nature herself would like to change us—that other person who we also are and yet can never attain to completely” (Jung, 1950/1969c, p. 131). This gradual unfolding in individual lives, this push to realize the self in time, is what I mean by the “dramatistic” element of my approach.

Stage 1: The Person Sleeps

The first stage of Jungian self-realization is all about the little person, the small self, the ego, and its related parts. The Primal Person has fallen “asleep,” and remains unconscious at this time. During this stage, psychic energy (or libido) is directed “outward” toward extraverted mastery, achievement, recognition, validation, and success in the world. Several subprocesses occur simultaneously during this initial stage.

First, there is the formation of what Jung (1928/1971c) calls the persona (p. 97). The persona is what we feel we should appear to be for others. Based on the desire to be liked and loved, to have some measure of power and control in the world, we construct a false self or “mask” during infancy, childhood, and adolescence which we then wear in the appropriate social contexts. We eventually become so familiar with the persona that we come to automatically identify with and present it, even to ourselves while alone.

Second, the executive functions of the ego must grow and develop during this time. This is greatly facilitated by cultures which support the “ego project” (see Jung, 1954/1971d). Important aspects of ego development include identity formation, building intellectual skills, discovering one’s strengths and weaknesses, self-esteem, self-efficacy, mastery of language, social competency, and emotional development. The work of the various contemporary schools of personality development are all relevant and appropriate here (see, e.g., DeRobertis, 2008; Engler, 2013).

Third, as it navigates its way through the social and familial world, the ego painfully discovers that there are many aspects of itself which are not welcome, which do not meet key people’s expectations, or which threaten vital relationships the ego is cultivating. These unwanted features of the ego must therefore be “put on ice,” repressed, dissociated, and relegated to what Jung calls the personal unconscious. So, in addition to strengthening the ego and developing a persona during this first stage of self-realization, the ego also develops a shadow (Jung, 1928/1971c), which contains all the unacceptable, undesirable, and “bad” traits it banishes in order to obtain love and security.

For the process of self-realization to proceed past this first stage, the ego must become itself and establish a strong conscious control point. Under favorable circumstances, this may take 30 years or more following birth. Many individuals struggle mightily well into their adulthood to achieve the daunting developmental tasks of this first stage. They often need considerable extra time and/or therapeutic attention to reparent or repair the ego to the point where it can stand and function on its own. It is important to point out in this context that the pathological failure to establish a stable ego or the shattering experience of a psychotic disintegration of the ego is not the same kind of “disintegration” of the Primal Person alluded to previously. Primal dispersal refers to the disintegration of an unconscious and archetypal Primal Person, and does not include the personal experience of psychological breakdown. Problems with ego stability, on the other hand, involve the conscious experience of regulation failure, or even total disintegration of the ego.

One of the unique aspects of Jungian psychology is the notion that ego development, while crucial, is not the telos of the growth process. Rather, a larger Person who seeks realization within us lies in slumber, patiently waiting for a well-developed ego, a firm and supportive foundation in the familial and social world, on which it can begin to live out its life.

Stage 2: The Person Stirs

The Primal Person sleeps for 30 years or more, but they eventually awakens. They are hungry for growth and now demands some attention. This awakening is the principal feature of the second stage of self-realization: the disintegration of the persona. Jung (1930/1971e) believes this process starts around midlife (see Levinson, 1978). Regardless of the precise age, this stage begins when psychic energy (libido) recedes from its previous outward direction (from extraversion to introversion) and turns toward inner realities. As the Primal Person stirs, their principal aim is the deposition of the conscious mind from power, and the establishment of what Jung (1928/1966e) calls a “transpersonal control point” (p. 134) at the very center of the Person, just beyond the ego’s grasp.

