stories reimagined
Many years ago, at the C. G. Jung Center of Philadelphia, I listened, fascinated, to lectures on the symbolism in fairy tales. Those lectures completely changed the way I thought of fairy tales. I understood the characters to be archetypes of human behavior, and the stories to be metaphors of psychological development. The same is true of countless stories that have stood the test of centuries. Viking and Baltic sagas, Greek and Roman myths, medieval tales, Arthurian legends, and Grimm’s and Anderson’s fairy tales are all products of western culture, and there are many more from other cultures. I look at these stories from a psychological viewpoint. What would these mythological or storybook characters be like if they were regular people living today? Out of what circumstances is the story born? What actions by which characters push the story along to its conclusion?
