Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2000, 45, 331341

Pre-Hispanic perspectives on the modern

Mexican psyche; contemporary subjects
and ancient objects. A Mayan text of
evolution: the stages of creation in the
Popol Vuh or sacred book of the Mayans
Julieta Besquin Rubinstein, Mxico

Abstract: The ancestral tribes of Mexico, like any people living within a certain culture,
may be affected by the archetypal images and values of their surroundings. Access to the
imagery of the Mayan creation myth, the Popol Vuh, has provided an orientation in my
analytical work with Mexican patients as they attempt to recreate themselves by engaging
their conflicts around their reality, individuality and capacity to relate.
I will address the psychological meaning of the different stages of creation: the original
creative event, the man of mud, the man of wood, the false sun and the man of corn.
With these images, I will illustrate their clinical application in analytic work with three
Mexican middle age male patients dealing with different issues of identity and with a
young female patient struggling to separate from a manipulative and destructive family
system.

Key words: analytic work, archetypal images, clinical application, ego development,
identity, psychological meaning.

The people of Mexico, like any people living in a certain culture, may be affected
by the archetypal images and values of the surroundings in which they live.
As I listen to the narrative of a patients life, the motifs of universal stories
serve as a background for personal process and psychic material. Hearing the
echoes of a cosmogonic myth (Monjaras Ruiz 1989) as an earlier expression
of the creative aspects in a psychological process, I will focus on the making
of the psychic substance we call ego within the analytic effort of connecting
the images of the unconscious with the conscious process, so that the ego can
par-ticipate with greater awareness in the creation of the psyche.
With this in mind, I turned to the Popol Vuh or Sacred Book of the Mayans
(Gmez 1990; De la Garza 1998), the most structured and complete source
of the Mesoamerican mythological world. As I entered the myth, I began to

00218774/2000/4502/331 2000, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
332 Julieta Besquin Rubinstein

interpret the descriptions the Mayans offered of the different stages of creation
not only historically but also as psychological statements of the mythopoeic
psyche.
I addressed the psychological meaning of the sequences from the original
creative event, through the era of the man of mud, the man of wood, the false
sun and the man of corn in the context of the modern Mexican psyche. These
might well apply to the experience of those patients who struggle through
certain developmental issues.
The Mayan Popol Vuh gives a moving description of the original creative
event. The text says: This is the story of how everything was in suspense, every-
thing in calm, in silence, no movement, and empty the extension of the sky.
Then the creative gods, Tepeu and Gucumatz, engage in dialogue and so begin
the act of creation. Through their speech, the earth and mountains are raised
out of the water.
The creative gods then populate the earth with all its animals. These creatures
are asked to talk and to worship their gods. As animals, they can only make
noises. They lack the voices and the understanding to honour and nourish
the gods, and so are condemned forever to being the food of higher beings.
The gods then decide to create human beings.
The original suspense brings us into the mystery of the unseen: latent forms
waiting to emerge into consciousness as equivalent to the archaic pre-conscious
condition identified by Jung (1937), or the uroboric state described by Neumann
(1973). It is the psychic state on the edge of the beginning, the original situation,
before the establishment of the ego. There is no separation of the opposites,
no language, no differentiation for reflection.
Among these ancient peoples, there is the notion of implicit knowledge that
predates explicit consciousness, an archetypal pre-existent background sug-
gested by the gods talking among themselves. It is as if psychic processes are
interested and active in us, even before we become aware of our own psychic
existence.
The creative gods of the Popol Vuh may thus be seen as parts of the person-
ality within the collective unconscious which are not yet actively engaged.
While psyche is present, we need awareness of it to establish the psychological
relationship, in which psyche reflects on itself. The conversation between the
gods refers to a continuous and ongoing process which happens in differ-
ent parts of the emerging personality, and we are required to engage in that
conversation.
One patient dreamt of an aquatic, flat, and undifferentiated atmosphere,
which corresponds to such a level of experience. He looks at the whole world,
as the dream says:

The oceans and continents have no name. I paste them together. The mapa mundis
or world map is complete, except for the poles. It is as if they have been cut off from
the extremes.
Pre-Hispanic perspectives on the modern Mexican psyche 333

This dream can be compared to the first creation as told by the Chamulas, an
ethnic group still alive in Chiapas, southern Mexico. The text says:
The earth was flat bottomed and with no form. The father sun sent an earthquake
that created a new world of mountains and valleys, no longer was the earth flat

(Chamula Popol Vuh)

Just as the conversation among the creation gods leads to a discussion of the
origin of humankind (see von Franz 1995), this man, who came into treatment
after a crisis with his wife, was becoming aware of the different sources of
energy and different perspectives within his own psyche.
The Popol Vuh tells of a second attempt to create beings who would praise
their makers:
The gods spoke among themselves, and agreed to a further attempt at creation.
We can now make obedient, respectful beings, who can sustain and feed us. They
then formed men of mud, but they were too soft, no movement or force, veiled and
unaware. So they were finally dissolved in the water, as the gods destroyed their
creation.