This withdrawal of outward energy and the deposition of ego-control is no easy task. As any middle-aged person knows, this time can be fraught with strange new emotions, resistance to change, and other psychological disturbances unrelated to symptoms pertaining to the development of the ego, persona, and shadow. The purpose of this second stage, which can often take 5 to 10 years, is to train the ego to adopt a more receptive posture with respect to the control and direction of its life, to properly interpret the meaning of these odd new psychological phenomena, and begin the integration of the hitherto dormant parts of the Primal Person. These dissociated parts can be understood as archetypes, what Jung (1919/1971b) describes as “inborn forms of intuition,” perception, and apprehension (p. 52).

The Primal Person guides the growth process during this time by speaking to us in a recognizable “voice” (Jung, 1950/1969c, pp. 131-132). This voice comes to us in the language of metaphor, symbol, images, and personified figures (Jung, 1934/1969a, p. 40). For this stage to be successful, what we need to do is: (a) restructure our lives in such a way that we have regular periods of reflective time in which to block out distractions and listen to the voice speaking to us and (b) learn to interpret our psychological life symbolically so that we can discern just what the voice is telling us to do. Of course, it is not at all inevitable that this transpersonal psychic shift and related lifestyle changes will take place. They require considerable conscious effort and are greatly facilitated by courage, skills in literary and symbolic interpretation, and in many cases, by what Jung (1946/1966d) calls an “adept” (p. 221): a wise and experienced therapist or knowledgeable other willing to serve as a helpful guide or psychopomp in this difficult and disorienting process, as, for example, did Virgil for Dante in his harrowing journey through Hell.

Stage 3: The Person Takes Flesh

This stage involves the actual integration of unconscious material which symbolically presents itself to us during midlife in the form of dreams, visions, feelings, automatic thoughts, projections, and psychological symptoms. From the mythical–dramatistic point of view, we should think of most of the material manifesting at this time as the various dispersed parts of the Primal Person which now require reassembly and integration.

Before the big Person can realize him or herself in earnest. however, the disparate parts of the little person (the ego) must first be gathered, recollected, and assimilated (see, e.g., von Franz, 1985). The third stage thus begins with the identification and integration of shadow material and other elements from the personal unconscious (e.g., complexes) which formed during Stage 1. This work principally involves the isolation and reduction of our tendency to project the disowned aspects of ourselves onto others whom we then experience negatively (see Johnson, 1994/2009).

After this difficult shadow work, we come to the actual hidden parts of the Primal Person seeking reassembly (i.e., the archetypes). Given the fact that the ego is a body ego for Jung, in most cases, it is gendered either male or female. There is therefore a “contrasexual part” of the cosmic Person which has lain dormant for years, what Jung calls the anima or animus (Jung, 1951/1971a, p. 148). The anima is the feminine part of a male ego; the animus the masculine part of a female ego. These hidden contrasexual parts of the primal Person first manifest themselves as if they were outside us, in conflicts with romantic partners and marital relationships. These relationships thus become prime opportunities for integration of the anima in a man or the animus in a woman (see Hendrix, 1993; Johnson, 1989a, 1989b). (For a critical revision of this aspect of Jung’s theory, see also McKenzie [2006].)

There are also other parts of the Person which need to be identified and integrated during this tumultuous time. They include the archetypes of: Mother, Kore, Spirit/Father, Child, Trickster, and more. (I do not have sufficient space here to explore each of these archetypes in detail. See Jung [1940/1969e] and Myss [2014] for a more elaborate description.) The important point is that for full integration to occur, we must allow this material to embody itself, and then do the necessary psychological work with it. This process can take some time and considerable effort.

Jung (1916/1971f) highlights three principal steps to follow in working with archetypal material during this stage. First, we offer up a concrete medium (e.g., paint, clay, images, our own body, etc.) and allow it to be impressed on by unconscious content. Second, we analyze this embodied material to make sense of what it might be saying to us. This includes further work with the embodied material in imaginal dialogue, amplification, drawing, painting, journaling, or discussion with an adept, therapist, or analyst. Third, based on our interpretation of this symbolic communication, we take the appropriate action. Here we ask ourselves, “Based on what I have heard, what must I now do (or stop doing)?” “How must I change to fully embody the direction of what has happened in me with this image?” (For more on this kind of work, see Greer [2014], Myss [2014], Nelson [2007], and Progoff [1992]).

