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The term myth, variously understood, has been conterminous with Jungian psychology from its origins to the present, and a concise overview of the topic is much needed. For it is here that key evidence for archetypes and, thus, the collective unconscious was, and is, claimed. From around 1909 onwards, Jung and his associates and successors sketched out hypotheses to account for ‘parallels’ they claimed to find between remote or archaic materials and otherwise unrelated elements of contemporary dreams and fantasies. Over time the emphasis shifted markedly to the taken-for-granted existence of the collective unconscious, and thus archetypes, being exemplified or worse, manifested, in both ancient and modern examples. When it is said, for instance, that Erich Neumann ‘takes the reader on a guided tour of the manifestations of the Mother’ (p. 113), a lot is being assumed both about psychology and the archaeological or other evidence for any primordial Great Mother, where, despite the endless recycling of Bachofen's originally creative muddles of the 1860s, there is surprisingly little to go on.
Similarly, if someone in a personal and professional crisis finds ‘wisdom and inspiration in the mythic consciousness of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest’ (p. 141), good for them, but does this tell us anything about the Native Americans, unless we assume the ‘two way’ traffic between myth and dream, ancient and modern, far and near, which is exactly what needs to be examined? It is the detail of the fit claimed between these diverse instances that is decisive and it is here that Jungians have so far failed to persuade few but themselves.
Steven Walker starts well, illustrating Jung's case from less used sources like the Letters and seminar notes and making a number of interesting points, in particular in his discussion of Jung's fascination with the Siegfried figure (pp. 67-73). It is soon