Why call this narrative technique “Jungian”?

I have always been a student of the creative process. During my early years in college, I was introduced to the work of Dostoevsky. I read all his novels, short stories and a couple of biographies. From this man and his bizarre work, I became interested in writing. I started my own attempts at poetry and fiction.

Also during these initial college years, as do most college freshmen, I was introduced to and fell in love with Greek tragedy. Sophocles had a major impact. From the story of Oedipus, I found my way to Freud and the “Oedipus Complex”. I read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.

It wasn’t until I turned thirty that I actually began work on a novel, and I was still as interested in the creative process as I was in the actual writing. There might be a certain amount of truth in the statement that I started writing to learn about the creative process. I instinctively realized that it spoke to something basic about the human condition.

During this time I read the thoughts of other authors concerning the nature of their writing experience. The interviews in The Paris Review were a primary source. A little later in life I went through five years of psychotherapy; and following this trying but illuminating experience one of the most important events of my life occurred. I was laid off by my company. Instead of trying to find work immediately, I decided to spend my time reading about ancient Greece and planned an extended trip about the Greek mainland and islands. Prior to leaving, I read everything I could get my hands on concerning the archaeology and mythology of ancient Greece.

I spent ten weeks traveling Greece alone. Afterward I began my research into the religion and myths of ancient Greece. My primary resources were the writings of university professors, classicists published by university presses. Early in this period I came into contact with the writings of Karl Kerényi and Carl Jung. I had always known of Jung’s work because of his association with Freud, but I had never explored his writings to any extent. I had viewed him, naive that I was, as Freud’s junior partner. Surprisingly enough I had never heard of Kerényi. These two would become my newfound heroes.

Though Freud had always been highly interesting, Jung came as a revelation. I’d had many experiences during my life that had gone unexplained even through the five years of therapy. Jung’s explanation of life events and, maybe even more importantly, of our internal responses through their connection with mythology I found simply mind blowing. Karl Kerényi was a professor of classics and the history of religion. He wrote a series of books in association with Carl Jung on the archetypes from Greek mythology that served the ancients as patterns for human existence. The profound insight this provided into ancient Greek culture and institutions I found astonishing, as well as the insight it provided into western civilization. Through the writings of these two, I delved deeper into this crossover field of psychology and mythology and ran onto the archetypal psychologists James Hillman and Murray Stein. It was as if I’d found the Rosetta stone for my own psychology as well as a guide to human existence.

The in the fall of 1999, I was approached by the head of the Continuing Education Department at New Mexico State University at Carlsbad to teach a couple of non-credit courses. She’d heard that I was a writer and interested in mythology. “Something on novel writing and Greek mythology,” she said, “would be interesting to some of our older students.”

I was already primed. Since most of the students who would be taking these courses were college educated, some even retired teachers, I could treat the material as if I was teaching graduate school. My years of research could be put to good use. The course on Greek mythology I taught primarily from the writings of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. For the novel writing course, I pulled from everything I’d read through the years concerning storytelling: novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and narrative non-fiction writers. I injected good doses of Jungian and archetypal psychology.

While developing the material for the two courses, I began to realize how connected the two subjects were, that novel writing, all storytelling really, was an outgrowth of the same psychological processes that through the millennia had created myth. The techniques of novelists, playwrights and screenwriters all have their origin in Jungian psychology. All my research into these different disciplines came together as a sort of critical mass, which resulted in an explosion of ideas concerning the craft of novel writing that I describe here. Thus, I have called this approach to the craft “Jungian”.

Writing has long been thought to have a therapeutic value. I have found this to be true myself. But I also believe that the processes involved are the most powerful in the human experience, and, therefore, may also be destructive when used naively or cruelly. The power of the written word has its source in the forces that create the universe. I believe it has the power to transform human existence. It behooves us all, as writers, to be careful how we use it. Years ago I backed off from a horror novel I had started. Something just seemed wrong about it, though I do not believe all horror is bad and even believe Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to be one of the most important works of modern times. However, Stephen King has regretting some of his own writings. We should all keep an evaluative eye on the spirit we serve.