Malaysian Folk Tales:A Study of Archetypal Patterns in Selected Tales

Malaysian folk tales are rich with symbolic imagery which tells the story of a nation and its people – the people of Malaysia. To further understand the psyche of the Malaysian people, some popular folk tales have been studied in this book using Jung’s theory of archetypes. Reoccurring motifs, symbols and imagery suggest that Malaysian folk tales and Western fairy tales have much in common thereby subscribing to Jung’s theory that archetypes are present in all human psyches. Jung further postulates that this is proof of the Universal Unconscious. The human mind does not exist independently and is fused to the Universal Unconscious thereby explaining why similar motifs, symbols and imagery exist in the oral literature of different cultures all over the world. However, these symbols and motifs are similar but never identical due to the concept of the collective cultural unconscious, a theory which was not acknowledged by Jung. This theory suggests that diverse cultures of people tend to subconsciously pass on set ideas of thinking, behavioral patterns and stereotypical images to the next generation.