Kevin Richard
Two Worlds
I have spent over thirty years working in two worlds that rarely share a room. One is within a judicial system as a current court administrator, and former child advocate, and counselor. I have held the weight of people in crisis. The other world lives in the study of archetype: patterns, symbol, and the old stories that carry them, explored for decades within Jungian communities as a speaker, faculty member, and Chair of Fairy Tale Studies. Neither world explains the other. Together, they offer me something I don't think either could have done alone.
What the Court Taught Me
Working over thirty years inside a judicial system means decades of hearing people's stories at their most vulnerable moments — custody hearings, child welfare, crisis intervention, and the moments a life comes apart in front of strangers who have to decide what happens next. I hold a master's degree in counseling, and it serves me daily. But what stayed with me longest wasn't any single case. It was the pattern underneath thousands of them: the same handful of stories, wearing different names, asking the same questions.
What Story Taught Me
Alongside that work, I spent decades training and working as an archetypal pattern analyst — learning to read fairy tale and myth not as artifacts, but as instruments still capable of showing us what we are. That study eventually led me into faculty work within Jungian communities, teaching this material to students at every level, and speaking internationally on archetypal psychology.
Where the Threads Meet
A courtroom and a fairy tale don't obviously belong in the same sentence. But both are places where a pattern insists on being seen, whether or not anyone in the room is ready to see it. Thirty years of moving between the two taught me that the patterns inside an individual life and the patterns inside our oldest stories are the same patterns — and that finding them is rarely a solitary act. It happens in relationship: between reader and story, between consultant and seeker, between a person and the version of their own life they haven't yet learned to read.
The Work Now
Today that work takes many forms — consultation, teaching, presenting, and mentoring — but the premise underneath all these paths hasn't changed. Sharing a story is always relational, each universally formed and each uniquely lived.
Archetypal Stories Mission
Archetypal Stories exists to honor the wisdom of stories and to engage in dialogue. Fairy tale and myth were born in relationship — told and retold across generations, shaped by the collective until they carried the accumulated pattern-knowledge of the people who told them: knowledge about suffering, transformation, and what a life asks of the person living it. That knowledge still lives in the story and its symbols . A story that emerged from many voices finds its resonance again one person at a time, whenever an individual enters into dialogue with their own deeper self. The mission here is to serve that meeting: through consultation for those seeking the pattern in their own circumstances, through teaching for those drawn to the stories themselves, and through mentoring for those held by a single tale that keeps asking for their attention. A story read closely becomes a companion. A pattern seen clearly becomes a choice.