Myths that live us

Archetypes, romance & the roles we don’t know we’re playing

There are times in life when we feel less like authors of our story and more like actors dropped into a script that was written long before we were born. A forbidden attraction, a love triangle at work, a powerful figure and a vulnerable one, the whole thing can feel irrational and fated at the same time.

Jungian psychology offers a language for this: archetypes and myths. The idea is simple and unsettling: there are patterns in the collective psyche that look for situations to express themselves through. When the right people meet in the right (or wrong) circumstances, a very old story can suddenly start living itself through us.

Archetypes: patterns looking for players

For Jung, beneath personal history lies the collective unconscious: a shared layer of images and tendencies shaped by the repeated experiences of humanity. It is populated by archetypes and universal patterns like lover, healer, victim, hero, trickster, mother, father, exile. When real life lines up with one of these patterns, something inside us clicks into place.

Certain constellations are especially charged: the rescuer and the wounded one, the married person and the outsider, the powerful client and the vulnerable helper. From the outside it may look like ordinary workplace life; from the inside it feels “fated”, as if we have been chosen for a role.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – C. G. Jung

If we do not notice the pattern, we do not simply live a story – the story quietly lives us.

Projection: when the soul sees a god in a human face

A key mechanism here is projection. Depth psychology describes projection as what happens when the psyche cannot yet bear its own depths, so it sees them “out there” in another person. Jungians speak about anima and animus projections: the inner image of the ideal beloved, the inner critic, the magical helper, all carried by an unsuspecting human.

From the inside it does not feel like projection; it feels like destiny. We over-idealise someone in a role (doctor, therapist, concierge, manager), read cosmic meaning into small gestures, and treat coincidence as a sign from the universe. We are no longer seeing the person – we are seeing a god or goddess wearing their face.

The more “charged” the projection, the less we can see the actual human in front of us, with their flaws, limits and real life.

When myth repeats itself

People often notice that the same kinds of situations keep returning:

• falling for someone who is already committed, again
• becoming the secret emotional partner for people in power
• always ending up as the rescuer, the side character, the one in the middle
• From the ego’s point of view, this looks like bad luck or fate. From an archetypal point of view, it can mean that a pattern is trying once more to complete its story through us. Unless we become conscious of it, we risk playing the same roles over and over with different costumes and locations.

Archetypal psychologist James Hillman suggested that myths are not just old stories we read; they are living structures that organise our experiences.

We do not simply “have” a myth; we can be had by one.

Romeo & Juliet: a pattern that wants an ending

One of the clearest examples of a love-myth that lives inside the collective unconscious is Romeo and Juliet. Two people from different worlds, intense attraction, families or systems in conflict, secrecy, escalation, and finally destruction. We know how the story ends: the lovers do not grow old together; the pattern burns itself out in a tragic final act.

Because that story has been told, felt and cried over for centuries, it becomes more than literature; it sinks into the shared psychic field as a template. We may never stand on a balcony in Verona, but the pattern can still play out in modern apartments, offices, hospital wards and hotel lobbies: “forbidden” love, total intensity, no brakes, and a sense that we would rather lose everything than lose the feeling.

The danger is that the myth does not care about our actual lives. The pattern “wants” its ending. If we are unconscious, we can find ourselves moving toward outcomes that echo the original story: broken marriages, wrecked reputations, nervous breakdowns, even self-destructive choices that put our life and health at risk, all in service of a love that feels larger than life.

This is why consciousness matters. To notice a Romeo-and-Juliet script forming is to reclaim some freedom inside it. We can say:

• “Yes, the feeling is intense, but I know how this myth usually ends.”
• “I can honour what has been woken up in me without acting out the whole tragedy.”
• “I choose not to sacrifice myself or others to a story, no matter how romantic it feels.”

The pattern is strong. So is the psyche that sees it and chooses another path. When we become conscious of the unconscious, we open the possibility that this time the lovers do not have to die for the story to feel complete. The myth is still there, but we are no longer obliged to give it our lives.

When the love story becomes dangerous

Many archetypal romances begin with a sense of being seen at last. The lonely parts of us – the burnt-out carer, the exhausted worker, the unseen genius suddenly feel recognised. The connection feels larger than life. Rules and consequences fade into the background.

• But the very intensity that makes it feel sacred can also make it destructive:
• existing partners and families are quietly abandoned in the imagination
• colleagues and bystanders are pulled in as messengers and witnesses
• reputations, jobs and mental health are put at risk to serve the “story”

Intelligent, ethical people can find themselves behaving far below their own standards. It is not because they are stupid; it is because they are possessed by a pattern they do not yet recognise.

When that edge appears, it can help to pause and touch something gentler the possibility that love can move without wrecking the boat, that a feeling can be honoured without everybody drowning in it.

Stepping out of the script

We cannot stop archetypes from existing, but we can learn to recognise when a myth is trying to recruit us. A few moves help:

• Name the pattern. Ask yourself: “Am I in a rescuer/wounded-one story, a forbidden-lover story, a triangle?” Language already loosens the spell.
• Honour the feeling, question the story. The tenderness may be real. The idea that it must be acted out at any cost is not.
• Remember the humans. Behind every archetype there are ordinary hearts: partners, children, staff, neighbours. The myth may be grand; the damage is painfully local.
• Choose a different ending. We may not choose how the story begins, but we can choose not to repeat the same destructive third act.

Sometimes the bravest move in an archetypal love story is not to cross the line, or to step back before the wave crests. That choice rarely feels heroic in the moment, but it is often the point where we stop being merely an actor in a myth and become a co-author of our own life.

Co-authoring our ending

Archetypes and myths will always move through our lives like weather over the highlands: sudden storms, mists, shafts of light. We do not control that. What we can choose is how we respond when a story tries to live itself through us.

We can abandon ourselves to every wave and call it fate, or we can pause long enough to recognise the pattern, feel it fully, and still steer towards a harbour where no one has to be sacrificed.

We will always be influenced by stories older than us. With enough honesty and reflection, we do not have to be destroyed by them.