Stage 4: The Person Is Ensouled

As aforementioned, the Primal Person seeks not only to reassemble their dispersed parts in us but to consciously experience life in an ego. For this to happen, the Person not only needs a healthy ego but a stable bridge to span the gap initially separating ego from unconscious. Jung (1916/1971f) calls this bridge the transcendent function. The work we do in Stage 3 often requires external support and guided practice. In Stage 4, however, these supports are internalized and become the transcendent function, a permanent and stable part of our psychic system. Jung (1916/1971f) says this transcendent function is, a “living, third thing” (p. 298) which manifests as a new structure of the ego whose function is to join two separate and often opposed psychological systems together: the discursive logical system of the ego and the imagistic metaphorical system of the unconscious.

Seen from a mythical–dramatistic point of view, the transcendent function is the “soul” of the Primal Person. I take the meaning of soul in its classical sense as the animating principle that holds disparate pieces together (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E./1986). With the soul, the Primal Person is now fully alive, their dispersed parts have been integrated, and they have an open channel of communication with ego consciousness. We can now see that the establishment of this soul was the very reason the Person sought embodiment and ego consciousness in the first place. It marks the crowning achievement of the self-realization process.

For Jung, the telos of human growth is not the autonomous ego or a merger with the collective psyche, but a healthy “marriage” (hieros gamos) between ego and unconscious. In this new relationship, there is now a dialogue between two human beings with equal rights, “each of whom gives the other credit for a valid argument and considers it worth-while to modify the conflicting standpoints by means of thorough comparison and discussion or else to distinguish them clearly from one another” (Jung, 1916/1971f, p. 297). With the establishment of the crucial transcendent function, or “soul,” a new equilibrium is formed between ego and unconscious, which leads to the ongoing and productive use of dreams, fantasy, images, art, and so on. We are now able to assist the Person in their ongoing effort to achieve wholeness in us.

Personal Terms for a Personal Process

When we adopt a mythical and dramatistic standpoint, we move away from an exclusive reliance on impersonal forces and factors to explain human growth. It is common, for example, to describe the process of growth as one in which we “actualize human potential” (Maslow, 1968), or “realize human nature” (Fromm, 1947), or alternate between “assimilation and accommodation” (Piaget, 1985). We may see growth in Jungian terms as one in which the human being “individuates,” allows the “archetype of the self” to fully realize itself (Jung, 1934/1969a), or where the ego comes to open itself ever more fully to the “dynamic ground” (Washburn, 1985). In these and many other approaches, the principal growth factors are described in abstract, impersonal terms. As Guntrip (1961/2012) notes, the benefit of impersonal terms is that they allow a certain precision and universality in our investigations. We can discuss the general nature of various developmental processes without reference to particular cases and individual life histories. We also have a common vocabulary in which to share our findings and observations.

While impersonal terms carry great benefits, there is also something lost when we use them exclusively to deal with human beings (see DeRobertis, 2008). Impersonal terms and processes are often difficult for people to work with in concrete and/or clinical settings. This is because there is a great difference between “actualizing potential” or “realizing human nature” and experiencing them in one’s real life. If we choose to make a major life change in furtherance of what we see as our growth path, the full reality of the experience is about much more than “actualizing potential.” It is about birth, death, agony, fear, courage, joy, and drama. When we think about our own growth, where our life is headed, we do not typically think in terms of generalized processes. We do not imagine an abstract state of “self-realization” or “wholeness;” rather, we have a specific picture of ourselves in the ideal state. The growth process is an intensely personal affair, so the terms we use to describe and understand it should be personal as well.

This is not to say our terms should only be personal, but they should also be personal. Overly personal approaches carry the danger of egocentrism and a certain personalistic myopia (Guntrip, 1961/2012). We should surely talk about the growth process in more abstract and impersonal terms to further process experience or communicate any findings with others, but we must recall these terms are not fully describing people’s lives. The personal and the impersonal should complement one another in psychology. The mythical–dramatistic perspective offers psychology a set of these more personal terms.

