Kaj Bernhard Genell - Notes on Myth

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NOTES ON MYTH

- with Some Regard

to Sigmund Freud

Kaj Bernhard Genell

Gothenburg 2025

MYTHS RULE

"Myths are anonymous; from the moment they are seen as

myths, and whatever their real origins, they exist only as

elements in a tradition. When the myth is repeated, the

individual listeners are receiving a message that, properly

speaking, is coming from nowhere; this is why it is credited

with a supernatural origin."

(Claude Lévi-Strauss)

"The main task of art is to reveal myths."

(Adorno)

„Es gibt kein Ende des Mythos, obwohl

es die ästhetischen Kraftakte des

Zuendebringens immer wieder gibt.“ (p. 685)

( Blumenberg )

THE PROLIFIC MYTH

A common idea is that a myth is something one analyzes and

that it is not really real, but rather fiction, albeit fiction with a

deeper meaning than stories in general. What few people

realize is that we, individually, are parts of not just one but

many myths. Equally few realize that these myths, of which

we are so little aware, significantly determine our lives. As

Claude Lévi-Strauss asserts, it is not the task of myth research

to clarify how humans think, nor how humans believe in

myths, but how myth thinks in humans. To gain perspective on

what a myth is and is not—which is not entirely easy to say—

one can, while trying to determine this, also consider what

humanity would have instead—a better or worse substitute—

if myths had never existed. Some people argue that myths are

socially necessary, and that the criterion of truth for a myth is

its "effectiveness." The effectiveness of a myth—so the

argument goes—would be connected to its general,

The Raw and the Cooked,1969 (1964),

empirically validated, positive validation and inspirational

power. As everyone knows, fiction can be both a myth itself

and a part of a myth. Fiction can still examine, consciously or

unconsciously, the current overarching myth, as well as myths

from earlier eras, or myths from humanity’s very early

childhood, when we separated ourselves from beings with, in

some respects, lower levels of consciousness. The myth is

peculiar when looked at more closely; as Lévi-Strauss—the

man behind books such as The Savage Mind and The Jealous

Potters—points out, no part of a myth is more important than

another. Indeed, one could say of a myth—unlike historical

writing—that no part is independently significant, or that all

parts are just as it is in a work of art. Through integrated

totality, art operates. But fiction is then—as mentioned—both

a myth, as a historical phenomenon, and a creator of myth in

its diverse forms: literature, visual arts, or film, etc., etc.

Myths are not often created on demand. A conspiratorially

inclined person might believe that this is precisely what they

do. That they are tailored to lead the herd of sheep. No, myths

mostly emerge from other created things. They often come as

something imposed, as if to seal holes that have opened, or as

something that hangs loosely and flaps in the wind. That this

is the case does not mean that Power cannot benefit from it,

nor that the powerless cannot suffer the effects of the myths

sanctioned by Power. Myths are not created from nothing, but

they nearly always build on an event or idea that has matured

over time. After a suitable time period, the myth thus emerges.

In this, it resembles mysticism, which, according to a theory

presented by G. Scholem, arises in relation to a religion only

after some time has passed, and perhaps when the religion in

question has lost a little of its initial charm. And it is like the

Renaissance, which did not arise fifty years after antiquity, but

only in the 1300s-1400s, when a glow began to form around

what the ancient people had engaged with, which attracted as

one perhaps found one’s own time rather gloomy, and a bit too

overshadowed by Christianity. It would, of course, not least in

the interest of the powerless, be beneficial to try to clarify what

influences the creation of holes and rents, and what they are

primarily filled with in terms of mythic material, and what it

means when things hang loosely and flap in the wind,

especially when a myth tries to ensure that this does not

happen. What regularities exist in this vast ideological, trope,

and narrative supramechanism? What is it that causes, as soon

as a phenomenon is born or made conscious, that a myth forms

in its vicinity?

Romanticism had tied itself to folk beliefs, symbols, fairy

tales, myths, and rituals, sometimes connected with additional

layers of symbolism and notions, thoughts about protection

and fate, as well as transformation myths and fairy tales, and

symbols in everyday life and culture. Such simple images,

which had not been given much thought, came to be made

visible in a different way through Freud, Jung, Groddeck, and

others. Significant were the fruits of the work of the Brothers

Grimm for Freud, but also ancient myths from the Bible, from

the Israeli tradition of the Torah, Greece, the Roman Empire,

ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and so on, as well as the entire

Jewish tradition, which overflowed with legends, jokes, and

proverbs with elements open to interpretation and travesty. In

the Talmud, for the souls who had fallen victim to

indoctrination in this, there were myriads of different customs

and rituals that one could attempt to trace back to one thing or

another, without getting anywhere at all.( The much younger

Jewish mystical tradition // the Talmud, is not referred to as

mysticism // there is a whole ocean of mysticism, but Freud

never refers to that, since he was keen not to pose as a Jewish

scientist, but as a European one.)

Freud´s interest in myths was concentrated more on ancient

myths, and less on myths that were created during the turbulent

times in Europe when Christianity was ruling the minds by

countless scary myths of its own.

One could see the elements of the dream, as well aspects in

jokes and in unconscious acts of humans conceptually flow

into something else than the original meaning, mean

something more, much more than initially believed, in the

symbol-creating process, the dynamics that Freud discovered

simultaneously with the Berliner Groddeck just as they

realized that there was a semiotic storage process in the human

psyche. No one had previously understood within science the

purposefulness of the type of defence mechanism that Freud

came to discover and dissect: that which emerged from the fact

that a person could not consciously take in all the information

from their senses, process everything that happened to them: It

would also be an unusually foolish waste of information if

evolution had “decided” that humans would forever discard the

information they currently could not tolerate. It would be like

throwing away a piece of history – the part that didn’t fit at that

moment. Freud found, in his studies of the psyche's

transformation mechanisms, that repression, conversion, and

distortion, as well as symbol creation, perhaps constitute the

most ingenious and original aspects of the human psyche.

Freud also saw the possibility of examining how this

information distribution and these protective barriers were

connected in humans.

In essence, however, Freud was a Darwinist. What Freud

investigated were all functions of humanity that, in one way or

another, favoured their survival as a species. Freud wanted to

build his theory, movement, teaching, etc., on his own

observations and interpretations of them. He therefore believed

he did not need to read what others had written about dreams.

Cf. Delumeau,(d.2002) La peur de l´Occident.( In Eng. : Sin and

fear : the emergence of a Western guilt culture, 13th-18th centuries.

)

He assumed, somewhat presumptuously, that no one before

him had anything substantial to contribute to his theory of

interpretation, etc.

Freud's instinct depended on the foundational worldview of the

romantic philosophers and "poets," built on antagonistic

oppositions: "Freud was so dependent on this dynamic

worldview that one of the crises in his thinking arose when he

seemed, theoretically, to end up in a drive theory without this

polarity between two main drives."

We will notice that Freud later – in the 1920s – really sought

to balance Eros ( sexuality in the broadest sense ) and Thanatos

(the death and aggressive drive) as politically charged drives.

Here one can see that the death drive is the flipside of the first

– that they condition each other theoretically.

The concept of drive became among Freud's disciples to create

various deviations; for example, A. Adler – an early, important

follower – viewed the compensatory drive – of the type:

whoever loses a sense sharpens another – as fundamental for

humanity. He received support for this (!) from Freud but then

chose to go his own way.

Alongside the interest in dreams, (which Kafka would come to

share), Freud had an almost manic interest in myth, myth with

its megalomaniac thickness, its timestamped caricaturing of

history, its vast scene, where people wearing masks are telling

repeatedly the same story about Man without ever being asked

for historical sources.

Lauri Honko, in the essay “What is a myth?” ( in a journal

published by the Donner Foundation Scripta Istituto

Donneriani, Vol. 6 (1972): The Myth of the State, published by

the Donner Foundation ), defines what a myth is. Many of

these points overlap, so the number is considerably too large:

1) Myth as source of cognitive categories. Myth is seen as an

explanation for enigmatic phenomena. The intellect needs to

conceptualize certain aspects of the universe, to establish the

relationship between different phenomena. Myth as form of

symbolic expression. Myth is placed on par with other creative

activities, such as poetry or music. Myth has its own laws, its

own reality, its own forms of expression; it may be viewed as

a projection of the human mind, as a symbolic structuring of

the world. 3) Myth as projection of the subconscious. Myth is

viewed in relation to a substratum shared partly by all humans,

partly only by members of the same race, nation, or culture

(Neo-Jungian emphasis on socialization and cultural group

instead of racial-genetic inheritance). Freud offered the

concept of daydreams as models for myth. The message is

disguised and condensed; the projection of the subconscious is

controlled partly by tradition, partly by elementary life facts.

4) Myth as an integrating factor in man's adaptation to life:

myth as world view. In myths, man is faced with fundamental

problems of society, culture, and nature. Myths provide

opportunities for selecting different elements that satisfy both

individual tendencies and social necessities. From these

elements, it is possible to create an individualized yet

traditional way of viewing the world. 5) Myth as charter of

behaviour. Myths support accepted patterns of behaviour by

placing present-day situations in a meaningful perspective

concerning past precedents. Myths provide a valid justification

for obligations and privileges. Myths act as safety valves by

allowing people to vent their emotions without socially

disruptive effects. 6) Myth as legitimation of social

institutions. Myths sustain institutions: together with ritual,

they express common religious values and consolidate them.

7) Myth as marker of social relevance. Myths are not regarded

as a random collection of stories; in a culture, there is a clear

correlation between the distribution of mythical themes and

what is considered socially relevant in that culture. 8) Myth as

mirror of culture, social structure, etc. Myths are considered to

reflect certain facets of culture. This reflection is seldom direct

or photographic but may reveal values that would otherwise be

difficult to detect. 9) Myth as result of historical situation.

