Psychoanalysis Of Mythology

Since Freud published the Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 and utilized Sophocles' Oedipus Rex to work through his developing ideas about the psycho-sexual development of children, it has been virtually impossible to think about psychoanalysis without reference to classical myth. Myth has the capacity to transcend the context of any particular retelling, continuing to transform our understanding of the present. Throughout the twentieth century, experts on the ancient world have turned to the insights of psychoanalytic criticism to supplement and inform their readings of classical myth and literature. This volume examines the inter-relationship of classical myth and psychoanalysis from the generation before Freud to the present day, engaging with debates about the role of classical myth in modernity, the importance of psychoanalytic ideas for cultural critique, and its ongoing relevance to ways of conceiving the self. The chapters trace the historical roots of terms in everyday usage, such as narcissism and the phallic symbol, in the reception of Classical Greece, and cover a variety of both classical and psychoanalytic texts.

This book surveys the history of psychoanalytic treatments of myths variously as symptoms of psychopathology, as cultural defense mechanisms, and as metaphoric expressions of ideas that may include therapeutic insights.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This innovative study posits that myths in general, and Greek theogonic myth in particular, have a latent meaning that is responsible both for the emotional energy inherent in myths, and for the special attraction they have even to those who no longer believe in their literal meaning. Caldwell describes, in clear and comprehensible language, aspects of psychoanalytic theory relevant to the understanding of Greek myth, implementing a psychoanalytic methodology to interpret the Greek myth of origin and succession, particularly as stated in Hesiod's Theogony. In reassessing this work, which tells the story of the world's beginning from unbounded Chaos to the defeat of the Titans, Caldwell addresses several unexplained problems-- why does the world begin with the spontaneous emergence of four uncaused entities, and why in this particular order? Why does Ouranos prevent his children from being born by confining them in their mother's body? Why is Ouranos castrated by his son, and why is Aphrodite born from the severed genitals? Why is it always the youngest son who overthrows his father, the sky-god, and what is the logic of the steps taken by Zeus to prevent the same thing happening to him? Presenting a new definition and analyses of the psychological functions in myth, this new study should appeal to a wide range of classicists, teachers and students of mythology, and those interested in the application of psychoanalytic methods to literature.

More than a hundred years ago, Freud made a new mythology by revising an old one: Oedipus, in Sophocles' tragedy the legendary perpetrator of shocking crimes, was an Everyman whose story of incest and parricide represented the fulfilment of universal and long forgotten childhood wishes. The Oedipus complex - child, mother, father - suited the nuclear families of the mid-twentieth century. But a century after the arrival of the psychoanalytic Oedipus, it might seem that modern lives are very much changed. Typical family formations and norms of sexual attachment are changing, while the conditions of sexual difference, both biologically and socially, have undergone far-reaching modifications. Today, it is possible to choose and live subjective stories that the first psychoanalytic patients could only dream of. Different troubles and enjoyments are speakable and unspeakable; different selves are rejected, discovered, or sought. Many kinds of hitherto unrepresented or unrepresentable identity have entered into the ordinary surrounding stories through which children and adults find their bearings in the world, while others have become obsolete. Biographical narratives that would previously have seemed unthinkable or incredible—'a likely story!'—have acquired the straightforward plausibility of a likely story. This book takes two Freudian routes to think about some of the present entanglements of identity. First, it follows Freud in returning to Greek tragedies - Oedipus and others - which may now appear strikingly different in the light of today's issues of family and sexuality. And second, it re-examines Freud's own theories from these newer perspectives, drawing out different strands of his stories of how children develop and how people change (or don't). Both kinds of mythology, the classical and the theoretical, may now, in their difference, illuminate some of the forming stories of our contemporary world of serial families, multiple sexualities, and new reproductive technologies.

The mythological patrimony is an excellent example of the unconscious creative ability that brings reason both to the existence of myth as well as to its symbolic function. Reconsidering the connection between literature and psychoanalysis, this study starts from the Jungian archetypal theory up to the Freudian unconscious and its ability to produce symbols, and provides the tools for a reading of the phenomenon of the literary reworking, in the modern age, of meaningful themes and mythological figures. Therefore, revising and rewriting the myth means thinking again about one’s cultural memory, attempting to re-propose in a new dimension the ever present questions that have not found an answer and which the figures of the myth symbolise across the time. The attention focuses on figures like the elementary spirits of Romantic imagery, in particular on that of the Wasserfrau, up to the analysis of a twentieth-century reinterpretation of the myth of Undine. Moreover the Medea myth is reconsidered starting from the contradiction implicit in this figure – and in that of every Mother Goddess – in order to then explore the most problematic and conflicting aspect of this image of womanhood, the infanticide, which over time becomes the symbol of the denial of the maternal principle.

Looks at how nine classical myths, including Oedipus, Electra, and Psyche are used to explain psychological theories, and assesses the validity of these comparisons.

First published in German in 1909, Otto Rank's original The Myth of the Birth of the Hero offered psychoanalytical interpretations of mythological stories as a means of understanding the human psyche. Like his mentor Sigmund Freud, Rank compared the myths of such figures as Oedipus, Moses, and Sargon with common dreams, seeing in both a symbolic fulfillment of repressed desire. In a new edition published thirteen years after the original, Rank doubled the size of his seminal work, incorporating new discoveries in psychoanalysis, mythology, and ethnology. This expanded and updated edition has been eloquently translated by Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman and includes an introductory essay by Robert A. Segal as well as Otto Rank's 1914 essay "The Play in Hamlet."