The Storied Mind

A second benefit of the mythical–dramatistic approach is that it better accords with our human tendency to see our lives in narrative or storied terms (see Adler, 1956; Bruner, 1987; May, 1991; Sarbin, 1986). Bruner (1987) describes two basic modes of cognitive functioning in human beings: the paradigmatic and the narrative. The paradigmatic mode attempts to fulfill the ideal of a formal, mathematical system of description and explanation. Its terms are regulated by the requirements of consistency, precision, and noncontradiction. These are the impersonal terms of science and explanation described in the paragraph above. The narrative mode, on the other hand, deals with the vicissitudes and unfolding of human intention and desire over time. It deals with character development, discovery, surprise, and denouement. Through the employment of the story form, the narrative mode strives to put timeless miracles into the particulars of experience. As with the impersonal terms described above, the paradigmatic mode surely has its benefits, but describing the overall course of human growth is not one of them. The narrative mode is therefore the ideal vehicle to express the unfolding embodiment of the eternal person over time. With the mythical–dramatistic approach, life is cast as the inherently heroic story that it is (see Efthimiou & Allison, 2018; Romanyshyn, 2019).

Inner Dialogue

When we see development in terms of a relationship with a person, it highlights the need for inner dialogue in psychological growth (Jung, 1916/1971f). The unconscious comes to us mostly in the form of personified images and figures. To understand and work with it, we must talk back to this material, have a real-time conversation. When we “reflect on” or “process” our thoughts, feelings, and problems, we are not thinking about a something, but talking with a someone (see Hillman, 1975). At bottom, introspection is inner dialogue. We should not translate this personal communication into abstract terms, because we might miss the information that comes to us from being personally addressed.

Inner dialogue staged in journaling, role play, prayer, meditation, or what Jung called “active imagination” can also be an incredibly powerful and emotional experience for people struggling to grow. Active imagination is a technique in which we consciously confront and translate unconscious contents into images, stories, or personified beings. To fully benefit from this kind of process, the person must often overcome an initial sense that having inner conversations like these is silly or ridiculous, that one is merely “making it all up” in one’s head. This common form of resistance reflects the power of abstract terms in our psychology that can blind us to the personal and dialogical nature of psychological life.

A concern, of course, is that this inner talk will lead to a sort of narcissism and social inaction. While this is surely a possibility, Jung (1916/1971f) stresses that the capacity for inner dialogue is ironically the “touchstone for outer objectivity” (p. 297). That is, the more we know ourselves through inner dialogue, the less we distort reality by projecting this inner material onto others and the world. Furthermore, when we really listen to what this material is trying to tell us, we find it always demands action and change in the world. If inner dialogue lulls us into narcissism and inaction, we are not really listening to or comprehending the conversation.

Voice, Vocation, and Mission

When we look at growth mythically and dramatistically, important and often neglected terms are added to our psychological vocabulary, like voice, vocation, and mission. These terms are necessary because they reflect the achievement of a transpersonal control point in Stages 3 and 4 of the self-realization process. In Stage 1, for example, it makes sense to speak of “making meaning” and “choosing one’s path” in life. These terms accurately reflect the conscious control point the ego needs in these early stages. However, in the later stages of self-realization, one’s psychological position radically shifts. One now “finds meaning” and “listens” for the path to take in life. This subtle but important difference in terminology reflects a monumental developmental change. It is therefore important for us to have terms at our disposal that accurately and phenomenologically describe the experiences and struggles of people during this more transpersonal time in life.

