ABSTRACT
The dragon belongs to the wider family of snakes and serpents, as such it is much older than mankind. Contrary to men, dragons are creatures of chaos. Dragons are born from eggs which usually have the size of two man's fists. Descriptions of dragons were seldom accurate, because those who happened to meet a dragon were so scared that they could only remember one or the other of its horrible parts without any further perception of its gestalt. Dragons are disseminated all over the world; detailed maps prove, for example, the dragon places in Middle Europe. The Chinese version of the dragon, however, has quite a different mythological connotation than the traditional western one. The dragon has also become an increasingly prominent figure in children books. The dragon in children books thus sometimes carries the notion of the Jungian shadow, the unaccepted split-off part of oneself which has to be integrated during the process of further maturation.