Emphasis is placed on the reconstruction of those events that

were most decisive in the formation of the myths. Myths are

appraised in light of their historical background; their

subsequent use and modification in light of new historical

developments are examined in relation to their origin. 10)

Myth as religious communication. Myths may be regarded as

information transmitted from sender to receiver via different

media. Closer analysis of this communication process implies

examining redundancy in the language of religion and in non-

verbal forms of expression, the definition of the basic elements

of a message, etc. 11) Myth as religious genre. Myths are

considered principally as narratives: they are seen in relation

to other narrative genres and to non-epic genres that help

disseminate the myth's message. This genre analytical aspect

of myth implies that traditional forms condition the nature of

the communication process. 12) Myth as medium for structure.

This category includes research methods often characterized as

structural but that deal in various ways with the language,

content, and structure of myths. The structure of myths can be

analyzed from syntagmatic or paradigmatic perspectives, for

example. The concept of binary opposition is one of the most

popular watchwords in this respect.

Thus there is, apart from the symbolistic myth science also a

science of myths that wants to find out the social and historic

origin of the actual myths. This branch of the science of Myths

is called the functionalist. It is connected to Malinowski as well

as to Lesly Bolton.

Adhikari

Prodip Kumar Adhikari, Islamic University

“Bolton adds the third function which is about

establishing order of myths. Myths give a good image of the

natural and social order. The universe starts with the creating

of universe. After that, the myths show that the creation of

human being and its society comes after the creation of the

large universe. The Natural order is explained in the character

and role of the God Zeus (Romans call him Jupiter). Myths

depict Zeus (Jupiter) as the responsible for everything in the

universe. He is believed to be the creator of such order in the

universe.

Although, some gods have role in the universe and

power among some phenomena, he is illustrated to be over all.

He orders everything in the universe in its respective place.

Social order has an important role in any societies. Any society

must have a leader who has the responsibility to judge and

shows people their roles in society. Each society has to be in

order and every individual has to know his authority and must

not exceed others’ authority. Otherwise, the individuals will

fight each other and this society will be vanished as fast as

possible. As people now have rules which establish the order

of society, ancient people have rules establishing through

myths. Myths reflect rules for the ordering of society. So myths

are like a social charter which shows people what to do and

what not to do. Like the responsibility of natural order, the

social order responsibility is laid on the shoulders of Zeus

(Jupiter) as well. He is stated as the judge who builds rules for

maintaining order and justice. Moreover, he sets rules for

punishing those who break these rules.”

The myth itself is a mythical phenomenon

for which an

increased interest suddenly emerged during the nineteenth

Hegel suggests in his Aesthetic that the source of Myth in some

way is linked to Man´s yearning for LIGHT.. Hegel, Esthetik, del I,

p.425. The source of Myth is somewhat paradoxical, since it is in the

Nature of Myth, that it is not born until someone – with purpose or

without such - looks upon something in the mirror of hindsight.

century, by the side of the interest in Geography

, not least in

the German-speaking countries, in an almost colonial manner.

A large branch of this study became comparative mythology,

where thousands of researchers devoted all their energy to

finding parallels in myths from around the world.

When these

similarities were discovered in the sun, vegetation, the sea and

the sky, death and love, one arrived at the strange - but also

certainly ultra-romantic conclusion - that there must exist a

universal myth, - a myth behind it all.

And this is

structuralism.

The insight into and interest in the power and significance of

myth was reinforced as religious faith generally waned.

One

could say that religion—with its powerful, state-sanctioned

position—served as a shield for myth, which now stands in the

crosshairs, searching for defences against intensified criticism.

Myth is an example of an anonymous power, argues Lévi-

Strauss. Consequently, it will also be subject to the criticism

that Robinson's creator, Daniel Defoe, articulated in his

famous satirical pamphlet, "Everybody's business is nobody's

business."

What is provided in such a way that everyone

shares responsibility for it can often deteriorate to the point

where no one takes responsibility for it. In reality, it becomes

the case that those who hold societal power ultimately decide,

through a function of the general public's apathy.

Cf. the Brothers Humboldt

Jfr. A. H. Krappe´s “universal mythology” (1935) , a project

doomed by R. Caillios to be ”chimaerian”.

Ideal typic…

Cf. Jan de Vries.

suggests that when something is deemed to be the concern of

everyone, it often ends up being neglected because no one takes full

responsibility for it. /// This pamphlet mostly was about the way

women as servants in the household were exploited in English

society.

As Mircea Eliade

suggests - in juxtaposition to Sartre's credo

- that: for homo religiosus, the essential precedes the

existential. For the conservative person, nothing is more

important

than keeping the myth alive

. For the

revolutionary, on the contrary.

Eliade claims that “generally myths display the incursion of

the Holy into the World”.

To conservatives all attention is placed on the fixed point

behind – according to Kierkegaard ( c:a 1850 ) while he saw

the revolutionary put the interest in the future.

Thus, it was believed that by establishing this, one had reached

a scientific study of myth, but not only that; one had even

created an alleged “scientific mythology”. ( cf. e.g. Carl Jung,

Sandor Ferenzy, etc.).(where the myth was placed in a context

that was scientific only in that the history of the myth was

related to ... Jung's muddy theory of archetypes. Thus, the so-

Aspects du mythe, Gallimard, 1963; On the myth of eternal return

(1969 ) Sw,;Myten om den eviga återkomsten – arketyper och

upprepning, 2023. ( orig. 1969 )

Cf. Magic, as such, and M. Maus´classic definition of magic ( in

his Esquisse ) : ”Nous appelons ainsi tout rite qui ne fait pas partie

d'un culte organisé, rite privé, secret, mystérieux et tendant comme

limite vers le rite prohibé. De cette définition, en tenant compte de

celle que nous avons donnée des autres éléments de la magie, résulte

une première détermination de sa notion. On voit que nous ne

définissons pas la magie par la forme de ses rites, mais par les

conditions dans lesquelles ils se produisent et qui marquent la place

qu'ilsoccupent dans l'ensemble des habitudes sociales.” s. 14.

This is mainly achieved, as Caillois has pointed out, by the RITE.

Se: Constantin Gulian, ( f.1914, i Bukarest ), Mythos und Kultur,

p.13. Noteable is that the concept of ”holiness” is a nounification of

a a feeling, and does not refer to any known concrete object, but an

emotion.Cf.:: R. Otto, Das Heilige, - a metaphysical épopy..

Cf Kierkegaard in his discussions with Rosenvinge about the point

behind and the point ahead. Papirer.

called scientific nature lay in the exact correlation with Jung's

theory. However, there was of course no scientific correlation

between Jung's theory and reality. How could one

scientifically not only study myths, but also create, organize,

and justify them? Just as Hägerström criticized those who

wanted to create a scientific Ethics by asking them whether

they stood behind a concept like "scientific emotional

expression," one could - analogously - ask those who support

a scientific mythology whether they stand behind "approved

myths"?

All of this was, of course, utter nonsense, but one could build

a whole career within the humanities worldwide by claiming

to have created one. The interest in myths, even in the sense of

social and historical myths of a more immediate nature, such

as curiosity about ordinary people's customs, prejudices, and

general misconceptions, can also be counted as mythology.

The study of myths has been enclosed by a mystical respect,

bordering on subservience, as if the realm of myth were

something akin to a sanctuary of Humanity, where peace and

harmony should prevail, a kind of ecclesiastical tranquillity,

and all critical voices regarding myths that would imply

criticism of them for fascism, racism, or historical falsification

have usually been dismissed as inappropriate, since "after all,

it is just a myth."

If something is considered a myth, it is impossible to adopt a

critical view of it. Literature, philosophy, art, journalism,

historiography, and politics—all of these can be criticized

from philosophical and ideological standpoints, but not myths.

This is a peculiarity that should be overcome. To call a myth

detestable, childish, or grotesque is generally viewed as either

a sign of lacking education or understanding of what is being

discussed or as inhumane.

Here it is suggested that different forms of knowledge and

communication, due to the circumstances, in a eerily automatic

manner, like monkeys searching for water in a scorching

desert, find the means of obtaining water through extremely

hostile maneuvers and show others where it is located.

The myth, even if it denies it, is a mode of communication, a

genre, like poetry, prose, comedy, satire, tragedy, even as it

insists that it is not. "Tragedy is grounded in history, comedy

in fiction," writes Lope de Vega in 1609 in his treatise. He also

writes: "Everyone knows that comedy, being under suspicion,

was silenced for a period, and that this is why satire was born,

which, being more cruel, quickly came to an end, and instead

made way for the New Comedy."

Whatever the

circumstances were, at that time around 1630, which seem very

intricate, Lope de Vega evidently knew exactly how things

stood regarding which expressive forms could be used at a

given time, and which ones were not permitted... ( One can

think here of the last imperial era in Rome, when Nero and his

ilk could quarrel with comedy writers, and these constantly had

to seek new genres and new modes of expression, given the

situation: that the emperor could not manage without comedy

writers like Batyllus and Pylades, while they had to be careful

not to upset the people too much! )

Mythology is generally constructed around a circle of people.

The Empyrean (the dwelling of fire):

B.H. Clark, (1947), p.90

H. Schück, 1900,p.340.

1.) Ancient Greek Empyrean Crowd.( Houasse )

The Ancient Greek Empyrean, in the middle of 500 BC.

2.) Aristotelian-Christian-Dantesque Empyrean.

In the Empyrean above the waters, angels sit in several tiers,

and at the very top, like in a small alcove, God himself reigns

"on the cherubs" - Ps 80:2, 99:1; Isa 37:16. The concept

appears in literature, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy in the last

canto about Paradise. Dante finds God in the second circle

before the Empyrean. See also Hieronymus Bosch (1450-

1516).

3.The Empyrean that was created in California during the

20th century.

[photo Thomas Wolf]

Walter Benjamin, in the essay The Work of Art in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction, states:

Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-

SA 3.0

"For the film, what matters primarily is that the actor

represents himself to the public before the camera, rather than

representing someone else."

This insight excellently illustrates the underlying idiocy of the

modern Empyrean. But here we also have the gateway to the

realization of modern narcissism, essence, and self-perception.