As aforementioned, the Primal Person speaks to us in a voice that is not the voice of the ego (the little self), but of the whole person. It comes in the form of feelings, images, dreams, symptoms, and even words for some (like Socrates, for instance), reflecting the interests and wisdom of one’s deepest self. As opposed to an auditory hallucination, for example, this voice is received as coming from the inside, rather than from without. From this perspective, our psychological experiences are not just events that happen to us, but meaningful, personal communication. The voice of the “cosmic person” has great power to affect our experience, actions, feelings, and opinions. Furthermore, its voice is guiding, helpful, and purposive (see Jung, 1928/1971c, p. 71). For example, one may experience a series of splitting headaches in waking life. Rather than see these solely as meaningless physical symptoms to remove as rapidly as possible, one can also view them symbolically, as potentially helpful communication. Once we rule out the possibility of a brain tumor or other neurological problem, perhaps what is being communicated in the headaches is that I have dissociated different parts of myself which need to be drawn together. The “splitting” headache tells me I am not now a whole human being. If the interpretation of this symptom is correct, trying to immediately mollify the headache with pain medication may rob me of the opportunity to address what is really at issue.

There are many ways the person speaks to us. The person speaks in dreams, fantasies, feelings, urges, problems, and symptoms. There are many messages, both large and small, shared with us through these media. Among the different kinds of voices, there is one which pertains to the realization of our whole personality, what Jung calls the “superordinate personality” or “self” (Jung, 1943/1968). I refer to this kind of voice as vocation or calling. It is the “big voice” which attempts to guide us to fulfill our destiny or fate, to offer the next step we must take toward self-realization. The idea is that each person has a calling in life as to what kind of person to be, what to do with one’s time in the world of work, perhaps even whom to love (see Hillman, 1996; Maslow, 1968; Palmer, 1999). Jung describes this voice as a force we feel from beyond ourselves to realize the cosmic person in time. We experience a will not coincident with, and indeed, often in strong opposition to, our own ego will. Jung (1943/1968) writes, “The man who submits to his fate calls it the will of God; the man who puts up a hopeless and exhausting fight is more apt to see the devil in it” (p. 30). Hillman (1996) has described this inner voice as the daimon, an innate image that is the essence of a person’s life, calling it to a greater destiny.

The call of vocation seeks to correct the ego’s many imbalances, and move us from a state of brokenness and one-sidedness toward a wholeness, in the form of a specific goal in the future. Vocation guides us toward a vision, a picture of our ideal, unrealized state. I refer to this goal-for-the-future as mission. The call literally sends us on a mission, some specific task to achieve or thing to do in life to realize the promise we see. For example, one may hear the call to be a healer and see one’s mission as working to cure cancer. Or, as in the case of Jonah in the Hebrew Scriptures, one can hear this vocational call but choose to ignore or reject it, resulting in painful consequences.

In some of my own work doing career counseling with college students, I have found that if they can discern a mission based on a larger vocation, they perform the concrete tasks of college with more enthusiasm than when they are just “taking classes.” As Frankl (1963) suggests, they have a purpose, which provides some sense of meaning in life. A student “on a mission” now has a coherent reason for learning the various concepts and skills in their course of study. The student is aware how these individual classes all help him or her perform this overall life task. Of course, sometimes discerning a vocation and mission does not come so easily. Or sometimes we do hear or see something, but find later we were terribly mistaken about what we heard. Sometimes these visions, once received, can later change, disrupt, and alter an established life course after major commitments have already been made. Sometimes a too-firm mission may rob us of the benefits which can come from more open exploration. We must be sensitive to these negative possibilities, and remain flexible in the discernment out of our life’s course.

Ego Versus Self-Based Psychological Problems

Self-realization is not only the telos of human development for Jung, it informs the process of therapeutic activity as well. While the process of self-realization outlined in this article refers to healthy human development, we can usefully locate various psychological problems within the different stages (see also Finn, 2011; Fordham, 1978). Some psychological problems, for example, involve insufficient development of the ego, such as low self-esteem (e.g., Harris, Donnellan, & Trzesniewski, 2018; Harter & Pike, 1984; Jahoda, 1958), poor self-control (e.g., Baumeister, 1987; Maccoby, 1980), distorted self-concept (Damon & Hart, 1988), and a host of other Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–Fifth edition “mental disorders.” These issues all pertain to struggles which occur during the first stage of self-realization. Various non-Jungian clinical treatment modalities and psychological theories of development are quite appropriate tools for treating and understanding such “ego-based” problems.

