Dear Mitchell.

Thanks for that. I will study that carefully.

In the meantime, as an aside from the current discussion, but on our general theme, here are a couple of quotes from Campbell for your contemplation:

“...myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation”. (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Fontana Press, 1993, p3)

To use one of your favourite phrases, it's “absolutely clear”, or it is at least to me, that Campbell is saying here that myths do not emerge from the human psyche, however you understand that term. They are separate from it, and pour into it (from outside) through a SECRET (!) opening. That doesn't sound very biological or natural to me. The possibility to receive them may well be innate, however, because we inherit our access to the collective unconscious. He also refers to “the energies of the cosmos”, thus something not of human origin.

“[Myths] orient people to the metaphysical dimension, explain the origins and nature of the cosmos…and…address themselves to the innermost depths of the psyche”. (I found this in another author, the reference saying that it's in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, but didn't give the page number. I've had a quick glance through, but couldn't find it.)

So here we have the word 'metaphysical'. If myths have the possibility of orienting people to that dimension, I would say that that is where they emanate from, thus not human biology and psyche/mind. Also, myths “address themselves” to the psyche, thus are distinguished from it.

I do accept that there are other quotes which are closer to your understanding, so we can perhaps say that Campbell is either ambiguous on these issues, or sometimes hard to understand. Here's one that you will like. He says that Jung's archetypes of the collective unconscious are “biologically grounded” (Inner Reaches, Pxxi). But what does 'grounded' mean here? Perhaps that they have been, like seeds, planted into our biological ground, and taken root there, but nevertheless remain different from it? (This might be a similar meaning to the Jung discussion below.)

Here's another: “myths are productions of the human imagination” (p27), which favours your understanding. Later he says “the archetypes... cannot be defined as culturally determined” (p69), which is closer to mine.

And here's a quote from Jung for you to chew over: “...within the limits of psychic experience, the collective unconscious takes the place of the Platonic realm of eternal ideas. Instead of these models giving form to created things, the collective unconscious, through its archetypes, provides the a priori condition for the assignment of meaning” (Mysterium Coniunctionis, para 101, p87 in my copy). I would suggest that this comes down heavily in favour of my side of the argument. However, as Keiron Le Grice points out, “the archetypes were conceived by Jung as principles that are both instinctual and spiritual, both natural and transcendent” (The Archetypal Cosmos, p158). You are emphasising one side of this, and I the other. How do we get beyond this? As I said in earlier correspondence, Jung modified his understanding of archetypes when he realised that they were blueprints for the natural world as well as the psyche, and therefore adopted the term 'psychoid'. His possible understanding for this might be: “Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche” (quoted by Le Grice, p152, unfortunately without a reference). I would interpret this to mean that, in Jung's view, what you call biological and natural nevertheless has a transcendent source.