In his life and relationships, my analysand experienced himself as a man of mud

trying to move to a further stage. He would have to identify and give a name
to the unconnected pools of his feelings and emotions, find his own poles, his
orientation in the world, in the exploration of his emerging masculine identity
and integrity.
Mud is water and earth. Under fire, it becomes clay, a fragile and delicate
material with little resistance. This stage of human creation represents a fragile
man we say someone has feet of clay when he has no firm ground, principles
or roots to hold and sustain him. In this brittle but empty state, such a man
may try to substitute for a sense of self with the grandiosity of instinctive rage,
discharge, or gratification.
In the analytical context, with my patient, I confronted a system of elusive-
ness, of evasion, of splitting and dissolution. Rather than talking about him-
self, the patient spoke of the women his women who drew him as the moon
attracts the lunatic.
Someone as dissolved and slippery as mud might expect and demand that
the analyst ground him, dry his humidity and contain his amorphousness until
he can solidify, differentiate and put order into his world. My role as the ana-
lyst is not to satisfy this demand, but rather evoke the desire to find his own
fire and so avoid making of him a wood puppet.
The next text then says:
The gods then made the men of wood. But they didnt have a soul nor an under-
standing, so they didnt remember their creators. They walked with no direction and
on all fours. Their faces were dry, their feet and hands had no consistency, and they
had no blood or humidity.
334 Julieta Besquin Rubinstein

For that reason, an abundant rain of pitch came from the sky, and the men of
wood were attacked, their eyeballs emptied. They were decapitated and their
flesh was devoured. Their bones were broken and their nerves were ground.
This was their punishment for not being conscious of their creators.
Why wood? It is a superior stage to mud, but still not strong enough to
confront the human destiny. To be made of wood may be representative of not
being connected with feelings, with no soul, vitality, or emotion. In this form
a man is often incapable of directing himself, and deciding his path. Like a
fragile branch, he is victim of moods. Like a monkey, he imitates others and
even himself. As a puppet, he is waiting to be handled by his emotions or by
a superior, a father, friend, or wife puppeteer.
In the Mayan tradition, the monkey is the god of the wind, living and moving
as the wind moves the branches. In this phase, he is indecisive, with faulty
vision, unreflective and ungrounded though being conscious of himself and his
surroundings.
The constriction of the man born and formed of wood is to be numb, with
no sense or intention he fragments his energy. In the myth, the punishment
that comes from the creative gods is of total and absolute dismemberment.
Within the Mayan idea, it is the suffering and enduring of the strokes of fate
and human pain which bring forth the lacking of consciousness. The dismem-
berment of woodenness, and the total fragmentation of this old form offers the
possibility of emergence into a new state of consciousness.
A patient, whom I will refer to as Juan, described himself as a piece of
thread, as an automaton with no autonomy. His life is a living example of his
incapacity to choose, of indecisiveness, of an inability to complete tasks. Since
his early days, he has been moved by what he called things of destiny. Son of
an alcoholic father, Juan denied he was himself an alcoholic. He felt constantly
devalued, disconnected from his emotions. Like a ghost, he was unable to see
and manifest himself.
After accepting his alcoholic condition, he started his analytic process,
thus discovering his wooden aspect, as a puppet of destiny, unable to pull the
strings of his own life. He perceived that he would have to create and direct
his existence with his own efforts. Through the creation of a stronger ego,
and the use of the analytical mirror to reflect upon himself, he became capable
of tolerating the horror and pain of watching his old self disintegrate in order
to integrate the parts in a new form. This is what he expressed in a moment of
trust within his doubt and confusion: the hiding places are no longer useful.
Now, choosing to yield to the effect of the analytic relationship, he could
discover, integrate, and connect to new resources. In doing so, he was able to
reconstruct and reflect on himself, and hence participate in a process of self-
definition.
The following dream from another patient, whom I shall call Fernando, also
shows the imagery of the Popol Vuh as the man of wood in his dismem-
berment. The dreamer is in what he called a hospital for extremities. He sees
Pre-Hispanic perspectives on the modern Mexican psyche 335

