Jung's psychology and the study of myth

Abstract

Paper provides an interesting counterpoint to structuralist analyses. Author attempts to correct some fundamental misunderstandings of the Jungian notion of the collective unconscious and its relationship to cultural expressions of this collective unconscious as myth. Myth, according to Rajcok, is both ordered by its parent culture and orders that culture by reinforcing the expressed patterns. Interestingly, Jung's archetypes serve more as Kantain categories than as the dialectical moments envisioned by Levi-Strauss. What emerges is a Jungian theory far more accessible to anthropologists,which parallels classical structuralism in accounting for variations in the form of particular myths, but preserves the integrity of the individual mind by differentiating the collective and specific unconsciousness.