myth: more than a literary genre
Though most people believe myths to be tales from long-dead cultures, in depth psychology, myths are symbolic stories that reveal how universal patterns of human behavior–archetypes–play out in our lives. They help us understand timeless struggles, emotions, and experiences in a meaningful way. They also illustrate what’s going on in the unconscious, and help explain why we find ourselves in the state we’re in.1 2
Myths give a person a point of reference, a perspective. Thus, the study of myth is as essential to depth psychology as the study of dreams, for myth is to a culture what the dream is to the individual–namely, a means of getting at the message of the collective unconscious, of showing us a way to relate to it.3
Although they had different approaches to the inner life of human beings, when Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud wrote and lectured about myth, they referred not only to the stories of specific cultures, but also to myth as a fundamental aspect of human consciousness. The traditional anthropological view of myth as a literary genre a collection of stories, often supernatural or paradoxical in nature, that incorporate the beliefs of a given culture. Myths provide a container for the supernatural and the paradoxical or conflicting elements that the modern mind dissociates and denies.
the orphan myth
Much of my life’s work has surrounded orphans, actual and archetypal. I keep up with child welfare as a field, and read often in topics of child protection, foster care, and adoption. I do a lot of thinking and living with issues surrounding adoption.
I see orphans everywhere, as many adults carry wounds that are both literal and symbolic of orphanhood. I recognize their pain and want to help, but I also understand that, on some levels, I cannot. As Jung wrote, “I am an orphan, alone,” because orphancy is at the heart of every human experience.
Even so, I’m sympathetic to those who have been separated from their biological parents. Along with their histories, they have lost their nationalities, cultures, and myths. I sympathize with them as adults who, in most U.S. states, are denied access to the truth about their own origins. Currently, only 15 states grant adopted individuals the same unrestricted access to their original birth certificates that non-adopted individuals have. 4 Anyone who has lost their history for any reason has suffered a substantial loss. The work of recovery is immense.
a matter of heart
This afternoon I watched Matter of Heart, a film from the Jung Film Project (1975-1981) with interviews with many of Jung’s colleagues, two of his grandsons, and with Jung himself. 5 One particular excerpt from an interview with Jung had me riveted, and I wanted to reproduce it here because it speaks to the heart of what I’ve been writing about:
A man is not complete when he lives in a world of statistical truth; he must live in a world of his biological truth. Man has always lived in the myth, and yet we think we are able to be born today and to live in no myth, without history.
C. G. Jung in A Matter of Heart.
That is a disease! It is absolutely abnormal, because man is not born every day. He is once born in a specific historical setting with his specific historical qualities, and therefore he is only complete when he has a relation to these things.
It is just as if he were born without eyes and ears when you are growing up with no connection to the past. From the [perspective] of natural science, you need no connection to the past; you can wipe it out–and that is a mutation of the human being.
This statement left a lasting impact on me–perhaps the most powerful insight I’ve encountered regarding the practice of severing ourselves or others from biological truths, our families, and our histories. I’ll write again about the practice of such spiritual genocide later in more depth, but for now I hope Jung’s thoughts provide food for thought.
references
- Hollis, J. Tracking the Gods? The Place of Myth in Modern Life, 1995, Toronto, Canada. ↩︎
- Jung, C. G. The Collected Works. (Bollingen Series XX). 20 vols. H. Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds.). (R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953-1979. Vol 5, para. 466. ↩︎
- Jung, C. G. (1984). Dream analysis: Notes of the seminar given in 1928-1930 by C. G. Jung. (Bollingen Series SCIX). William McGuire, Ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 3. ↩︎
- “Interactive maps: The right to obtain your own original birth certificate.” (2024). Adoptee Rights Law Center. ↩︎
- Wagner, Suzanne. Matter of Heart. DVD, 6 Jul. 2004. ↩︎
resources
For more information about adoptee rights and information about why adopted people in the U.S. have been denied unqualified access to their own birth records, see “FAQ: Original Birth Certificates,” at the Adoptee Rights Law Center.
Leave a Reply