Personal mythology

In 1926, Carl Einstein used the term "private mythology" to describe the worldview of the painter Paul Klee, especially as Klee formulated it in his world. The term "personal myth" was first introduced into the psychotherapeutic literature by Ernst Kris in 1956 to describe certain elusive dimensions of the human personality that he felt psychoanalysts need to consider if their attempts to bring about change were to be effective and lasting. Carl Jung (1963) began his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections by writing, "Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth". In 1965 Arthur Warmoth wrote about the way certain memorable human experiences may become personal myths, fulfilling on a personal level functions that cultural myths have historically performed for entire societies. Warmoth's colleagues Sall Raspberry and Robert Greenway (1970) spoke of "the personal myths of one's dreams," observing that dreams and myths arise "from the same places... in the human psyche" (pp. 54–55). James Hillman (1971, p. 43) used the term in his psychological commentary on Gopi Krishna's autobiography.

Sam Keen and Anne Valley Fox (1973) produced the first comprehensive self-help book that enabled its readers to "tell their own story." In addition, the concept of personal mythology resonates with Eric Berne's (1961) notion of "scripts," Albert Ellis' (1962) description of irrational belief systems, George Kelly's (1963) personal construct personality theory, Theodore Sarbin's (1986) emphasis on narrative psychology, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's (Csikszentmihalyi & Beattie, 1979) concept of "life themes.".

In 1973, Rollo May remarked that "the underlying function of psychotherapy is the indirect reinterpretation and remolding of the patient's symbols and myths" (p. 342). And in 1975 he added, "The individual must define his or her own values according to personal myths...Authentic values for a given patient emerge out of the personal myth of that patient." According to May (1975), psychotherapy can best be described as the collaboration between therapist and patient in the adventure of exploring the patient's awareness of himself and others. "The person can then cultivate his own awareness of his personal myth, which will yield his values and identity as well as give him some shared basis for interpersonal relationships" (p. 706). McLeester (1976, p. 8) applied the concept to dream interpretation, stating, "In dreams we can discover our "personal myth." the story... underlying our daily lives." Ullman and Zimmerman (1979) applied the personal myth concept to dream interpretation, writing that it is the nature of dreams to expose and puncture dysfunctional myths while illuminating the self-deceptive strategies one uses to avoid initiating a more functional pattern of behavior.

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