Jung To Live By's widely-loved Personal Myth Guide is now available in paperback, exclusively revised and updated for 2023 with a brand new chapter on the Trickster Function.
"All Knowledge is Remembering"
This manual, written by Steven T Richards, is the distillation of 43 years of front-line clinical work in the psychotherapy service-provision, in the UK's National Health Service and in Private Practice: itself set within the context of a life-time of personal-experience, of the psyche.
To realize our fullest potential, to ‘know who we are’ and more importantly, ‘who we can become’ has been a goal of the human spirit, from time immemorial.
People are driven by instinct to create: each act of novelty that brings something new into the world, each new engagement with life, every new horizon sought, every fresh idea, work of art, or endeavour: all of this, is the handiwork, of the very essence of our being.
But to be the artisan of our own life?
This drive, too, is innate, and arises, out, from our unfolding genome, across the arc of our life‐span development.
Our task here is to offer a practical approach to understanding and working with your own Personal Myth.
"Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world"
The modern epidemic of anxiety, depression, addiction, poor sense of 'self' and low relationship success, is the result of cultural forces operating down the generations, causing us to be more disconnected from our instincts than ever before: Freud, Adler and Jung saw this in their own day, but in our age of the internet, these problems have only escalated.
The unique pressures of the modern world - from parents, to school, to the culture at large - have the capacity to generate
Complexes: these cause us to diverge from our Personal Myth timeline, capping our potential, and separating the Ego from its instincts, and true character.
Underneath these Complexes, however - at the very core of our being - is the genome: the wellspring of homeostasis, with the capacity to heal, revivify our lives, and catalyse the future we were all intended, by teleology, to have.
We all have a Personal Myth: the deep-structure narrative arc of our lives, beginning with our earliest memories, that writes a new page as each day, month and year goes by. To consciously engage with your Personal Myth allows you to know who you are, where you have come from, and, completely under the authorship of your own pen, and away from the influence of Complexes, where you are going.
This, is the purpose of this guide - to equip you with the most cutting-edge psychodynamic knowledge and tools available, so you can Discover your Personal Myth.
“What is it, about you, that when you look inside, you could not give‐up, without giving‐up being 'you’?”
This guide includes all of the necessary theory for understanding the biopsychosocial structure and dynamics of the psyche, including the:
- Genome/"Self"
- Persona
- Ego
- Shadow
- Anima/Animus
- Projection, Introjection, Identification, Transference, Inflation
- Instincts
- Trickster Function
- Moral Complex
- Mother/Father Complexes
and much more.
Following this, is a full practical step-by-step walk-through of the entire process of
weaving together your Personal Myth timeline, and consciously understanding everything that has moved your path and identity thus far.
Then,
Individuation, can truly begin.
Two example Personal Myths are also given, as case studies for you: Alexander the Great, and, Carl Jung.
We wish you well on your journey, and really hope that you enjoy what you will find in these pages.