a dismembered arm in one bed, a leg and a hand in others. They are dry, and
the bones are cracked. His sense was that they needed healing. He did not
mention the possibility of reconnecting the different fragments of himself, for
there is not the awareness that his cracked extremities must not only be healed
separately, but re-membered. A re-membering of himself would later allow
him to put back together the dry and useless bones.
Despite the apparent outer situation of a successful marriage, family and
career, his dream presents him as a man whose main parts are not connected.
In his daily life, he is indeed dry, dissociated from his emotions and feelings,
and cut off in his relation to himself, to his wife and to his children. When we
started working together, it felt as if Fernando was a man without a soul, and
hence I was unable to grasp and identify his emotions. Fernando lacked a
feeling tone when he expressed himself. His eyes filled with tears, but his tears
were not connected to his narrative.
Fernando projected the image of an inert chameleon with no human flesh,
blood or psychic muscles to work with his confusion, emptiness, despair and
panic. He was paralyzed by his panic. He defended himself by not risking any
kind of movement: he would remain motionless. He resisted exploring himself, as
if this information would dissolve his ego capacity to function in daily life. I
wondered how to translate and bring understanding and vitality into such a state.
As I listened to his history, I realized the importance of physical activity in
his life. I noticed that I encouraged him to begin to exercise, and although he
felt better, he was unable to continue. I became aware of my pull to identify with
the creative gods, and thereby activate him, and pull his strings, to breathe into
him some kind of animating soul and motivating desire.
Fernando himself is pulled between his desire and his fear of weaving and
sewing the threads of his life. Accustomed to being directed, it was terrifying
to be oneself, by letting go of the puppet-like sense of himself as anothers object.
In this analytic passage, the only available resource was to evoke a reliable
empathic resonance and name his internal state.

False sun
In this stage of human creation, there was no sun, only a pretentious and proud
being called Vucub Caquix, who pretended to be sun and moon. He had a wife
and two sons. Hunahp and Ixbalanque, a pair of demigods, decided to
destroy the arrogant family by shooting them with their blowguns. First they
wounded Vucub Caquix in his jaw, and thus took his teeth and eyes away,
stripping him of his power. They exterminated him with his wife Chimalmat.
After hunting and cooking several birds, the victorious pair of demigods
filled one bird with stucco. When Cabracan, one of the pretentious sons of
Caquix woke up with hunger, he ate the stucco bird. As he lost all his force,
Hunahp and Ixbalanque tied and buried him. He too was subdued (Miller &
Taube 1993).
336 Julieta Besquin Rubinstein

This story may be seen as an analogy for the individual living in a world of
pretending. To pretend to be like something/somebody is more important than
to be. The false sun exists as long as he is looked on and admired. He lives
disguised, identified with the figures that seem to make him powerful, he
adorns himself to forget and escape from discovering his vulnerability, his
void, and his fear.
In object relations terms, this part of the myth refers to what Winnicott
(1958) called the false self, which is fostered by the parental need for a child
to fulfil a particular function, as a narcissistic appendage of a fused system. The
child then may not be able to discriminate between genuine feelings and efforts
to please others. He might believe that if his real feelings were found out,
rejection or humiliation would follow. He attempts to adapt to a dysfunctional
situation as a norm, in order to define oneself in identification with the family.
The Caquix lineage suggests an amalgamated family system, where there is
no awareness of an independent ego able to fight for its own position. One lives
with this false adaptation, sometimes through identification with the persona,
sometimes as an unconscious archetypal inflation.
For a patient, whom I will call Rosa, the psyches attempt to achieve a seem-
ing unity based on fusion, was particularly marked at the beginning of her
analysis (Besquin Rubinstein 1997). In her case, it was as if certain morals were
coming from the archetype of The Sacred Prostitute, but such an unconscious
identification with an impersonal realm resulted in personal dysfunction, most
especially in the realm of relationships.
Rosas maternal grandmother was indeed a professional prostitute. Her
own mother married Rosas father, but began a promiscuous life of multiple
affairs when Rosa was very young. It seemed as if in this family, the social and
moral rules neither existed nor needed to be considered. From the time Rosa
was six years old, her mother was in relationship with a man named Dadito.
From that time on, he had been a permanent presence in Rosas life. The
unfavoured second child of four, in an effort to please her rejecting mother,
Rosa helped her mother keep the Dadito bound by having sex with him,
while her mother was pregnant with his child. Thus at seventeen years old, she
prostituted herself because of her need for her mothers approval, to the
Daditos inflated appetite, thus deeply injuring herself. Unable to metabolize
this distorted arrangement, Rosa attempted suicide.
At this point, Rosa was experiencing herself as muddy humanity. She was
fused with her ancestral mores, and her familys demands. She had no under-
standing of who she was, no awareness of the possibility of becoming a differ-
ent and separate individual. Alienated from her true nature, Rosa developed a
false persona even to herself. Her archetypal identification was a defence
against admission of injury and violation of her own human needs for care and
protection. In our meetings, I never knew who would come into my office, nor
what gesture or movement would provoke an emotional reaction that would
dissolve her into an undifferentiated and vulnerable state. She defended herself
Pre-Hispanic perspectives on the modern Mexican psyche 337

