Stories move like rivers. When a reader penetrates rich and solid narratives, it is relatively easy to perceive the plot in motion, the fiction flowing, the storyline pushing through. Even if the origins, paths, and destinations of such currents may be unclear, multiple, or distant, there is usually a sense of direction: stories do not merely move; they also go somewhere. Movement brings with it a sense of meaning and purpose that situates the reader in a specific place and furnishes an incentive to follow the plot. A good narrative – through a book, a movie, a story, or a personal experience – provides whoever is witnessing or experiencing it both this fictional river and a good reason to swim in it.

Sometimes, however, movement and meaning are lost, the stream is interrupted, and the bed crumbles away, and stories enter vicious circles: histories get stuck and become mere anecdotes, images are fixated and turn into dry stereotypes, and values grow stale and degenerate into hollow habits. All these are signals of decaying storylines, which may occur in several contexts: In art, they can result in bad novels or trite films. In culture, they can be reflected in oppressive societal structures or sterile collective practices. And on a personal level, they can produce dull, rigid, and lifeless lives.

But how is it possible to identify this interruption of narrative rhythm? What causes it, and how can we overcome it? How does one restart the flux and recover significance after an episode of mythic paralysis? And by the term “mythic paralysis,” let us understand a state in which the stories that sustained a given system – a person, a novel, a society, a culture – no longer perform their function of providing such a system with meaning. Mythic paralysis is the blocking or drying out of the fictional rivers on which the boats of our lives and our cultures float. When the narratives that usually keep us on course go sterile, there is a rise in the feelings of randomness, meaninglessness, impotence, and futility; the myths that once held us together lose their power, leaving the culture without either the motor that moved it or the course through which it moved. The river is deprived of water and a bed. This imaginative stagnation is to a great extent a desperate call for an epic intervention.

This desperate call for an intervention is a manifestation of mythic paralysis, where there is a failure in the ordering, moving, or directive function of a story. When a narrative structure detaches itself from order and direction, it is, in essence, lacking the father principle, or as James Hillman says, “we are uncertain about what we are about because we are uncertain of our author, from whom would come both our authority and our authenticity.” A story lacking this father principle risks becoming stagnant and loses its meaning. Psychologically, this makes sense, for developmentally it is the father (or, at least, the fathering function) that situates us in the world. It is the father who validates us as a part of society and certifies that our personal history is inserted into the fabric constituted by the larger stories of our culture – a very Athena-like role considering that it weaves us into the “fabric” of civilization. By giving us a place in the human race, and thus handing us a role to play in the collective drama, father introduces us into an established order, one within which we can move in this or that direction. In short, father gives us meaning by helping us figure out who we are. The epic poem functions as our proverbial father and allows for the self-discovery that will bring water to the dry river once again.

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