How Hermes Guides and Hestia Resides in Therapeutic Personal Myth Discovery

Abstract

This hermeneutic dissertation explores how depth-oriented psychotherapy can be viewed as a process of personal myth discovery toward individuation. The study investigates the healing function of story and narrative and discusses the difference between story/narrative and the special kind of story/narrative that is myth. Myth connects one to the archetypal layer of the psyche’s unconscious, the collective unconscious. Myth can be collective, pertaining to everyone or all members of a particular time or culture. Myth can also be personal, pertaining to an individual life. This study discusses personal myth and how psychotherapy can function to help with processes of discovering, creating, focusing on, exploring, renewing, working with, changing, tuning in to, and living with one’s personal myth. Because psychotherapy can be a spiritual undertaking in which archetypal energies are involved, therapeutic personal myth discovery is connected and interwoven with two ancient Greek mythical deities—Hermes and Hestia—and the principles of soul and of the Self, that each of them embody. This study explores the archetypal Hermes–Hestia relationship and how it interacts with personal myth discovery in the depth psychotherapy process.