The idea of ​​a "magical helper" rescuing the hero is widespread in both folk tales and theological concepts. We can say that this archetype is the collective creation of many generations of our ancestors, giving us in childhood the opportunity to preserve ourselves, our selfhood, personality, allowing us to survive, and in some cases not to go crazy. Someone is led by his guardian angel, someone is a demon who is favorable to the child, others are protected from danger by the branches of an apple or birch tree. But in fairy tales, the main assistant usually turns out to be some kind of animal, a beast. It is difficult to say what a modern person believes in, what picture of the world, what metaphysics ultimately took root in his mind; he himself often does not really understand it. But we know that a child’s consciousness and perception of the world is always mystical, and there is always some kind of magic that saves him. The image of a magical assistant very often settles in the souls of children, and he helps a small and still defenseless creature cope with the troubles, problems and traumas that society and his immediate environment bring upon him. In some cases, magical helpers leave the lives of children along with the loss of faith in Santa Claus, but for some the magic of this fairy-tale hero lasts throughout their lives. Collective unconscious This idea, introduced into use by psychologists by Jung, greatly undermined the status of psychology as a science, but but it gave a lot of opportunities for the work of practicing psychologists. It seems to me that psychologists could save their “scientific inclinations” by turning to ethnography, which very actively studies the archaic structures and meanings that underlie the thinking of modern man. The elaboration of such archetypes as “magical assistant”, “magical gift” and “meeting with the Other” is my modest contribution to the implementation of this plan. And, of course, these topics should have appeared during the development of the “Childhood Memories” projective test. A number of drawings presented in this test were selected precisely because, looking at them, people often had associations with the above “archetypes.” Personal unconscious If the image of a “magical assistant” is considered not within the framework of Jung’s plans, but in the logic of the theory of the unconscious, approved by Freud, we get a slightly different picture. As mentioned above, in the context of the collective unconscious, “saving archetypes” seem to convey the experience of their ancestors to an individual. The archetypes “magic gift” and “magical helper” at least give hope that a person has a way out of a difficult situation. But in addition, they contain special semantic and organizational codes that give us the opportunity to somehow reformat our psyche and personality, so that we have the opportunity for more effective behavior and relationships with those with whom life encounters us. Freud associates the image of an animal rather with the idea of ​​the unconscious, something wild and natural, living in the human soul. This natural principle can jump out and break all the prohibitions and all those high fences of norms and regulations that were built by parents and the immediate environment in the child’s psyche in order to make him comfortable for himself, or “the way he should be.” On the other hand, large reserves of suppressed mental energy often form in the child’s soul, which is looking for a way out. In this case, the figure of a “magical assistant” or “secret friend” is, as it were, a way of sublimating this energy, expressing it in forms that preserve the integrity of the child’s personality and open up opportunities for the development of his imagination, creative abilities, and thinking. What gives the image of a “magical assistant" for working with the human psyche. The plot of a story in which a magical assistant appears usually indicates the range of problems, fears and psychological traumas that a person faced in his childhood. When detailing those threats, dangers and unpleasant situations from which the gray wolf.