Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung delivered a series of lectures at the Eranos Conferences, formalizing his theory of the collective unconscious and its universal archetypes. Breaking from Freud's focus on repressed individual desires, Jung argued that deep dreams draw from a shared, evolutionary pool of human symbols, including the Anima, the Shadow, and the Wise Old Man. He demonstrated that these cross-cultural dream symbols match ancient mythologies, suggesting that dreaming is a process of psychological integration.

Jung's concept of the collective unconscious gave post-surrealist poets a massive mythic vocabulary, heavily influencing mid-century titans like W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath. It allowed poets to treat their private dreams as valid myth-making events, bridging modern psychological interiority with ancient epic traditions.