through acting out her anger and fear. She made many gestures, she exploded
with minimal tensions; and she gave me the responsibility for her well-being.
Rosa had learned to live with the pretence that she was a nice girl within a
normal middle class family. In reality, she was deeply poisoned by her history.
Rosa hated her mothers sins even though she felt she carried them within her.
The identification with her mother induced her to sleep with her mothers lover
which she rationalized as saving the mother. Rosa was in an unconscious
competition with her mother, willing to please the man in search of the needed
attention and protection she could not get in a more appropriate emotional
way. This degree of fusion made Rosa vulnerable and responsible for her own
behaviour as well as the behaviour of Dadito and her mother.
In Mexico, a father is expected to be a strong and powerful figure. Rosas
father was weak, impotent in relation to his wife and children. He was incapable
of offering a roof to defend and protect his children, and hence he played a game
of pretence, never confronting, but acting out his anger through aggression,
isolation, absence, silence, and the tyrannizing of his children and his wife.
Rosa saw him as absent, greedy, lonely, quiet and isolated. She felt on the one
hand shame and guilt for betraying him, and on the other, rage and anger at
his incapacity to offer a containing structure.
In her initial dream she was living in a house with no roof. These homeless feel-
ings overwhelmed Rosas relationships for she felt she only deserved dirt. One of
Rosas dreams gave a clinical example of this stage of the Popol Vuh. She dreamt:
I was with several women, 3 or 4. We killed a man and cut his body horizontally
with a knife. One of the women, smaller than the rest, studied in a school where they
offered death in a sacred well called the Cenote. To come to death in such a sacred
well was an honour and a sacred sacrifice. The woman who studied in this school
could obtain permission to offer this death. We asked her for permission to throw
the body into the well. Close to the well, we started burning the man as if he was a
barbecue. Two young men suddenly arrived and asked to see our permission for
throwing the body into the Cenote. We become nervous as we had not actually yet
received the permission.

Rosa brought this dream at the beginning of her analysis. From it I inferred
that she would go through a ritual of cutting, dismembering, burning and dis-
posing of the perspective of the adult male who would impose himself on the
woman who was seen only as an object. The sacrifice and transformation of
her unconscious uroboric identification with her parents view of women and
of her role were essential. While contained in this incestuous system, Rosa could
not enter into a process of self-realization. The motif of duality can suggest the
potential dis-identification on which our awareness of personal reality depends.
In the myth, the destruction of the pretentious Caquix family by the pair of
twins, Hunahp and Ixbalanque, represents a movement away from an uncon-
scious phase of merger. The fight among different forces portrays the possibility
that any phenomenon or experience may be observed from different per-
spectives. Engagement in this process allows a dis-identification with a self in an
338 Julieta Besquin Rubinstein

undifferentiated state of unconsidered existence. In this sense, the conflict may

