Myth. An involuntary collective statement based on an unconscious psychic experience.
The primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them. Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche . . . . Many of these unconscious processes may be indirectly occasioned by consciousness, but never by conscious choice. Others appear to arise spontaneously, that is to say, from no discernible or demonstrable conscious cause.[“The Psychology of the Child Archetype,” Ibid, par. 261.]