Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 2: Archetypal stories originate from individuals who have episodes in which their unconscious bubbles to the surface. This could be in the form of a dream, or a waking hallucination. This incident then gets amplified into myth or fairy tale. Individuals with these episodes may shape the telling of their incident to match an existing archetype, thus enriching and prolonging the archetype.

There is a kind of "chicken and egg" debate as to what came first, myth or fairy tale. One man, E. Schywzer, broke the Greek Hercules mythology down and discovered that the myth was made up of a succession of fairy tales, supporting the position that myth arises from fairy tale. On the opposite side, there are those that believe in the theory of the "decayed myth," that is, larger myths "decay" and break down...