Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

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The Heroic Journey
He is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it,
declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one
who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it
wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain.” 59
Traditionally, in folklore and myth, it is a hero’s task to do something
out of the ordinary. Overcoming dragons certainly fits the
bill. But when you think about it metaphorically, we are all potentially
heroes, for we all have our inner demons, a.k.a. dragons.
On a personal, everyday level, meeting the dragon corresponds
to becoming aware that our emotional reactions are determined by
unconscious factors, namely complexes with a will of their own.
Fighting the dragon involves coming to terms with these complexes,
part and parcel of which is the ongoing effort to understand
why we act or react the way we do.
For those who have a mind for this way of seeing things, dreams,
and often outer life too, take on the flavor of a myth or a fairy tale.
There are wicked witches (negative mother) and fairy godmothers
(positive mother); wizards and elves, demons and wise old men
(aspects of the father); helpful animals (instincts) to guide one
through the forest (daily life). There are crystal balls (intuition) and
rolling skeins of thread (markers on the way); magic hats and
cloaks (attitudes); thorns and needles that prick (projections); fearsome
giants (complexes) that knock you off your feet (personal
standpoint); princesses (eros, feminine energy) held captive in towers
(logos ideals), and handsome princes (positive masculine energy)
scaling mountains (self-knowledge) to rescue them.
As a matter of fact, I have seldom come across a motif in a
59 Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, par. 756.
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