Carl Jung talks about the archetypal hero-myth of fighting the dragon

— “The prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon.”–

“Absorption into the instinctual sphere, therefore, does not and cannot lead to conscious realization and assimilation of instinct, because consciousness struggles in a regular panic against being swallowed up in the primitivity and unconsciousness of sheer instinctuality.

This fear is the eternal burden of the hero-myth and the theme of countless taboos.

The closer one comes to the instinct-world, the more violent is the urge to shy away from it and to rescue the light of consciousness from the murks of the sultry abyss.

Psychologically, however, the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon.”

Collected Works 8

On the Nature of the Psyche

Paragraph 415