In comparing myth to other genres of representation, one might

consider the temporal transition from religion to mysticism, as

sketched out as a hypothesis by Gershom Scholem in his

Jewish Mysticism. Scholem argues that it is only when religion

has somewhat solidified and lost some of its aura, and similar

accounts, that mysticism can arise, as a kind of rekindling.

In connection to this, one can see much of the reasoning put

forth by Constantin Gulian in his work Mythos und Kultur as

thought-provoking. There, the thesis from Jon de Vries is

developed, which reads:

"We must consider that the need to find an explanation for

myths only arose when belief in the gods was shaken."

The study of ancient dramas—such as the old Greek dramas—

is sometimes also counted among the research of myths, and it

is common in academic humanistic research, as these dramas

are usually built on myths. The first Greek drama that was not

based on a myth, and one of the few, is Agathon's

play "The

Flower."

One should – just for the saker of

EXPERIMENT - think about who Homer,

and consider Homer in light of that

Illuminations, p.231.

Friend of Plato.

Freud's theory was born on a plush chair,

in the midst of bourgeois Vienna.

One can assume—much points to that—that Homer in ancient

Greece sat on something akin to a plush chair there. It seems

incredible that his poems would have been preserved if he had

not been in a context that resembled Versailles under Louis

XIV more than a hillside in the Peloponnesus, surrounded by

shepherds and bleating sheep.

Thus, Homer's 'transformation of the Greek pantheon' was a

transformation in the direction of the precious and the ironic,

away from the perception of the pantheon that the average

person in the Greek context had.

The religious world in

which the priests of antiquity and the people lived has

remained completely unknown due to history's concentration

on the Homeric tales. By absorbing Homer’s salon version, it

was assumed that this was the Greek "spirit," and not without

reason. It suited perfectly to have this light-hearted story, to

enable people to trust civilization. The power could not find a

more delightful tale about an ideal society than the tale of the

society where the Homeric worldview prevailed.

Just as Homer came to create a light-hearted image of the

pantheon, Freud presented a simplistic view of the human

psyche, where the dream, in an almost equally picturesque way

as in the Iliad, haunted with figures resembling symbols, even

hieroglyphic images, which were also tied to various myths

from ancient Greece.

Seductive tales are not created in huts, in cafes, and in small

shops. They are created on plush sofas and in affluent homes,

One might remember that, picturesquely, the concept of ”mutos”

during the era of Homer, ( 600B.C.) mostly referred to a … horror

story.

by diligent creators, to then be sanctioned from the parlours of

the powerful and super-rich.

Already early in Western civilization, people were outraged by

myths; for example, the philosopher, the Roman emperor

Julian ( who was born in Constantinople ) in the 4th century

AD, who was struck down in battle after just three years in

office, stated:

“Now it is true that the Hellenes invented their myths about the

gods, incredible and monstrous stories. For they said that Kronos

swallowed his children and then vomited them forth; and they even

told of lawless unions, how Zeus had intercourse with his mother,

and after having a child by her, married his own daughter, or rather

did not even marry her, but simply had intercourse with her and then

handed her over to another. Then too there is the legend that

Dionysus was rent asunder and his limbs joined together again. This

is the sort of thing described in the myths of the Hellenes. Compare

with them the Jewish doctrine, how the garden was planted by God

and Adam was fashioned by Him, and next, for Adam, woman came

to be. For God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone. Let

us make him an help meet for him." Yet so far was she from helping

him at all that she deceived him, and was in part the cause of his and

her own fall from their life of ease in the garden.

This is wholly fabulous. For is it probable that God did not know that

the being he was creating as a help meet would prove to be not so

much a blessing as a misfortune to him who received her? Again,

what sort of language are we to say that the serpent used when he

talked with Eve? Was it the language of human beings? And in what

do such legends as these differ from the myths that were invented by

the Hellenes? Moreover, is it not excessively strange that God should

deny to the human beings whom he had fashioned the power to

distinguish between good and evil? What could be more foolish than

a being unable to distinguish good from bad? For it is evident that he

would not avoid the latter, I mean things evil, nor would he strive

after the former, I mean things good. And, in short, God refused to

let man taste of wisdom, than which there could be nothing of more

value for man. For that the power to distinguish between good and

less good is the property of wisdom is evident surely even to the

witless; /…./.”

Authors throughout history have been almost obsessed with

gathering knowledge about the customs of less educated

people. Shakespeare, for example, acquired a book on just this

topic, perhaps to satisfy his thirst for knowledge, but also as

inspiration and seasoning for his writing. Maybe also because

such facts, or such stories, "urban legends" and the like, tell a

lot about Humanity, as they say. Levinus Lemnius, - b. 1505,

died 1568 in the Netherlands - wrote several books on

medicine, nature, and mysticism. These books were translated

from Latin into French, Italian, and English during Lemnius'

lifetime, among others, and were read by none other than

William Shakespeare himself.

Lemnius (Lemne) recounts in

a writing about a newborn child that was born a monster, which

Lemnius assumed was due to the child having nourished itself

during pregnancy on the blood of its twin brothers, who died

from this action. What happened to the monster, Lemnius, does

not mention.

This kind of encyclopaedic anthropological knowledge was

also amusingly gathered by, for example, August Strindberg,

much later, and of course also Freud. Evidence of this is,

among other things, his book on wit, where it abounds with

unnecessary knowledge about people from all social strata,

from different eras and times. The interest in folklore increased

during the Romantic period when numerous collections of

fairy tales were written across Europe.

( Against the Galileans, c.a. 332 A.D.)

”He that has read Shakespeare with attention, will perhaps find

nothing new in the crouded world.” Samuel ( Dr. ) Johnson.(

Shakespeare Criticism, p.76.)

The Divan-Cartoon in Playboy Magazine

Freud's divan. The divan is the one that Freud also had at

Berggasse 19 in Vienna, which, along with the desk and carpet

as well as thousands of art works , was moved to London in

1938.

“His [Freud's] fame was born in America and then

reexported to Europe.”

( E. Kurzweil )

“Hugh Hefner was a baneful influence in American life across

the last six decades. Hefner's telltale, cloven-hoofed footprints

are deeply imprinted on much of the misshapen, broken

American social and sexual landscape that is littered with the

manifold casualties and victims of the sexual revolution he did

far too much to popularize and promote.”

( Richard D. Land, The Christian Post, Oct. 2017.)

“America is useful for nothing else than to supply money.”

( S. Freud, 1909 )

“But Hefner was selling more than pornographic images.

He was selling a complete philosophy of life, a worldview. A

despicable, profoundly anti-human worldview. Fraterrigo

sums it up: For Hefner, ‘self-denial was old-fashioned. So

were… conservative sexual attitudes. It was okay to pursue

pleasure. In fact, it was American. Above all, individuals did

not have to follow the strictures of society—they could find

fulfilment in a lifestyle of their own choosing.’ Hefner, of

course, can’t take sole credit for the idea that pleasure is the

only worthy goal in life. In this post-modern age, that credit

should go mostly to Sigmund Freud. As I wrote in my book,

The Good Life, Freud believed that the purpose of life was to

‘become happy and remain so.’ And for Freud, happiness

resulted from pleasure. Specifically, sexual pleasure, free of all

those cumbersome social restraints foisted upon mankind by

religion.”

( Charles Colson, Catholic Exchange, 2010.)

See: Cold War Playboys: Models of Masculinity in the Literature

of Playboy, Author Taylor Joy Mitchell, University of South

Florida. – and Vitullo: “Playboy is a mix of conservative capitalist

economic views, pragmatic racial politics, and sexually progressive

standpoints. At times, the various positions clash, such as Hefner’s

It is most important to realize that a myth variant of science or

ideology, or a cultural expression, is not a variant that is merely

a simplification or a variant where one has forgotten the

important parts. A mythification is not that. A mythification, a

diffracted myth, is something else. Now, much can be myth,

yes everything, in relation to something else. “Someone should

teach me that one cannot write without stating all thoughts on

‘sincerity’...What writing requires...is to sacrifice a bit of one’s

Fantasy image, and in that way ensure capturing a bit of reality

with the help of language. All I can at best produce is a text

about the fantasy image…” ( R. Barthes )

But we must be methodical. Let us therefore first turn the

reasoning around. Let us hypothesize that the myth is always a

schematization. Let us add that it—for example—is always

empirical. How does the myth of—for example—

and the magazine’s purported support of both sexual freedom and

clearly-defined gen-der roles.” (Mark Vitullo) See also: Auf der

Couch: Psychoanalyse in Karikaturen. Eine kritische Studie

(SCHOTT's NEUE BIBLIOTHEK) Paperback – 12 Jun. 2024 by

Heinz Schott (Author), as well as: www.ssoar.info Freud in the

Mirror of Caricatures Quante, Julia Published Version / Journal

article Recommended Citation: Quante, J. (2014). Freud in the

Mirror of Caricatures. Psychology and Social Criti-cism, 38(3), 75-

97. The lecture was later published in book form (1910). The author

of The Aspern Pa-pers. Here one can also think of the study of

Talmud, the substantial collection of rules regarding every-day

ethics, which Judaism mandates studies of. Such studies are

encouraged not to take place individu-ally but only in pairs or

groups. One can thus best understand Talmud triangulistically. cf.

Elizabeth Fraterrigo, Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in

America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 (diss.) Freud’s

refusal concerned a film from the silent film era, 1926. Cf. Trichet,

Marion, Bulletin de psychologie 2017/1 Issue 547 Groupe d'études

de psychologie. - which analyses three films containing

psychoanalysts from film history: John Huston's Freud: The Secret

Passion (1962), Benoît Jacquot's Princesse Marie (2003), and David

Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011)......

psychoanalysis look when it has gone through this hypothesis

process? What does psychoanalysis look like in its myth

version?

