Personal Myth

Description

1. Brendan Graham Dempsey:

"What exactly is personal myth? In the decades since Jung first introduced it, the term has gone on to acquire a somewhat diffuse array of meanings as subsequent generations of psychologists and mythologists have developed the idea in slightly different directions. Nevertheless, in spite of this diversity, there are a number of key elements about which all more or less agree.

Among these consensus points is the impetus for personal myth: namely, the growing inability of cultural myth (i.e., traditional religions) to provide people a sense of meaning, and the transference of that responsibility to the individual. As Stephen Larsen, one of Joseph Campbell’s protégées and author of The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal Mythology, puts it: “Mythology was, perforce, collective mythology. But in our modern times these forms have relaxed their collective grip on the psyche, placing the burden for a meaningful experience of the universe on the individual person.”[xv] Indeed, as Campbell himself wrote, “[W]e can no longer look to communities for the generation of myth. The mythogenetic zone today is the individual in contact with his own interior life…”[xvi] Some form of this sentiment is shared by virtually all writers on personal myth.

This idea leads directly to another universally-recognized feature of personal myth: Because the locus of myth and mythmaking has shifted from the inherited cultural tradition to the individual’s inner life, it is in our own experience that we must seek the inspiration and material from which to craft our myth. So, as Dan McAdams says in The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self, “The personal myth is…a sacred story that embodies personal truth. To say that a personal myth is ‘sacred’ is to suggest that a personal myth deals with those ultimate questions that preoccupy theologians and philosophers.”[xvii] The traditional idea of “sacred history” is thus converted to something like “sacred biography.” Meaning is found not through participation in a group’s relation to the divine (e.g., the Church, the people of Israel, etc.), but in seeing your own story as meaningful, in forging your own link to the sacred.

At a basic level, then, a personal myth can be understood as an individual’s narrative of meaning, developed out of their own experience, which fulfills for them what cultural myths once provided but no longer can."

(https://brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com/p/building-the-cathedral-1-surveying)

2. David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner:

"Personal myths speak to the broad concerns of identity (Who am I?), direction (Where am I going?), and purpose (Why am I going there?). For an internal system of images, narratives, and emotions to be called a personal myth, it must address at least one of the core concerns of human existence, the traditional domains of cultural mythology."

(https://brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com/p/building-the-cathedral-1-surveying)

More information

Books

Stephen Larsen (1990) The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning through Personal Mythology (Inner Traditions, Rochester, VT), 15.

Dan P. McAdams (1993) The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self (The Guilford Press, New York), 34.

David Feinstein, Stanley Krippner (2008) Personal Mythology: Using Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination to Discover Your Inner Story (Energy Psychology Press, Santa Rosa, CA), 6.