be seen as a progressive movement towards a complex and ambiguous con-
sciousness. The victorious pair of brothers then are the opposites which provide
the needed tension to move.
The woman student in the dream carries the part of Rosa which has sub-
mitted to a learning process in relation to her own psyche, and so was evolving
and separating from the coagulated, established ego position where nothing
could be learned.
At the time Rosa had this dream, her ego was not remotely close to auton-
omy. It is still two men checking the womens permission to throw the man
into the well. The new feminine authority is not yet lodged in her ego, but is
still transitionally carried by the new arrivals. She must still go through a pro-
cess of living from different perspectives, and in doing so, de-identifying from
her mothers compulsions and so claim her own nature.
As Rosa and I were working together, we both experienced moments of
suspense, of latent forms waiting to emerge out of her dark unseen places, of
fear of not knowing who she was or what her feelings were. In this sense it was
as if we were on the edge of creation. Her fluid psyche did not have the solidity
to contain her in a world which she experienced as threatening to the point
of extermination. Slowly, we went together through evolutionary stages from
containing her reactions and opening a space for reflection on her continuous
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. During this first stage of humanizing
Rosas sense of her own identity, she was able gradually to rescue seldom used
resources, which she could later use in reconstructing her life.
As I referred to the myth of the Popol Vuh from a psychological perspective,
I became more aware of how archetypal material adds to the orientations from
which one can work. In terms of the stages of creation, we sometimes face
all of them within one hour. When Rosa was less diffuse and muddy, the era
of wood was expressed as a brittle and rigid alienation from herself. In her
stultified feelings and emotions, when simply following her familys path, Rosa
was like a wood puppet, manipulated by the ancestral energy. This wooden
life as it was had to be dismembered. She assumed and transformed her weak
and muddy personality. She learned to speak and understand her world and
its creators puppet personality. I fought a tremendous battle to defeat the
power of her false inherited family structure.
In this paper, I have discussed the first three stages of creation, as what we
most often encounter in working with patients in the developmental phases
within an analytic process. Owing to space limitations, I can only offer some
meditations on the further stages of the Popol Vuh as it moves toward the
creation of the man of corn.
In the text, the destruction of the wooden men and the creation of the people
of corn are separated by a long and crucial account describing the doings of
two sets of twins. The older pair, Hun Hunahp and Vucub Hunahp, are
summoned to play ball with the lords of the underworld, the Xibalba, who
Pre-Hispanic perspectives on the modern Mexican psyche 339

then defeat and sacrifice the twins. They place the head of Hun Hunahp in a
gourd tree. This miraculous head impregnates an underworld maiden, Ixquic,
who escapes to the surface of the earth. Here she gives birth to the second pair
of twins, the sons of Hun Hunahp. Known as the Hero Twins, Hunahp and
Ixbalanque are great monster slayers and ballplayers. When they in turn are
summoned to play ball in the underworld, they eventually defeat the lords of
Xibalba and retrieve the remains of their father and uncle. Thus the descent
of Hunahp and Ixbalanque to rescue their father also signifies the search for
corn, the material from which mankind is made. Although these people of
maize worship and nourish the gods, they are too knowledgeable and wise,
too like the gods who made them (De la Garza 1995). For this reason, the gods
cloud their eyes, limiting the vision of the present human race, the people of
corn, to what is immediate and close.
Corn requires a discriminative sorting between kernels, ear, and husk, each
of which may be used for different purposes. A stalk of corn is an image of
totality, and yet each grain is a separate unity. The twins represent an example
of a more consolidated personality, which can tolerate a sense of duality where
the opposites are not split. In terms of individuation, it signifies the capacity
to live from an awareness of the conscious and unconscious in every instance.
This allows the ability to suffer an otherwise traumatic experience in an
integrated way. This ability to go through the cycles of life represented by the
image of the man of corn rising from the underworld suggests the integration of
experience for the sake of ongoing fertilization in birth, life, death and rebirth.
The man of corn thus embodies the capacity to live in what Jung (1928)
called wholeness. Within the imagery of this myth, this wholeness allows us to
live in both a reflective and an active awareness of those different parts of self
which might be characterized as mud, wood, falseness, or fertility. This to me
is an apt description of what Jung called wholeness.

TRANSLATIONS OF ABSTRACT

Les parties archaques des mexicains, comme pour tout peuple vivant dans une certaine
culture, peuvent tre touches par les valeurs et les images archtypiques de cette
culture environnante. Avoir connaissance des images du mythe crateur maya, le Popol
Vuh, ma aide dans mon travail analytique avec des patients mexicains qui, cherchant
se retrouver eux-mmes, taent en train de se confronter leurs conflits concernant
leur ralit, leur individualit, et leur capacit tre en relation.
Je considrerai la signification psychologique des diffrents stades de la cration:
lvnement crateur originel, lhomme de boue, lhomme de bois, le faux soleil et
lhomme de mas. Je regarderai lapplication clinique de ces images dans le travail
analytique de trois patients hommes mexicains au milieu de leur vie et aux prises avec
des questions diverses concernant leur identit, et le travail dune jeune patiente femme
luttant pour se dgager dun systme familial manipulateur et destructeur.
340 Julieta Besquin Rubinstein

