A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving through a Jungian Archetypal LensCarl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who developed many theories regarding the unconscious mind. Jung's theories state that the unconscious part of the human psyche has two different layers, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is unique to each individual; however, the collective unconscious “is innate.” (Carl Jung, Four Archetypes, 3) The collective unconscious is present in everyone's psyche and it contains archetypes which are "those psychic contents which have not yet been subjected to conscious elaboration" (Jung, Archetypes, 5 ) ; they are thought models inherited from the collective unconscious. Jung defined many different archetypes like the mother archetype, the hero archetype, the shadow archetype, etc. These Jungian archetypes are often projected by the collective unconscious onto others. If John Irving's novel A Prayer for Owen Meany is examined through a Jungian archetypal lens, it is possible to discern different archetypes projected by the protagonist's unconscious to illustrate the effects of the collective unconscious on character analysis and of the plot. Tabitha Wheelwright embodies the archetype. of the mother. Which shows us how, upon reflection, John sees her with a divine quality; he mythologizes it. Jung's theory states that: “Parents are the first major carriers of projection, and children unconsciously project onto them omnipotence and omniscience. This is what Jung calls archetypal projections. Parents become gods, invested with powers that men attribute to the divine. “Daddy can do anything!” It's in the middle of the paper...if it's not accepted first. Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is one of several novels that can be analyzed through a Jungian archetypal lens to show how the unconscious projection of archetypal images affects the way a person perceives the actions and behaviors of others. In this novel, the narrator John Wheelwright projects different archetypes onto different people depending on their role in his life. This shows us how the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is not objective because as a reader you see all the events and characters through John's eyes. Everything you read is tainted by the archetypal images of John's unconscious self that are projected onto different characters and situations. This leaves the reader wondering how to know that Owen Meany's story is true and that all the characters are portrayed accurately..