Enki at Eridu

A key focus for Jungians and post-Jungians alike has long been the ‘interchangeability of mythology and psychology’. ¹ C.G. Jung once described mythology as ‘the textbook of archetypes’, where the unconscious psyche ‘is not rationally elucidated and explained, but simply represented like a picture or a story book’, ² and where archetypes can be understood as ‘patterns of psychic perception and understanding common to all human beings’. ³ It is interesting to note, however, that in recent times non-Jungian approaches to myth also seem to be reaching towards this way of thinking about the ‘interchangeability of mythology and psychology’.