The mass culture that swept over the West during the 20th

century, as a result of rapid industrialization, quickly seized

upon Freudian ideas, and after a few decades, a new genre

emerged within essay writing, film, journalism, and the novel,

where symbols that soon became classic as “Freudian” and the

Freudian analyst, as type and cliché, were featured. This often

occurred in a purely superficial, illustrative way, as in a

gigantic cultural “illustrated classic.” Amazed novel readers

and moviegoers, mainly in Europe and the U.S.A., repeatedly

experienced stories throughout this century, where the plot was

based on the Oedipal triangle, or where the main character was

a fetishist, or where they dreamt dreams, obvious to all in a

“psychoanalytic” way, just not for themselves, etc.... etc....

( At the same time, as in a living paradox, society itself, in its

high-tech form, and in its most absurd artistic view, took the

liberty to completely erase the symbols upon which they

allegedly grounded themselves in the supposedly primordial.

Thus, a cinema-goer could see houses burning in films, which

indicated that the soul and life were in acute danger, while

upon leaving the cinema, they could not see anything within a

mile radius that resembled a house, but all living things were

stuffed into gigantic squares, where walls could just as well be

barriers, and windows could be seen in a row, resembling more

a shelf.

Foolish, pretentious Modernity did its best to erode the

symbols believed to be eternal servants to the Unconscious—

our only reserve when it came to mental health—and to

figurative speech, where one often wished to speak of the brain

as a house for thought, and the eye as a window to the soul.

The architects were in their immense, foolish, egotistical

tendency, and their striving for their own immortality,

obsessed with trying to design houses that resembled a

geometric painting by Piet Mondrian rather than a house

recognizable in a painting by Jan Vermeer, idyllically mirrored

in a wide canal. Everything that was mirrored now was an

architect in another architect.) An art product that was often

placed as an integral part of the content, alongside nude

pictures and psychoanalytic essays about literature and society,

in the American monthly magazine Playboy was the cartoon.

Freud himself appreciated the cartoon, which he felt stood up

against authority. Freud believed he did the same. Much of

such opinions obviously formed part of Freud’s own myth-

making around psychoanalysis, and about his own person.

Throughout his career, he ensured that myths flourished

around his method and his psychoanalytic movement, and

preferably exclusively on his own terms.

When visiting the U.S.A. in 1909, and after the successful visit

to Clark University , in the presence of philosopher William

James ( Henry James' brother ) and neurologist J.J. Putnam, he

was invited for a mountain and forest walk with students and

teachers, but he was horrified by the lack of respect shown by

the students, who, to Sigmund's dismay, addressed everyone

by their first name. For Freud, the cartoon likely appeared as a

structurally fulfilling continuation of the joke, which he had

paid attention to at an early stage of his authorship. The joke

focuses, among other things, on triplicity: a joke works fully

only if three people are present. Here, in the divan cartoon,

there is a perfect tripartite division between the analyst, the

analysand, and the observer of the cartoon.

The film, in its massiveness and overwhelming diversity, is not

as structured into triplicity. Freud did not want to—upon

request—act as a consultant for the production of films with

psychoanalytic themes.

The scene—the setup (!)—in the divan cartoon is admirably

simple. One could say that it has a philosophically simple

form, or that it has an aesthetically perfected form At the same

time, while it has such a form, it is not pretentious, which one

might suspect when dealing with such a form. Reality's divan

scene is, to borrow a term from the metaphysician Carl Jung,

“archetypal.” Who can at all imagine a therapy conversation,

any at all, without first thinking of a scene with a divan, the

patient thereupon, and at the head end an analyst, equipped

with a pad and pencil? The magazine Playboy first emerged in

the 1950s. In December 1953, publication began, continuing

uninterrupted until 2020, and Playboy is therefore disqualified

from participating in an account of the background myth of the

Kafkaesque or the myth of Freud, but it has its place here both

because it is such an illuminating example of how a myth

transformation occurs and it shows how the caricature of

psychoanalysis progressed with unmitigated strength, long

after psychoanalysis, as theory and practice, had reached its

peak, which most consider to be around the mid-1950s. The

cartoon about psychoanalysis in Playboy stood roughly in the

same relationship to psychoanalysis as comedy writers did to

the three mad Caesars during the Roman Empire: it was a

negotiation game, where the Caesars knew that the comedians

enlightened the audience in the theatre about the entire scope

of the situation, with all its terror and arbitrariness. So it was

also with the cartoon in Playboy, where the cartoonists placed

modern civilization on the divan, with the Oracle at Delphi

beside it, with a cigar and glasses. Here, everything that

modern capitalist society created and subjected modern man to

could be visualized, with the oracle’s words, or complete lack

of words. And furthermore, all this occurred, so to speak, in

the name of sexuality, for as far as the arena was concerned, it

was fundamentally about tickling the male viewer's sexual

nerves. Here, too, was hinted at the connection between the

oracle and the Magazine. The oracle—i.e.,

Freud had proclaimed that everything fundamentally reverted

back to sexuality. Thus the ties began to be tightened around

the viewer, who now felt as if they were sitting in the middle

of the spider's (life's) web, snickering at the entire civilization,

including themselves. Indeed, only a fraction of the cartoons

in Playboy dealt with the theme of Freud's divan, but there

were enough of them for them to symbolize the radical attitude

of seducers and enlighteners that the magazine cleverly

endowed itself with. It became a time factor, a litmus test, and

a force to be reckoned with, well into the future, until the

Internet broke far too many boundaries, and the cultural

universe became limitless. The divan cartoon is therefore an

excellent example of the myth in the process of time.

THE COMMUNICATIVE MODE OF EXISTENCE of

MYTH

The myth is therefore not history. It is also not a symbol. A

symbol is something monolithic. The myth is not a series of

symbols, nor is it a story, but the myth is a SCENE for

DISPLAY. In the early Wittgenstein's classic Tractatus,

written during the First World War, W.'s entire theory of

language is presented as a collection of pictures, and the

linguistic proposition as an image ( W.'s theory of pictures).

There are also a number of sub-theories and theories that have

a relatively independent character. W. mentions, for example,

a distinction between saying and showing. The proposition:

"What can be shown, cannot be said."

Here Wittgenstein points out the great difference, the mutually

exclusive difference, between, for example, telling someone

how to cut Lena's hair and showing someone how to cut Lena's

hair. Even if it were possible to describe in many words how

to cut this hair (or do something else just as complicated), it is

actually impossible to describe, to say, how to cut this hair, in

the descriptive form that showing has, in that it shows how to

cut the hair. One can never say the showing, so to speak.

Saying and showing exclude each other.

So it is also with the myth, which in its tremendous schematic

nature is not at all built to be narrated, just as much as it is, in

its imagistic quality, intended to be represented with an image

or a showing. In this respect, the myth is much less a statement

than it is a display of an imagistic relationship. And thus

something decisive happens with the message that the myth

conveys. If the myth is something that is shown, like a haircut,

then it is indeed shielded from criticism! One cannot say about

the myth, which is exhibited on "the myth's stage," that: "That's

not how it happened!" just as one cannot say about the person

showing how to cut Lena's hair, that "That's not how you can

cut her hair!" since her hair has just recently been

demonstrably cut perfectly.

Thus, the myth, in that it almost instantly transformed into

simple images, which were placed on walls and turned into

friezes on temples, could not be objected to, as it showed more

than it narrated. The form of the myth was to build a bridge

between the obvious and the tale, in such a way that the tale

appeared obvious. Here, less was claimed than merely shown.

For the one who objected, the answer could come with a simple

pointing to the image on the wall, the statue in the square, and

the tattoo on the arm. The myth is therefore the least

argumentative one can find. If one takes philosophical writings

from the early centuries of our era, such as those of Josephus

or Sextus Empiricus, and imagines the exact opposite of their

persistently sophistic hair-splitting, one has the myth.

EXAMPLE : FEATHERED SNAKES

Aby Warburg - from the famous banking family in Hamburg,

with roots in Hungary - long-distance relatives of the

Regarding Josephus, ( d. 100 AD.) I am thinging of the way he is

reasoning which is completely void of prejudice. Those part of his

writings, indicating that he is a Christian, are supposedly forgery.

How J. displays Hoer´s empyré is strikingly accurate.

Gothenburg art and literature historian, Karl Warburg ( H.

Schück's

colleague ), - wrote the famous essay in

anthropology and myth research about feathered snakes

, the

snake ritual ( the snake dance ) among the Pueblo Indians

living in cliff dwellings in Arizona. Warburg had visited these

in Arizona during a trip to the USA in 1895. Essentially while

Warburg was drinking tea and bowing before the Pueblo

Indians, and photographing them

, German armies under

Henrik Schück was a completely secularized Jew, and at birth

dismissed by his father, and therefore could afford to emphasize the

violence in how the Israelis behaved in the Levant in his work, The

Israeli Literature, 1919, particularly since it happened thousands of

years before Christ's birth.

Confer the productive and noticeably unpretentious Edgar

Wallace, who in 1935 chose to title one of his books ( dedicated to

the capable Daphne du Maurier, author of the horror classic

“Rebecca” ) “The Frightened Snake.” Wallace had a sense of myth;

who can forget “King Kong”, where modernity reflects in the giant

gorilla's solitude? King Kong is a masterly example of the sort of soft

apocalypse story, that would make people in the 20ieth Century feel

a little bit more safe in their technological horror everyday life.

Wallace was also unique in that he declared that there was not a

SINGLE SENTENCE in his entire authorship that had literary value!

Wallace is fascinating in the combination of creative thought and the

rejection of psychologically perceptive aesthetics, which is the

foundation of art, that he presented with his work. With Wallace, it is

like observing someone’s back. His followers, who idolized Wallace

and assured him in letters that they could surpass him, like Gerald

Kersch, who likewise came to have significance for film, became

more of a Jewish Zola, in their dense but far too chaotic descriptions

of the Jewish working class in London.

Much like the French psychiatrist Gaetan Clérambault, specialist

in the 40000 titmes was photographing women wrapped in various

cloths on his travels in Marocco. C. was also a teacher at a college

for theatre, in the art of drapery. So it is: what is culture but the art of

drapery? What do we do, other than cover, to cover, and entice the

thought of revelation? What is more pretentious than to dwell in this

oscillation between draping existence in organza and slowly, to

music, freeing a girl from the covering layer?