Other problems, however, are not rooted in the ego, but involve an unproductive manifestation of collective psychic material or an insufficient degree of cooperation between the ego and the unconscious. These are psychological problems which tend to occur during the second and third stages of self-realization. Jung (1928/1971c) describes many clinical disturbances in which the person appears overwhelmed or “possessed” by archetypal material, rather than productively engaged with it. As other examples, Jung notes the phenomenon of generalized meaninglessness, lack of purpose and direction in life, the feeling that one is merely “going through the motions” of life. Jung (1929/1966c) observed that about one third of his cases “are not suffering from any clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and aimlessness of their lives” (p. 41). Jung says these comprise a different set of “Self-based” therapeutic struggles which can benefit from a more symbolic approach, such as active imagination, dream interpretation, painting, mandala drawing, and a host of other symbolic modalities.

Toward a Humanities-Focused Psychological Training

Jung was trained early in his career in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Jung (1929/1966c) recounts how at the beginning of his clinical practice he approached people’s problems with this single theory in hand. He realized slowly and painfully that Freud’s theory did not work in every case. Jung claims that contrary to prevalent opinion in psychology, the cause of “psychoneurosis” is multiform rather than uniform (p. 41). Some problems are caused by fixations of infantile sexuality; some are not. Some problems are caused by trauma; some are not. Since the cause of psychoneurosis is multiform, no single theory of neurosis and its treatment will suffice for every case a practitioner faces. Jung points out that the way psychologists are trained, however, typically presents a single theory of the neuroses, and takes that theory to cover the whole. He notes many cases in his psychiatric practice which seemed not to be based on the ego or its development. These instances forced him to discard the “uniform” theory under which he was first trained and later helped develop, and to create a theory that better fit the cases in which people’s struggles derived not primarily from childhood trauma, but from the failure of the ego to heed the deep directives of the collective unconscious.

Jung argues that people suffering from these kinds of “collective” problems sometimes cannot heed the directives communicated to them because they do not understand the unique language in which these directives are expressed. This language does not come in the form of sexual impulses, power urges, or cognitions, but presents itself in dreams, fantasies, and symptoms as powerful images, symbols, and “mythologems” (Jung, 1945/1966a, p. 92). He argues that the material which holds the key to curing these unique neuroses has more in common with myth, fairytale, and dream than it does with the logical, discursive language of psychoanalysis, and everyday life. But for most of us, our standard education does not equip us to competently comprehend and work with myth, fairytale, and dream. Given our relative symbolic illiteracy, we cannot benefit fully from the wisdom our own psychological experience imparts to us.

Consequently, since we cannot find a cure for our suffering on our own, we then seek help from mental health professionals. Jung says to be effective in the treatment of these kinds of problems, the psychotherapist must be able to understand the nature of this strange psychic material. But sadly, most psychological helpers today have not themselves been adequately educated in the tradition of literature, religion, and mythology, but have rather been trained exclusively in the discursive language of science (Jung, 1933/1966b). Thus, when confronted with disturbances of this collective variety, the helping professional typically proves as ineffective as the patient. Jung believes this is the reason why so many clients “bounce” from doctor to doctor seeking assistance, but never really receiving it.

Given the pervasive nature of these “mythological” neuroses, it is imperative that the education of clinical and counseling psychologists, and other mental health professionals, be transformed from an exclusively science-based program to one that includes humanities, including philosophy, art, literature, mythology, and comparative religion. To be a skillful practitioner, Jung (1935/1966f) argues that a “plentiful admixture of symbolical knowledge” is needed “which can only be acquired by a study of primitive psychology, comparative mythology, and religion” (p. 27). Clinicians seek to achieve this “symbolical knowledge” not because they personally love or are fascinated by myth and symbols per se, but because they want to help people be able to better understand and deal constructively with their own psychological depths (see Butler, 2014; Hillman, 1978; Stevens, 2000).