Mythical Figures

Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘mythical figures’ functions not as a decorative allusion to classical narrative but as a technical designation for the autonomous, archetypal personifications through which the psyche structures and communicates its own reality. James Hillman is the dominant voice here, arguing across multiple works that mythical figures are ‘the eternal metaphors of the imagination, the universals of fantasy’—not reducible to allegory, moral lesson, or primitive projection. For Hillman, these figures constitute the legitimate grammar of pathologizing, of memory, and of polytheistic consciousness itself; complexes that ego-psychology calls ‘split-off fragments’ are better understood as souls, daimones, and mythical-imaginal figures retaining their own intentionality. Erich Neumann traces these figures to the crystallization of collective-unconscious projections in the cosmological epoch, when the Great Mother and Great Father emerged as formative archetypes. Bruno Snell insists that mythical figures in Attic tragedy are never mere allegories: they remain ‘in the very centre of a grimly tangible plot,’ grounded in mimetic flesh and psychological plausibility even as belief in their literal reality fades. Liz Greene deploys an extensive mythological glossary to anchor astrological fate in living narrative structures. The central tension in the corpus runs between figures as psychological necessities (Hillman, Neumann) and figures as aesthetic, narrative constructs whose psychological status must be carefully argued (Snell, Giegerich).

In the library 16 passages

mythical figures which are the eternal metaphors of the imagination, the universals of fantasy. These mythical figures, like my afflictions, are ‘tragical, monstrous, and unnatural,’ and their effects upon the soul, like my afflictions, ‘perturb to excess.’

Hillman argues that mythical figures supply the only adequate mirror for psychic pathology because they share the same distorted, fantastic language as the soul’s sufferings, making pathologizing inseparable from mythologizing.

Hillman, James, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989thesis

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they are better reverted to the differentiated models of earlier psychologies where the complexes would have been called souls, daimones, genii, and other mythical-imaginal figures.

Hillman reframes psychological complexes as mythical-imaginal figures possessing autonomous consciousness, positioning them as the proper ground for understanding ego-disturbance and soul-making.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis

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they are better reverted to the differentiated models of earlier psychologies where the complexes would have been called souls, daimones, genii, and other mythical-imaginal figures.

A near-identical formulation confirming Hillman’s systematic equation of psychological complexes with mythical-imaginal figures as the foundation of archetypal psychology’s account of personality.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, 1983thesis

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An inner temple of fantasy was built, and in it stood statues of mythical figures. The art of memory presents us with a spatial ‘unconscious,’ like an amphitheater with a place for everything.

Hillman invokes the Renaissance art of memory to demonstrate that the pre-modern psyche organized its entire imaginative contents through mythical figures placed in an interior, spatially structured unconscious.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis

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the great hero Hercules, a mythical figure who provides a backdrop for much of our male, muscular, untiring, slaughtering, energetic sense of power

Hillman demonstrates how mythical figures operate as analytical grids that amplify and complicate cultural phenomena rather than reducing them to single definitions.

Hillman, James, Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses, 1995supporting

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the outlines of the mythical figures do not vanish behind a mist of unreality; on the contrary, they stand in the very centre of a grimly tangible plot.

Snell argues that mythical figures in Attic tragedy retain concrete, psychologically plausible presence even as their literal historical reality recedes, resisting allegorization through the devices of realism.

Snell, Bruno, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting

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The gods are places, and myths make place for psychic events that in an only human world become pathological… We discover what belongs where by means of likeness, the analogy of events with mythical configurations.

Hillman positions mythical configurations as the formal ordering principle by which otherwise pathological psychic events receive shelter, intelligibility, and ontological legitimacy within a polytheistic cosmos.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, 1983supporting

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The gods are places, and myths make place for psychic events that in an only human world become pathological… We discover what belongs where by means of likeness, the analogy of events with mythical configurations.

Identical to the preceding passage, reinforcing Hillman’s core claim that mythical figures function as topological containers for psychic reality rather than as mere narrative characters.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting

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the cosmic figures of the primordial deities—Great Mother and Great Father—crystallize out from the fluid mass of indeterminate powers… and begin to take shape as creator-gods.

Neumann traces the historical emergence of mythical figures from the undifferentiated collective unconscious, situating them as the first autonomous archetypal forms projected upon the cosmic order.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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psychopathology can be based altogether upon mythology and that mythology itself can become a new psychopathology… I mean that psychopathology is so real and so true, the fantasy of illness so necessary, that only something equal to its strange reality and strange truth can provide adequate background.

Hillman proposes inverting the pathologizing of myth by making mythology the legitimate ground of psychopathology, asserting a reciprocal relationship between mythical narrative and mental suffering.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting

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myths also tell of universals in specific images of figures and places, exact happenings which have never happened but always do happen.

Hillman, drawing on Broch and Müller, establishes myths as metapsychological archetypes that universalize through specific figures and events, grounding all human cognition including depth psychology itself.

Hillman, James, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975supporting

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when we do start with psyche, as in alchemy, the art of memory, and mythology, we find pathologized events inherent to these psychological systems. Both Freud and Jung adhere to this third, psychological line in their thoughts about psychopathology.

Hillman situates mythical figures within a specifically psychological lineage by showing that Freud and Jung both connected psychopathology to fantasy images and approached it mythologically.

Hillman, James, Mythic Figures, 2007supporting

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the figures of myth and the images of the similes burst fully-shaped upon the imagination… the truth of logical thought is something that requires to be sought, to be investigated, pondered; it is the unknown element in a pro

Snell contrasts mythical figures, which arise complete and immediate in the imagination, with the laborious constructions of logical thought, locating their psychological distinctiveness in their spontaneous, image-based character.

Snell, Bruno, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting

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A curious combination of typical trickster motifs can be found in the alchemical figure of Mercurius; for instance, his fondness for sly jokes and malicious pranks, his powers as a shape-shifter, his dual nature, half animal, half divine

Jung’s commentary via Radin identifies the trickster as a mythical figure whose persistence across cultures and alchemical tradition demonstrates the archetype’s structural autonomy within the collective psyche.

Radin, Paul, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting

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If for that reason we take at face value the figures and what happens in a myth, as if they were as what they are presented: real beings and events, we would somehow subscribe to the slogan, ‘the medium is the message.’

Giegerich cautions against literal reading of mythical figures, arguing that genuine psychological interpretation requires treating them as metaphors for an invisible psychological reality distinct from their narrative presentation.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020aside

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mythical tales that begin with a hero’s plunge into the dark… Such tales are meant to be reflective of a pilgrimage into the parts of ourselves where we hope to discover the spiritual powers needed to bring healing and peace

Peterson invokes the hero as a mythical figure whose narrative arc of descent into darkness models the psychological process of shadow-integration and spiritual transformation.

Peterson, Cody, The Shadow of a Figure of Light, 2024aside

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