General Trotha were massacring the inhabitants of German

South West Africa – now Namibia – in a genocide that saw

more than 60,000 Africans shot to death, others interned in

concentration camps and stripped of their land.

Warburg's question was:

"What elements are we entitled to call the essential

characteristics of primitive paganism?"

The essay - or lecture - has a suggestive power, which is further

emphasized if one knows how vulnerable Warburg himself

was while working on the project, haunted by anxiety and

confusion, still not fully discharged from the mental hospital

where he was treated.

Warburg's lecture asks about the

significance of myth not only for the human being who lived

before Edison and Tesla but also for us. How shall we deal

Jfr. G. Yasayanlar: ”Aby Warburg is a scientist and theorist who,

in his search for spiritual freedom caught between two wars,

associatively interrogates the correspondence of images in his own

subjective world and realises an inner transformation each time. The

experience of contemplation he observes in the lives of Pueblo

Indians can turn into a mystical experience that brings him together

with his own reality. In this respect, it is interesting that the mysticism

of the Serpent Dance and the impulse it creates emerges years later

at a time coinciding with his treatment process, enabling him to

recover and reach the necessary motivation. This is pre-cisely why

the liberating experience and perception of reality observed by a

psychology struggling with unlimited complexity in relation to what

it senses in a primitive tribe, the beliefs and magical powers created

by a ritual with cultural polysemy, is worth examining.” (

https://saglamart.com/warburg-snake-dance.) G. Y. me-nar också att

Warburgs föredrag skapar en fascinerande palimpsest, och att det är

mötet mellan Warburg och indianerna som är kanske – historiskt –

mer intressant än redogörelsen för ormdansen. Warburg kom att

inspi-rera Ernst Cassirer till dennes filosofi och symbolism och myt.

jfr. E.C.: THE PHILOSOPHYOF SYMBOLIC FORMS, London,

Geoffrey Cumbellege. Oxford University Press,1955.

with the great questions of life without myths, without magical

thinking and religion?

One of the most comprehensive and best lexicons of all the

world's myths was perhaps written by Robert Graves. He had

a firm notion that myth had been used for repressive purposes,

but his main point - which he presented in The White Goddess:

a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth - was that it was up to

poetry to revive the oldest part of myth, the cult of the moon.

Graves:

“My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently

current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a

magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies

in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating

from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of

true poetry—'true' in the nostalgic modern sense of 'the

unimprovable original, not a synthetic substitute'. The

language was tampered with in late Minoan times when

invaders from Central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for

matrilinear institutions and remodel or falsify the myths to

justify the social changes. Then came the early Greek

philosophers who were strongly opposed to magical poetry as

threatening their new religion of logic, and under their

influence, a rational poetic language ( now called the Classical

) was elaborated in honour of their patron Apollo and imposed

on the world as the last word in spiritual illumination: a view

that has prevailed practically ever since in European schools

and universities, where myths are now studied only as quaint

relics of the nursery age of mankind.”

(The White Goddess, p.12.)

Matt Wilson:

“Graves was a lifelong lecturer, and this tendency

culminated with the publication of The White Goddess. This

massive survey first appeared in 1948 when Graves was in his

early 50s, though you could say he never quite finished it:

subsequent editions were revised, expanded, clarified, and

appended.

Graves believed he had composed a genuine Key to All

Mythologies, and a few on the esoteric and occult fringes still

agree with him. To make short work of a long book, The White

Goddess argues that humanity once worshipped a three-aspect

moon goddess, but that in time immemorial, patriarchal

revolutions the world over suppressed her. In a speech given a

few years post-publication, Graves, never humble,

characterized the “inspiration” that descended upon him: “I

seem to have stumbled on the central secret of neolithic and

Bronze Age religious faith, which makes sense of many

otherwise inexplicable myths and religious customs.” The

innumerable “myths and customs” encountered in his

investigations include medieval Welsh riddle poetry,

forbidden druidic alphabets, the chthonic associations of the

elder tree, “the Orphic tree-alphabet,” the cults of Apollo and

Minerva, the isle of Avalon in Arthurian myth, and much more.

Graves emphasizes the literary significance of his

enlightenment, arguing that genuine poets are unknowing

Goddess worshippers who reject Apollonian rationality

(Apollo is a sort of anti-Goddess in Graves’s scheme) and give

ecstatic, if uncomprehended, homage to the mother of poetry.

The White Goddess now seems like the last in a loose series of

passionately argued, thoroughly researched, elegantly written,

and generally dubious cultural-mythical exegeses. James

George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, a loose, baggy, repetitive,

and enthralling account of a dying and resurrecting god across

cultures and civilizations, may be the first. Later iterations

include Jessie Weston’s Grail study From Ritual to Romance,

which influenced T. S. Eliot’s symbolism in The Waste Land,

and Alfred Watkins’s The Old Straight Track, the first book to

posit ley lines (the term originates with Watkins) across the

English landscape. Joseph Campbell’s Jung-lite The Hero with

a Thousand Faces, which appeared in 1949, is a disreputable

cousin to these books; the anthropological histories of Claude

Lévi-Strauss might be their academic heirs.

Graves saw this study as an apex of his career, and the

importance he placed on the Goddess has ensured that no critic

can read Graves’s poetry without looking for her three faces.

Grevel Lindop, in his introduction to the Farrar, Straus and

Giroux edition of The White Goddess, notes that Graves to

some degree became a prisoner of the deity he invented or

discovered. Can we read Graves without looking to the moon?"

As a contrast to Graves' poetic view of the moon, one can recall

the astonishing geological knowledge of how the Earth and the

Moon were formed, as was presented so convincingly by the

Australian A.E. Ringwood last century. He describes in a book

( Origin of the Earth and the Moon, New York 1979) how the

Earth, like many planets, forms through aggregation from dust

clouds in such an intricate – and violent way – that during the

process, nearly all planetary formations create an atmosphere

of debris – material not fitting into the actual planet formation

– around the planet itself, in such a way that a huge amount of

debris subsequently – through the various attractive forces that

matter is subjected to – easily forms MOONS through similar

aggregation. Moreover, this very Ringwood was honoured

with a metallic substance named after him ( Eng.: ringwoodite

), after he elegantly showed – by studying small diamonds

found in lava and in meteorites – that in the Earth's mantle -

i.e., roughly between the Earth's crust and core - there is a large

layer of a bluish substance – an aggregate of magnesium and

silicon – which has contained enormous amounts of water, so

that this amount corresponds to more than two whole Earth

surface water masses, or something like that. One hypothesis

is that the water that exists near the Earth's surface, in the form

of all these seas, has "sweated out" from ringwoodite and

become the stormy ocean upon which steamers, sailboats, and

foaming waves rush forward. This also means that we who live

up here in the crust area have, under our feet, vast reserves of

water far beneath us. This may be comforting to know during

times of drought in the summer.

What can MYTH help us understand? Did Sisyphus, as

he rolled his boulder, have any myths in mind?

The mythical indicates that which is believed but does not

exist.

"We have created our myth. The myth is faith; it is passion.

It need not be a reality. It is a reality since it is a spur, a hope,

a belief, that it is courage. Our myth is the nation; our myth is

the greatness of the nation!"

( Benito Mussolini )

An obscure, newer branch of myth research emerged with

structural myth research, primarily exposed in Claude Lévi-

Strauss's work – L.-S., a lawyer- born in Bruxelles - who more

or less accidentally found himself in São Paulo, and in the

jungles outside the city, in Brazil, in the 1930s – in which the

concentration is not on the arbitrary but on the total structures

that can be traced in the total mass of myths from all times, and

to some extent viewed from the perspective of past times. It is

a matter of uncovering determining structures. Here, as the

symbolists did, one does not only seek similarities among

symbols worldwide and was not, like the functionalists, solely

interested in the various conditions under which myths arose.

D. Sperber, Le Structuralisme en Antropologie,1968.

Within structuralism, one sought the structures that, like the

human language centre in the brain, organized phenomena in

the world in a way that could only be observed in first hand

myths.

These structures could even be laid out in diagrams, clarified

through the use of various logical and mathematical symbols,

as is the case, for example, in Lévi-Strauss's "Le Cru et le

Cuit."

LITERARY fiction often succeeds in placing the individual in

the situations of existence, in the positions of choice, which

contain a great dramatic tension, due to the fruitful duality

created by fiction, which describes reality, always having a

myth as its background.

By always having a myth as the

foundation for fiction, we as readers can also assess this myth

based on what we experience within the hero, from what we

… and not myths that are edited, like for instance by the Grimm

Brothers, or the Swede A.A. Afzelius.

Overall, the duality ( like the one in Irony ) itself has an enormous

power, both in the irony itself and in, for example, the

Rembrandtesque expression, which weaves around the viewer in its

insidious blend of weakness and strength. This has been noted by

myself in the book "The Theft of the Painting": "With Rembrandt,

it's not a single line that matters. Rembrandt was, in this respect,

extraordinarily elastic in his personality, moving his line within a

range between being completely strictly powerful on one hand and

being sketchily overviewed, loose, and searching in the line on the

other. And most of what he drew is in fact just a journey between

these two extremes. It is this pleasurable journey between energy

levels that makes Rembrandt so delightful and makes him such a

warm and humane artist. It is also not wrong to view Rembrandt as

an artist who, through his various ways of approaching reality, so to

speak ironically always illuminated one way with another, and as an

artist who, through this smiling ambivalence, endeavoured to provide

us with a double description of his world and his person, as well as

our own." It is important to note that Irony cannot be used to

persuade somebody in any matter, but Myth always tries to.

know and experience of him. Conversely, we learn, with the

help of the overarching myth of the hero. The contemporary

myth is in most cases a false image painted by the prevailing

power in contemporary society. It is the false history set from

the position of power, which the powerful, the psychopath, is

so capable of creating, and which the powerful - that is to say,

the ruling class, the man in power - is so capable of launching,

most successfully faking the impression that this myth

originates from the depths of the people, from the soul of the

people and the inner depths of humanity in relation to the…

divine. The myth has throughout time been polished, which

means that MYTH was Humanity’s truth, when in all societies,

and myth has in reality only - in all its parts - always served

the elite.