Wie jegliche Menschen, die in einer bestimmten Kultur leben, knnen die eingeborenen
Stmme in Mexico von den archetypischen Bildern und Werten ihrer Umgebung
beeinflut werden. Der Zugang zur Bilderwelt des Mayanischen Schpfungsmythus:
Der Popol Vuh, hat mir eine Orientierung in meiner analytischen Arbeit mit mexikan-
ischen Patienten gegeben, weil diese sich versuchen wiederzuerschaffen, indem sie ihre
Konflikte an ihrer Realitt, Individualitt und Beziehungsfhigkeit herum festmachen.
Ich werde die psychologische Bedeutung der verschiedenen Schpfungsstadien
behandeln: der ursprngliche Schpfungsakt, der Mensch aus Schlamm, der Mensch
aus Holz, die falsche Sonne und der Mensch aus Getreide. Mit diesen Bildern werde ich
seine klinische Anwendung illustrieren in der analytischen Arbeit mit drei Mexikanern
mittleren Alters, die mit unterschiedlichen Identittsthemen beschftigt waren, und mit
einer jungen Patientin, die versuchte, sich aus einem manipulativen und destruktiven
Familiensystem zu lsen.

Le antiche trib del Messico, come tutte le genti che vivono allinterno di una certa
cultura, possono essere influenzati da immagini e valori archetipici che li circondano.
Accesso al mondo immaginale del Mito Maya della creazione: Il Popolo Vuh mi ha
permesso di orientarmi nel mio lavoro analitico con pazienti messicani che tentavano
di ricostruire se stessi impegnandosi nei conflitti con la loro realt, individualit e
capacit di relazione. Considerer i significati psicologici dei diversi stadi della
creazione: levento primario creativo, luomo di fango, luomo di legno, il falso sole e
luomo di grano. Illustrer lapplicazione clinica di tali immagini nel lavoro analitico
con tre pazienti messicani, maschi, di mezza et, con una problema di identit, e nel
lavoro con una giovane donna che lottava per separarsi da un sistema familiare
manipolativo e distruttivo.

Tanto las tribus ancestrales de Mxico, como cualquier persona que vive bajo cierta
cultura, puede verse afectada por las imgenes arquetipales y los valores de su entorno.
El acceso a las imgenes del Popol Vuh, o Mito de la Creacin de los Mayas, me ha
servido de orientacin en mi trabajo analtico con pacientes mexicanos en un intento de
recrearse a s mismos y lograr relacionar los conflictos de su existencia con su individualidad
y su capacidad para relacionarse. Voy a referirme al significado psicolgico de las
diferentes etapas de creacin a partir del evento original, el hombre de lodo, el hombre
de madera, el falso sol y el hombre de maz. Voy a ilustrar la aplicacin clnica de stas
imgenes en el trabajo analtico realizado con tres hombres mexicanos alrededor de
distintos aspectos de su identidad y con una mujer joven luchando por separarse de un
sistema familiar destructivo y manipulador.

References
Besquin Rubinstein, J. (1997). From Hell to Heaven : Rosa and the Goddess Tlazolteotl,
(unpublished thesis).
De la Garza, M. (1995). Los Mayas, 3000 Aos de Civilizacin. Mxico: Monclem
Ed., S.A. de C.V.
(1998). Rostros de los Sagrado en el Mundo Maya. Mxico: Ed. Paidos.
Gmez, E. A. (1990). Popol Vuh, Antiguas Leyendas del Quiche. Mxico: Colofn S.A.
Pre-Hispanic perspectives on the modern Mexican psyche 341

Jung, C. G. (1928). On psychic energy. CW 8.

(1937). Psychological factors determining human behavior. CW 8.
Miller, M. & Taube, K. (1993). The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the
Maya; an Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion. London: Thames &
Hudson.
Monjaras Ruiz, J. (1989). Mitos Cosmognicos del Mxico Indgena. Mxico:
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Neumann, E. (1973). The Child. Structure and Dynamics of the Nascent Personality.
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Von Franz, M.-L. (1995). Creation Myths. Boston & London: Shambala.
Winnicott, D. W. (1958). Collected Papers. Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis.
London: Tavistock Publications.

[MS first received July 1999]