At Play in the Fields of the Mind: Personal Myths as Fields of Information

The concept that personal myths shape individual behavior in a manner analogous to the way cultural myths influence social behavior has been gaining increasing attention over the past two decades. A personal mythology is an internalized model of reality comprised of postulates about oneself, one’s world, and the relationship between the two. These postulates, which address immediate as well as eternal concerns, are both descriptive, furnishing explanations, and instructive, generating motivation. A comprehensive theory of human development based on the individual’s evolving mythology integrates the biological, psychodynamic, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of experience. This paper expands the personal mythology construct, suggesting that personal myths function not only as biochemically-coded models of reality, but also as fields of information—natural though non-visible elements of the physical universe—that impact consciousness and behavior. Just as some neurologists have proposed that “mental fields” complement brain activity in unifying experience and some biologists have proposed that “morphic fields” complement the action of the gene in giving form to an organism, the current work proposes that mythic fields complement the physiological bases of consciousness in storing symbolic content and maintaining psychological habits. Implications of this formulation for personal and social change are considered.