Myth has never arisen from any depth. "The depths of the

people" is itself a myth.

Everything related to myth has been

created to deceive the servants of the true ruler. Myth is just as

false as the concept of "the people," "the soul of the people,"

and "the nation." Lévi-Strauss suggests that, what is true about

history, is also true about myth. There is no sharp boundary

between the two.

A common idea is that a myth is something to be analyzed, and

that it is something that is not quite real, but more fiction, yet

fiction that has a somewhat more profound meaning than

stories in general.

What few people realize is that we are all parts of not just one,

but parts of many myths. What about equally few realize is that

these myths, of which we are so little aware, are something that

largely determines our lives.

Cf. Josef Jastrow, American psychologist, born in Warshaw, in his

book, The house that Freud built:” The soul of our species has a

history ( myth), p.122., in commenting upon Freud´s Totem and

Taboo.

Some people

argue that myths are socially necessary, and

that the criterion of truth of the myth is its "efficacy." It is

argued that the efficacy of the myth is connected to its general,

empirically validated positive validating and inspiring power.

As everyone knows, fiction, which can be both myth and part

of a myth, investigates, in a conscious or unconscious way, the

current overarching myth, alternatively myths from earlier

epochs, alternatively myths from humanity's very early

childhood, when we separated ourselves from beings with in

some aspects lower levels of consciousness.

Myth is peculiar when one looks closely at it; as Lévi-

Strauss – the ethnologist and philosopher behind books like

The Story of the Panther and The Jealous Potter – pointed out,

myth and the parts of myth are such that no part in a myth is

more important than another. Yes, one can indeed say about

the myth - unlike historiography - that no PART is

independently important, or that ALL parts are. Just as in a

work of art. Through integrated totality, art operates. But

fiction is then - as mentioned - while it is a myth, as a historical

phenomenon, a creator of myth, in its diverse forms of either

literature, visual art, or film, etc., etc.

Lévi-Strauss also asserts – in the preface to Le Cru et le Cuit –

that myth interpretation is like a kind of anaclastic

investigation: it is about refraction.

The most interesting anaclastic variant is perhaps the one,

when a white light ray hits a thicker medium and diffractively

Like for instance the Historian Karen Armstrong. But this is of

course the general, accepted idea about Myth.

Lévi-Strauss was – when he asserted that a culture without any

literary tradition should be called primitive - accused of

ethnocentrism by Jacques Derrida,( in: Grammatology ) who, unlike

L.-S. was not born in Europe, but in Maghreb in Northern Africa.

The Raw and the Cooked, p.5.

splits into various colours; for one can indeed see this when a

myth is processed through something that is not a myth, but a

literary work, which in several respects can be considered a

THICKER medium than myth, which is as fast as light, and

always made so that it can be as light as possible. One can thus

call it a THEORY OF REFRACTION when Freud’s thoughts

are diffracted in the medium here constituted by Kafka's

works. It is this process we are interested in, this anaclasticity.

(cf. Fig.1.)

-----------------------------------------------------

"The main basic principle of the skeptic system is that of

opposing to every proposition an equal proposition; for we

believe that as a consequence of this we end by ceasing to

dogmatize.”

( Sext. Emp. Outline, P.19 )

The most potent interrogative tool fiction has is irony. Irony -

which in many cases may be unknown to the author - is

fiction's most robust questioning, sceptical tool. A society

without irony is in great danger. A community without irony

has no correlator, no question, no creative negativity, no

scepticism, no self-awareness, nor archaeology of the

conscious or unconscious. Irony is also, by radically exposing,

the key to knowledge of the unconscious and the current

hallucination, and to the hallucination in our time.

Hallucination is not isomorphic with a myth, but they have

similarities.

Scepticism is fundamentally a defence against dogmatism.

Irony is an attack on this. Through irony, the myth is

unmasked, but irony also gives rise to more irony.

The goal of Scepticism is to reach a state of ”quietude”, which is

calm and unaffectedness.

UNMASKING THE MYTH is – inevitably – a risky

occupation. Since it is truly a redefinition of reality, it is open

for debate about what is reality if we do not have any myths.

Some people – if not all – will try to use this redefinition to

their advantage. If we do not criticize the myths – after we have

proven that the myths are instituted by malevolent rulers and

bandits, oppressors and usurpers, why should we even discuss

politics? If we talk about politics, we still have a world defined

by old myths.

"Science must start with myths, and with the criticism of

myths."

( Karl Popper )

Even culture itself has been subjected to such an extension that

it is a fetish in itself. Redefining the world by claiming that the

myths about NATIONS, & character and folklore are mostly

propaganda is a prerequisite for a world where democracy can

thrive as the sole important means to achieve universal peace.

"We choose Ithaca, the loyal land, the bold, clear

thought, the clear-sighted action, the personality of the one

who knows./…../ that conquers what we already own – the

scant fresh crops in the fields, the brief love on this earth."

(Camus, L'Homme Revolté)

One might - apropos our beloved and necessary irony - think

about how Anna Freud despised irony. Perhaps it was difficult

for someone who had been raised as a mouthpiece for a theory

to embrace the flagship of the sceptical doctrine?

Through the ages the conservative right has always

Cf. Upton Sinclair, The Profits of Religion.

The Revolted Man, p. 123

emphasized the importance of the mythical domain, to make

people slaves of historic, superficial bonds, to try to make a

particular group of people believe that they are superior. The

answer is about anti-myth work!

Myths are able to magnify some trivial gang fights of almost

no historical significance. Such a deception is often dealt with,

but under another star, by professors of literature across the

Western academic world in the form of the Homeric question.

Few people have realized that what we are dealing with in the

Iliad can be compared to today's gang fights in the suburbs,

where boys around 14 or 15 years old are involved (regarding

the weaponry used in the Iliad, it is sticks). The most reliable

source, a contemporary one, of what it was all about is

probably the historian Herodotus ( d. 425 BC ) when he

informs us about the number of inhabitants of the city of Troy.

This city had about 2,000 inhabitants. Taking away mothers,

children, and grandparents, not to mention all the wise boys

who thought it was a bad idea, we are left with a couple dozen

gangsters. They can easily fit in the café in my neighbourhood.

The Trojan War was – just to speculate - no more than a

brawl in size when the boys in a house in my suburb got angry

at the boys in another place for having been too loud when they

celebrated the victory of the latest football match, or when they

had too large an engagement party for a popular girl. Some real

weapons were not owned by the boys with the wooden boat.

They had felled some trees to make wooden sticks. Pelion's

spear was the biggest stick they had. I can assure my reader

that there are a few discussions about Pelion's spear in the

Pentagon! Pelion’s spear was a tree that had grown on the

mountain of Pelion, and it was believed that felling it could

scare one's opponent. The gang that set out to attack the

"castle" of Troy brought a couple of horses and some rowing

boats. One could imagine the little children running around

with pots on their heads. When it comes to all the gods in this

remarkable story, they were of course in reality all older,

uncles, aunts, and sisters as well as all the toothless alcoholics

that the gang had left behind, but who entered their minds

because they occasionally felt so guilty about having left them

without support. For they ought to be supporters for them, you

know. Grandfathers and uncles following the gang from a

distance could not help but indefatigably interfere in all sorts

of matters, which older people usually did. The goal of the

daring gang leaders, like Agamemnon and Achilles, was to set

upon the poor little Hector, who had had a bad reputation in all

neighbouring areas for months. They landed Philoctetes on an

island, as he was feeling ill.

It is a good story, thanks to the genius with the helper dog,

Homer, who used to sit under a tree during years of drought,

floods, and plague, and do nothing.

Few literature professors have been able to discern the scale of

the events behind the tale and have thereby missed the true

genius of the boy with the helper dog. I love the images he

gave us of Eos with her thousand rosy fingers, which were thus

named rosy fingers!

The professor missed the mythologization. Throughout all

ages, since Denisova, people have invented stories like the

Iliad to magnify themselves, their relatives, and their groups.

Feed them with myths!

Even a brawl over the beautiful girl living next door, who

eloped from Greece to Turkey with her lover, can be made into

a fantastic story, a great epic!

But Homer’s tale did not achieve what is crucial in literature.

It did not demythologize. It may have humanized the gods, but

not enough for the ancient Greek reader to understand that

there are no gods. The Iliad does give joy, which is also

something good. In my opinion, demythologizing is what

literature should effectuate, apart from the joy of beauty. These

two things are what this book is about. Literature in the future

should deal with and deliver these two things.

The Soul of Things

ANOTHER KIND OF MYTH is... let’s say... the myth that the

great seafaring ship has its own will. Or the car on the road,

our body, or that every book writes itself. The sailor does not

sail; the ship sails by itself.

THE SAILING SHIP. The solitary ship on the vast sea (the

myth behind Moby Dick, An Outcast of the Islands, and The

Mysterious Island ):

The ship is unsinkable and sails as if by itself. The background

to all these books about seamen in remote places, fantastic

ships with extraordinary powers, seas with infinite surface, can

be found among all the men who have lived and sailed on these

ships for years, all those who built them, and all those who are

dependent on them. The ships are of genius construction,

carefully assembled, with thousands of parts, wood or metal,

tertium non datur, all with their fine names, and all cared for

meticulously, every hour of the day, every season in its way,

as if the rigging of the ship were part of a theology, created by

many centuries of marine priests. Every sail and everything

that makes sails, and makes them large, turns the vessels into

large sailing ships, serves to create the environmental

backdrop to all the special, fateful moral problems on these

gigantic wooden boxes under sail. Sailing ships have been the

material foundation for countless people in round periods of

time. While storms and wars pass by, they continue to sail in

remote waters, carrying their goods and their mythology,

alluring and elusive. Some aboard these ships know that these

ships live and breathe. The waves crash against the hull. The

ship sometimes sails by itself. Not just The Flying Dutchman,

oh no! Every ship always sails by itself. That someone steers

is merely an illusion.

