The Myths We Play: Jung and the Inner Life of Gamers

Growing up in the '90s, I can assure you that video games had a reputation problem as they moved into more living rooms across North America. In my small Ontario town, my parents raised a few eyebrows for letting their three boys play the Nintendo 64. Despite the collective worry, video games did not turn me into a menace. I grew up to become a law-abiding taxpayer, a recycler of (mostly) clean containers, and a therapist who deeply values imagination, creativity, and compassion.

To this day, some headlines warn against video games, and people worry about gamers. Many therapists have also quietly assumed that a client who games a lot is a client who is pathologically avoiding something. However, a 2024 article in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Perspectives offers a different view.

Jungian analysts Pamela Power and Sheryl Corchnoy argue that games are not only entertainment; they are also a place where the psyche shows itself.¹ Corchnoy recalls a case consultation where a colleague mentioned, with concern, that his client played World of Warcraft. The room apparently nodded gravely, whereas Corchnoy felt the opposite: curiosity. She wanted to know who the client played in this game, and why.

That curiosity is worth sharing with anyone who games, or who loves someone who does.

Why would psychoanalysts and depth therapists care about video games?

Jung believed the psyche speaks in images.² Powerful psychological symbols show up in dreams, myths, fairy tales, and art across human cultures since time immemorial. These images also tend to find their way into whatever stories move us. In the modern era, one of the places people spend the most time experiencing stories and mythology is a video game.

Power and Corchnoy point out that many modern games are built from archetypal mythic material: gods, quests, monsters, facing death, and heroic returns. If the psyche goes where we go, then for billions of players around the world, it has gone into these worlds, too. Here are a few of the reflections their article offers.

1. You become your avatar

Corchnoy noticed that within her first hours of playing, she was already calling her character "I." Players describe leaning in their chairs to peek around a corner on screen. This is projection in action: We pour something of ourselves into the figure we play.

That is why the character you choose can be meaningful. Avatars, especially the ones we generate ourselves, may carry an aspect of psyche that wants more room to live in your inner life.

For me, it’s often the arcane mage: a scholar of forbidden knowledge who is likely hunched over ancient tomes in a tower somewhere. Jung wrote extensively about the psyche’s religious function—our innate pull toward mystery and meaning. In game, mine seemingly expresses itself by setting things on fire with secret words. Calcinatio!

2. Notice what you do when no one is asking

One of the article's most striking stories involves a player who wandered into a temple in World of Warcraft and found a figure based on the Norse god Thor. The game asked nothing of her here; there was no reward and no one watching. Nonetheless, she typed a command and had her character kneel. Asked why, she said kneeling simply felt like the only fitting response to a god. This reflects archetypal emergence; the game supplied the god image, but the player supplied the reverence.

Those unprompted choices are often the most revealing. Do you stop to watch sunsets or watch lightning storms? Collect things? Help strangers? Pick fights? Complete all the achievements? These small acts may reveal what you long for, or what is quietly asking to be integrated into your life.

3. Stories that resolve vs. stories that linger

Power draws on the Jungian philosopher Wolfgang Giegerich to separate two kinds of stories. Fairy tales move from a problem to a solution, whereas myths circle around one deep truth without tidying it up. She reads Stray, where a lost cat finds its way home as a fairy tale, and The Last of Us, a story of a world breaking down as a myth.

Are you drawn to enchanting fairy tales or messy epic myths right now? Sometimes we need tales where the light returns, whereas other times we need myths that stay with what hurts in an expansive way. Our instinctual cravings can hint at what our inner life is working on, and where we are headed next.

4. The ripple effects of play

Online games are not only private experiences; they are also deeply communal. In 2010, one World of Warcraft player organized a charity run for breast cancer awareness, asking others to create pink-haired gnome characters and race across the game world together. The run grew into an official in-game holiday, and Blizzard Entertainment (the game’s maker) went on to raise millions for disaster relief and other humanitarian causes.

Psychological researchers have also pointed to potential benefits of gaming, including problem-solving, emotional regulation, creative thinking, greater curiosity, and social connection.³ Like any powerful medium, games can be used to heal or hide. When people tell me they are gamers, I often ask, "What does your gaming mean to you?" as the answers are rarely trivial. A question like this tends to open conversations around authenticity, courage, play, loneliness, grief or trauma, stress, and belonging, which is the same rich clinical material I often find in night-time dreams.

Video games may be one of our newest mythologies and offer archetypal stories we directly live. The psyche rarely stays where we expect it, and sometimes, it follows us into other worlds.

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