Lecture 3 Why is Myth?
Sigmund Freud proposed that myth reflects psychological forces present in the individual.
- His most famous theory for the study of myth was, of course, the Oedipus complex. The story of Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, reflected the repressed desires of all male children.
- According to Freud, myths are the collective dreams of the human race; myths use the same kind of imagery, condensation, and displacement that are found in an individual’s dreams.
- This imagery is primarily sexual in nature.
Carl Jung saw myths as reflections of the “collective unconscious. (集体潜意识)”
- In Jung’s view, the collective unconscious contains archetypes, or recurrent images that exist cross-culturally and throughout time. Myths use these archetypes (such as the “Earth Mother” or the “Wise old man”).
- Because they reflect the collective unconscious and feature the archetypes, myths are crucially important.
Another universal approach to myth is Structuralism (构造主义。), “a system of definable relations between the parts or element of a whole which admit predictable transformations,” according to Walter Burkert. There are two primary varieties of structuralist theory.
- It analyzes traditional tales based on their surface elements.
- Looks at the underlying structure of the myths, rather than at their surface narratives.
- Levi-Strauss’s theory claims that myth provides a mediation of contradictions, a way of dealing with binary oppositions that underlie the human mind.
- Myth is analogous to language: just as the individual components of language has no inherent meaning in themselves but gain meaning only in relationship to one another, so too are the components of myth significant only as part of a structure.
- The scholar Walter Burkert has developed a structualist approach that differs from both Propp’s and Strauss’s in assigning the basic impetus for certain myths to biological programs of action.
- Burkert’s theory resembles Propp’s in that he isolates narrative element that recur in different myths; an example of this is his description of “the girl’s tragedy.”
- Burkert’s thesis that these narrative elements can be traced to early human or even pre-human biological necessities. From menarche（初潮） to deflowering to bearing a first child, is controversial.
- Burkert also assigns great importance to ritual; thus, he is sometimes called a “neo-ritualist.” （新研习礼仪者）
The best-known theorist of myth to appear in recent decades is Joseph Campbell. Though he is often called a Jungian (支持易雍学说的人), a better term to describe his approach to myth might be “metaphysical.（形而上学的。纯粹哲学的。又名第一哲学。）”
- Campbell takes as a given that all myth is the same cross-culturally.
- His method, like Frazer’s, depends largely on gathering examples of narrative similarities from different cultures.
- Campbell assumes that myth is “true” in a metaphysical sense.
- He imputes a spiritual meaning to myth that he thinks is both constant across societies and crucial for individual psychological and spiritual health.
- He separates this meaning from the specific religious doctrines held by the societies that formed the particular myths.
- Most scholars do not have a high opinion of Campbell’s work.
- He never attempts to demonstrate the validity of his interpretations of the myth; instead, he asserts his interpretation, for instance, that the human mind has a spiritual cast, as a given.
- He claims to be discussing narratives that occur worldwide, but, in fact, he takes element from many narratives to make a composite that does not really occur anywhere.
- He assumes that the multiplication of examples amounts to proof of his interpretation.
- He assumes that similar narrative elements must have the same meanings in different cultures. But Amazon or snakes, for example, have different functions in different times and places.
These universalist “why” theories, no less than the “what” theories of the previous lecture, have struck many critics as unsatisfactory, mainly because they tend to rest on unproven and unprovable assumptions.
- The psychological theories of Freud and Jung both espouse the idea that myths are in some sense the “dreams of the people.”
- This idea implies that a “people” or a society has a collective mind that is capable of dreaming.
- Freud further assumes that dreams have the same significance cross-culturally. But the interpretation of dream symbols changes according to time and place.
- Jung posits the “collective unconscious” as an entity and assumes that it produces the archetypes.
- Levi-Strauss assumes that the mediation of oppositions is a driving force of all cultures.
- Burkert’s assumption that myth is rooted in pre-cultural biological realities, while fascination, can only be asserted, not demonstrated.
The best approach may be to recognize that myth is a varied but recognizable category that can include all these theories
- No one theory seems adequate to explain myth overall.
- Theories can be useful for elucidating individual myths.
- The theories we have discussed cannot be proven, but they cannot be disproven either; we will use these theories as tools when and where they are helpful.
As such, myths offer insight into what a specific culture thinks about the nature of the world in general and about key questions, such as:
- The nature and function to the gods
- Humans’ relationship to the gods.
- What it means to be human
- The two sexes’ relationship to one another