(Albert Pinkham Ryder, The Flying Dutchman )

Myth is a phenomenon of an ideal kind, an ethereal trivia that

people come up with when they need something they do not

have. Myths are what we have and do not have. It is believed

that myths and legends have existed since the Age of

Dinosaurs, but that could also be a lie. Many just wished for

instance that their country had a myth

- and believed that

humanity could not imagine anything about itself and its place

on earth without having a myth to relate to. Others believe that

Famous in this respect Fr. Schlegel, editor of Ateneum, C.A 1810,

became.

the myth is created by those who have something to gain by

creating the particular myth. Many people still wave flags

today. Thus, the myth of the rain god and the rain man, of the

wicked man and the man with the evil eye, and the myth of the

good, and the myth of the two eternally loving, and similar,

created by kings and priests, who realized that they would gain

an advantage if the myth spread among their fellow humans.

Thus are the myths of great ships without crews, themselves

great ships without crews, mass-produced - and they are after

the kings and priests have died - eventually completely

rudderless stories. The historical centenary tonnage, our

everything, rests weightless and rudderless in the sea, which

derives its coldness and light from the space above, and its

bitterness and metallic taste from the alimony layers in the

Earth's interior.

Defenders of myths often claim that people need myths, and

that it is impossible to understand the world around us, if we

do not have these myths. Only that they themselves do not

require these myths to understand anything. The need is always

ascribed to other people. THEY need myths.

It is about the same lie that is evident when people claim

that children need children´s books. They do not. It is the

authors of children´s books that need children´s books!

But what about The Flying Dutchman?

This is an example of a most astonishing and catching myth.

There are many versions circulating, but it often goes: sailors

tries to seek shelter in a distant port to avoid a hideous storm.

They are denied entrance, and the ship vanishes, but is then

seen by sailors all over the world, apparently sailing without

any crew.

Other versions goes: the captain of the ship has committed

hideous crimes and God does not permit him to go ashore, but

Cf. the Swedish primitivist Arthur Lundkvist.

every time the ship comes near a port, the wind turns against

the ship and drives it away out in the ocean.

There are other versions too, and it is not a very old myth, but

the phantom ship with no crew is a common denominator.

KIERKEGAARD, CAMUS. FREUD and MYTH and

HORROR

WITH HORROR Kierkegaard also regarded how myths, with

horror—not least through Christianity—shaped the world.

One of his earliest books, published within a few years in the

early 1840s and dealing with this, was Fear and Trembling.

Here, the story of Abraham and Isaac is treated, when

Abraham receives orders from "God" to sacrifice Isaac. This

horror story is also of the type "The train has left, the journey

is over." Much like the Kafka parable Before the Law.

Kierkegaard's excellent treatment of the story, which

concludes in the belief in the absurd

( that Isaac would

nonetheless be saved by God ), leads him to believe in

something that one might call "redemptive horror."

That something is not KNOWN to us.

If one searches available sources for information about

Kierkegaard's person, as well as reading his works, it becomes

apparent, for the sensitive reader, that Kierkegaard is a complex

individual, and his face resembles the well-known Janus more than

many other famous intellectuals. Sometimes Kierkegaard appears as

the desperate one, at other times as the playfully laughing one. At

times he is the sincere friend, and at others the calculating

dialectician. And one cannot quite make sense of it. However, it was

precisely Kierkegaard's cheerfully arrogant and scheming, yet highly

INTERESTED personality that made his confrontation with the

WORLD so extremely interesting. His contemporary society was

marked by spiritualist emptiness. His father and his distantly loved

one were both engaged in spiritualist religiosity, which probably

disgusted Kierkegaard. The most vivid concrete trauma in Denmark

during Søren Kierkegaard's upbringing was likely the memory of the

Napoleonic Wars. Spiritually, the most vivid for S. K. were 1.)

Holberg's Comedies, 2.) the songs about the sweet Jesus, despised by

Kierkegaard from Herrnhutism, and 3.) Hegel's unreal philosophy for

Kierkegaard, 4.) Romantic horror novels. Misunderstood as

Kierkegaard was, he decided, disguised as a priest (he was ordained),

and thoroughly distrustful in his city, much due to his irritating

personality, to become the world's foremost ... horror writer.

(Hyperaesthesia – as "one can famously die from," as S.K. wrote...)

KIERKEGAARD'S HORROR-PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS:

Among the horror-romantic themes that Kierkegaard manages to

delve into, in his inspired and somewhat manic lifestyle, the

following can be noted, among others: Don Juan's and the seducer's

general (in The Seducer's Diary) dark interior - the cheerfulness of

the lost soul. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac because

he hears an indistinct voice that might be God's in his head.

Reflections on whether it is really decent to allow oneself to be

crucified by humans like the Jesus-God, thereby letting them incur

eternal guilt when one is, after all, omnipotent. Contemplations on

whether anything can truly be repeated or even remembered. Original

Kierkegaard both hopes that he demythologizes and does not.

He writes himself: "Oh, when I one day am dead, that book,

Fear and Trembling, will be enough to make me immortal.

Then it will indeed be read and translated into countless

languages. The reader will literally shrink before the terrifying

pathos in the book." … Søren Kierkegaard, who of course

suspected that the horror in the book actually came from the

fable it treated. The paradox faith, the paradoxical faith in

Jesus as a paradox! The superposition of paradox—and the

belief in the absurd is of course completely intellectually

dishonest. Bertrand Russell simply called Kierkegaard a

romantic.

It is interesting how almost everything SK writes about is

related to horror. But he was also raised in horror, by the blood-

Christianity of the Herrnhut movement and by his father,

Michael P. Kierkegaard, with his paranoia directed at an

invisible being …, the father who believed that his existence

was a form of punishment from the invisible … because as a

young boy, working as a shepherd on the Jutland heath, he had

climbed a hill and cursed God. The father told this later to the

child Søren.

Camus was filled with the rebellious horror—real or

constructed—before the absurd. In his books The Myth of

Sisyphus and The Rebel ( L´Homme revolté ) . All of Camus'

thinking about absurdity and revolt, in all its pretentious form

and spirit — ultimately stems from some passages in Kojève's

illustrious lectures on Hegel from the early 1930s, where K.

elaborates on negation as the driving force in world history, as

part of K.'s explanation of Hegelian dialectics.

sin. Can the father’s defiance against God have truly condemned an

entire family to misfortune? Original sin. Can original sin really

condemn all of humanity to anxiety? (in: The Concept of Anxiety)

Can one be oneself? What if one has no self? What if one does not

WANT to be oneself? (in: The Sickness Unto Death) What if one

cannot read a book?! (in: The Book of Fortale)

Kojève defended authority, in itself, just as the one authority

that ruled in his birthplace, the Soviet Union, worshipped the

revolt that was seen symbolized in the communist system,

where the goal of revolt was fulfilled, or at least a march.

According to Kojève

, authority was, of course, preferable to

chaos since true authority is the one which one willingly

submits to, just as the people in the Soviet Union did. Outside

a system where authority reigns, one can only lean against the

negation according to Kojève. In The Rebel, it is this eternal

no, without authority, that Camus preaches. Sartre, who at that

time was some communist, believed that Camus was

pubescent, or at most in high school. In embracing absurdity,

Camus thus positions himself under the question of absurdity

itself, under the myth of Sisyphus, for this myth, while it

explains that existence is absurd, also lifts from humanity the

feeling of absurdity by naming existence ab-surd

. This is of

course absurd. Camus describes Breton's surrealism—its

fusion of reality and dream—as the concrete irrationalism and

the objective danger. Surrealism, with its defence of Nietzsche

and return to ancient Greek values, has its enemy in

rationalism, claims Camus. Camus and the idea of the absurd,

which floated as a mantra in the 1960s, over time has had less

influence. Kierkegaard's radical voluntarism: "The truth is to

will one thing." … has been somewhat more enduring, even

though its argumentation is nearly as weak as Camus'.

Camus is of course worse, since his point is that it is in some

way an aristocratic and honourable act, to realize that every

thing is absurd ( which indeed is nothing ) and still “want to

live”. This positions commits nobody to anything, and is sheer

hubris plus a giant neglect for truly suffering.

Horkheimer and Adorno—the creators of the Frankfurt School

and Critical Theory—believed that they had come to an insight

The exact truth about Kojève´s relation to Stalin and the Soviet

Union has not yet been established.

Ab surdus = from deafness.

about the myth's circle regarding the analysis of the myth's

dictates: enlightenment was essentially the same as myth. The

moment enlightenment, reason in various ways rid itself of

myth, which always supported the belief that it was possible to

sort out all problems by using violence, thus through fascism,

a new myth was created, by which one AGAIN decided that it

was only with violence, through fascism, that one had the right

to rid oneself of newly discovered myths, etc. There are always

new reasons for a new authoritarian movement. Particularly in

times of high technical refinement and great automation. Who

really sees the human's place in such an environment? Who

understands what is myth and what is reason? Who could, for

example, see what is the small linguistic myth and what is the

large ideological myth? Who could be heard amidst the birth

of myth after myth? What is a demythologization? This

analysis was criticized by Habermas, who probably perceived

it as defeatist. Everything Adorno wrote came to be shaped,

consciously or unconsciously, according to a strict, orthodox

Marxist power analysis. The purpose of the Frankfurt School

was revolution.

FREUD´S STATUETTES

Reflection on how disenchanted something can become Freud

did not experience art but interpreted the patterns and figures

in art theoretically, not aesthetically. Lars Sjögren compares

the manifest dream to a piece of poetry and argues that Freud

had not the slightest sense of poetry either, in contrast, for

example, to a F. de Saussure. He did have, on the other hand,

a near-manic interest in jokes, which all kinds of jokes seem to

have stuck in his memory, which never exhibited any lack. The

book on jokes – which is part of the trilogy that according to

Lacan and others constituted the core of psychoanalysis;

Dream Interpretation, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,

and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious - is an

extensive collection of examples of over 690 pages.

