Mi·cro·gly·phic ("mI-krO-'gli-fik) adj.
20th century
  1. tiny writing
  2. diminutive form of symbolic language, whether visual, auditory, or tactile, or archetypal
Etymology: Middle English micro-, from Latin, from Greek mikr-, mikro-, from mikros, smikros small, short; perhaps akin to Old English smEalIc careful, exquisite and Greek glyphE carved work, from glyphein to carve -- more at CLEAVE

Pronunciation Key

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Faerie tales and myths relate wisdom of the ages manifested as archetypes. These stories can be analysed from various perspectives. The interest here is to approach the story from an archetypal vantage. In my opinion, the biggest problem in interpreting these stories is the analyst fails to distance himself from the archetype and projects his situation upon the story. This in and of itself is not bad per se, but an analysis of this type loses universal generality for specificity. While helpful for the analyst metaphorically, it is no longer applicable to the world-at-large.

One method one can employ to mitigate this specificity is to regard Jung's manifold Types. Whereas a Thinking person will interpret a story differently than a Feeling person (or Introverted v. Extroverted, Sensing v. Intuitive, Perceiving v. Judging), if this is taken into account during the interpretation phase, the interpretation will embody both aspects.

In my opinion Marie-Louise Von Franz did this best. For an excellent vantage of the Freudian position on faerie tales, Bruno Bettelheim offers The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.

The importance is not the interpretation of the story, rather it is the story in and of itself. Much like interpreting a dream where the dream itself is much more important than the conscious interpretation of the dream, so it goes with faerie tales. The interpretation is secondary, however it is still valuable.

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"The Self is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." -- Carl Jung

Carl Jung: Collected Works (Soft)
Carl Jung: Collected Works (Hard)
Carl Jung: Additional Works

"Dreams are private myths; myths are public dreams." - Joseph Campbell

2001 Publication
Joseph Campbell:
The Power of Myth DVD

All Listings
The Masks of God
Read about the Hero's Journey

1999 Publication
Marie-Louise Von Franz: All Listings
1995 Publication
James Hillman: All Listings
1994 Publication
Erich Neumann: All Listings
1988 Publication
Marion Woodman: All Listings
2000 Publication
James Hollis: All Listings
1999 Publication
Edward F. Edinger: All Listings
1993 Publication
Clarissa Pinkola Estés: All Listings

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Last Updated: 11/17/2006 16:19

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