The Jewish joke, sometimes seen as an original creation, can

perhaps be seen against the background of the prosaic in the

multi-thousand-page commentary on the Torah, Talmud, and

in Jewish religiosity as a whole, where one traditionally, in the

words of the Swede Meyerson, has a "God one can speak

with." The Jewish joke is, among other things, full of

sophistication, a kind of cunning intellectual play. Often

enough it is an example of Jewish racism. The Christian

religiosity - in contrast, since the environment in which Freud

grew up was Christian - is, from its inception, in the New

Testament, founded in an absolute seriousness, Jesus’ of

Nazarath words about a Yes-Yes, and in an absolute paradox,

the worship of the suffering God-Man, the “saviour,” and in an

absolute submission. The Christian God, in all his three

manifestations, Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit - whether

within Catholicism or Protestantism - cannot be discussed

with. In prayer, one can – indeed - present one’s case, and thus

consider oneself to initiate a certain dialogue, but one cannot

dispute with God. In Kierkegaard’s words, the relationship to

God is characterized precisely by the fact that “in the face of

God, we are all wrong.”

In Judaism, it is therefore more of a reasoning relationship.

Freud, who sees the joke as a descent into the unconscious

foundations, is also, in his total discourse, methodically

somewhat mystical. On the one hand, it is like a walk, which

seems arbitrary, and has an infinite potential length, and where

everyone, at times, doubts whether the walk will end somewhat

happily, and where the mentioned drives increases page after

page. There also prevails – in Freud – a mysticism surrounding

all drives and the Unconscious, where one feels like Anselm

of Canterbury, who, in order to prove God’s existence, asked

God for help.

We have in psychoanalysis numerous problems, problems that

are not only characteristic of psychoanalysis but naturally for

all human sciences, and some things are problematic

concerning all sciences. We cannot define “human,”

“conscious,” “preconscious,” etc. completely, yet we navigate

with these terms - placed in relation to each other in a model

that – as a model – resembles a closed system, like a board

game, with winners and losers.

The radical skewness in Freud’s talent profile, which bore the

stamp of a puzzle-solver, can also be illustrated by his two

famous desks: the one in Vienna and the one in London, where

a whole horde of small statuettes in terracotta and bronze stood

day in and day out staring at the soul alchemist while he wrote.

Freud’s inability to experience art, but desperate need to have

the outer shapes, gestures, and attributes of the statuettes

represent something distant and mythical, is almost comical,

as it builds on a presumption that every figure in wood, by

definition, must have an INFINITE MEANING linked to a

spirituality whose origin stretches back to the birth of

humanity! Humanity is free to create its own culture.

Freud may thus have suffered from a kind of logocentric

compulsion to interpret. But that a meaning of an artifact,

created by a human, can lie – not in what can be said in words

about it – but in a series of proportions, or in some contrasting

moods, in two colours next to each other, - which all can speak

so deeply to people, so that these people could walk three times

around the world on foot, just to experience something similar

again, - such that Freud cannot have understood. Freud

belonged to that part of the Earth's population that did not have

a sense of art.

Thus, Freud was excluded from much of what constitutes

human life for other people. With that, much of what Freud

claims about humanity, consciousness, and dreams falls apart,

since it was built on something as unreliable as self-analysis,

on subjective interpretation, introspection.

All figurines – fetched from all corners of the world – on the

desk represent a whole tradition, a whole worldview, a whole

myth, which Freud imagines represents, determines, and

reveals a whole group of people, an ethnic culture, an area of

the earth, etc., without Freud, except on rare occasions,

questioning under what power relations these figures, and what

they are said to represent, have been produced and crafted!

“Culture thus paralyzes the individual’s dangerous aggressive

drive, weakens and disarms him, and, by placing an instance

within him, guards him, just as one places a troop in a

conquered city.”

The figurines on the desk, which resemble a small army,

arranged to defend their owner in all weathers – not unlike a

boy’s fantasy in the playroom – tell Freud nothing, as he is

only sensitive to what he can transform them into. If he does

not feel the need for an interpretation of them, they do not exist

for him. Esse est percipi. This is why he can have them there,

every day, before him on the desk. They are, in Freud’s eyes,

merely assertions, perhaps at most jokes, thus: meta-assertions.

If it is as Rutschky argues, in "Freud und die Mythen" (1983)

that the myth for Freud would be the concept of what should

be clarified, then Freud works daily in front of the eyes of thirty

intensely unresolved cases.

These statues are – for the inventor of psychoanalysis – not

objects that can evoke feelings. Even if they are cult objects,

they are still completely disenchanting, in a way that

nevertheless defies most people's experience, as it lies quite

deep within most of us to have a certain reverence for other

civilizations' systems of thought, and the concept of holiness,

which for the philosopher Otto was such an obviousness that

he wanted to establish “holiness” as a category of reason,

alongside the other categories in Immanuel Kant's teaching on

transcendental reason. (cf. Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige. )

A common person, with a normal sensitivity to the

connotations of objects, would have gone mad if their daily

work took place in front of staring ivory eyes from East

African ebony heads. Nothing is, however secular and

scientific one might be, ever completely disenchanted.

FREUD and the ANTROPOLIGISTS

It seems as though Freud mostly viewed the myth as a parallel

to the dream: the myth as a kind of cultural clairvoyant

phenomenon that could be decoded. ( There is really no limit

to how much truth has been attributed to Myth, the most

uncertain of all sources, as if all humanity, in the absence of

anything else, turned to tales for guidance… The notion that

the myth would be ridiculous does not even occur to anyone. )

But more on this later. On Freud's desk—both the one in

Vienna and later the one in London—stood wooden, ceramic,

and bronze statues en masse, illustrating mythical tales and

conceptions of all kinds from nearly all the continents of the

earth. ( Freud's chair, on the other hand, was more ergonomic.

He is also said to have read with one foot entwined in one of

its legs.) Myths are symbols that have gained elephantiasis,

have grown out of their clothes, and run amok. The more

accurate analysis of the myth belongs to Malinowski, as he

argues that the myth reflects social and historical conditions,

which are always based on power. Nothing can be more trivial

than treating myths as reflections from the depths of the folk

psyche, as has been done for centuries by anthropologists and

the like. Michelle Wallace, for example, argues that what Lévi-

Strauss refers to as "myth" in books like Tristes tropiques, akin

to Freud, is nothing more than "history." Exoticization. The

traditional research journey.

What many anthropologists from former colonizing

countries refer to as 'myth' is probably only a distancing from

history. They turn a blind eye to WHO wrote history and who

ordered those who wrote it. They forget those who refrained

from burning just THAT history book.

Lévi-Strauss also asserts that ethnography is psychology.

One thus views societies as societies without power structures,

but rather as a collection of figures wandering in a world of

myths that obey the same underlying laws in all countries and

at all times, a world defined by ethnographers/anthropologists.

Africa—by example—had been divided among Europeans,

under the leadership of Bismarck, at the Berlin Conference in

1884.

Compare this to C. Jung's travels in Africa and India,

where he perceives these countries as being populated by …

children. With André Gide—the author of The Pastoral

Symphony and more—it was different; in 1927, he followed in

the wake of the cynical anthropologists and was shocked by

the colonial abuses. The books Voyage in the Congo and

Return from Chad gradually opened Europeans' eyes to what

was happening in the French colonies and contributed

massively to the anti-colonial movements in France.

Perhaps Freud's pyramidal collecting mania made him

blind to what these historical artifacts actually carried in terms

of peculiar, horrifying, and/or trivial backgrounds. The figures

in wood, stone, or ivory instead immediately rose into a

symbolic world where a place awaited them. What Freud

nonetheless did was unveil myths in his own culture. Or at least

in his cultural layer. He had no interest in workers, farmers,

sailors, or other culturally uneducated people—except perhaps

Sweden was represented by a certain Carl Bildt.

for soldiers. Among other things, he argued that national myths

were nothing more than nonsense.

He also did not conduct a closer analysis of the nature of myth,

which one honestly misses since it would have significantly

crowned his work, to use a mythological image. The secret of

the truth about the Myth is roughly this: The small myth, the

myth in the Symbol, the metaphor, the purely expressive myth,

the "dye-maker," is like a precious stone, exquisitely rare, or a

"noble stone," and entirely essential for Humanity. It is the

SMALL myth. Here, one can refer to the embryonic form of

such a myth theory present in Lévi-Strauss's attention to the

"mythème."

The BIG myth, the thick symbol, the symbol with

elephantiasis, the thick – GROSS - symbol, the swollen,

deceitful, inflated, meta symbol, the system, the grand

narrative, the great myth that is the skull of civilization, i.e.,

MYTH, the storm myth, psychopathology, the oppressive

authority, is life-threatening and deadly, a poison, and what is

understood for humanity.

The art of dealing with this discrepancy, of keeping apart the

rare diamond (the symbol) from the terrible skull (the larger

myths)—that is what CULTURE is about, or should be about!

Alas, may such a "science of Myth" soon be created! Perhaps

one could soon, through a "refraction theory"—the theory of

diffraction—for myths obtain a knowledge, a science that

could tame the myth, even on a more mundane level. Primarily,

the task becomes to catalogue and structure the two elements

in the diffraction, the character of the origin myth, and its

temporal position concerning culmination, as well as the

character and temporal position of the processing myth,

approaches, etc. What initially seems like a PURE platitude,

that myths are dealt with in literature, or that they are treated

in other media than the original, that one is treated by the other,

might upon further consideration appear as a sesame open the

door, regarding accessing what is corrupt in the myth, while at

the same time saving what is beautiful and insightful as a

Gyllenstenski diadem.

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The Swedish author and member of the Swedish Academy Lars

Gyllensten loved the prose and the richness of ideas by Kierkegaard.