Search

It is commonly assumed that Jung's view of myth, like his view of everything else, is best understood vis-à-vis Freud's. I argue that Jung in fact positions himself much more broadly, not merely against other psychologists of myth but more fundamentally against non-psychologists altogether. Undeniably, Jung pits his theory against Freud's, but only after pitting both his theory and Freud's against those theories that assume the subject matter of myth to be the external world rather than the human mind and that assume the function of myth to be either the explanation or the description of the external world rather than the expression of the human mind. The theorists whom Jung challenges are called 'nature mythologists', for whom myth is either a literal explanation or a symbolic description of the natural world. Which element of the natural world myth is about varies from nature mythologist to nature mythologist. The two leading nature mythologists, both of whom Jung cites, were Edward Tylor and James Frazer. Their theories epitomize the nineteenth-century approach to myth. For them, myth is the 'primitive' counterpart to science, which is entirely modern. For them, myth and science are incompatible, science is true and myth false, and myth must therefore go when science comes. Jung's rejection of the external world as the referent of myth and of explanation or description of that world as the function of myth epitomizes the twentieth-century response to nineteenth-century theories. For not merely Jung and Freud but also twentieth-century theorists generally, myth is anything but the 'primitive' counterpart to modern science. Consequently, myth and science are not rivals, so that myth need not go when science comes.

In Jung’s Ethics, Dan Merkur, a psychoanalyst in Toronto and the author of many books on the Inuit, psychoanalytic theory, mysticism, and drug-induced religious experience, here writes for the first time on Jungian psychology. Merkur is not abandoning Freud for Jung. A Freudian he remains. But he seeks to contrast Jung positively to Freud. Merkur draws scores of contrasts. Some of them are already known, some not. But even when the contrasts are known, Merkur illuminates them. He is especially concerned with the difference between Freud and Jung on the relationship of psychology to religion. Where Freud seeks to replace religion by psychology, Jung seeks to make psychology itself religious. Whether Jung in fact succeeds in tying psychology so tightly to religion, as Merkur contends, is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the modern study of myth can be divided into two main categories: that which sees myth as the primitive counterpart to natural science, itself considered overwhelmingly modern, and that which sees myth as almost anything but the primitive counterpart to natural science. The first category constitutes the nineteenth-century approach to myth. The second category constitutes the twentieth-century approach. Tylor and Frazer epitomize the nineteenth-century view. Malinowski, Eliade, Bultmann, Jonas, Camus, Freud, and Jung epitomize the twentieth-century approach. The question for the twenty-first century is whether myth can be brought back to the physical world, but in a way compatible with science. The case of the myth of Gaia will be considered as a possible way of doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Replies to the article of Russell McCutcheon about religion and myth. McCutcheon's rejection of the legitimacy of the category religion; Functions of myths; Ideological use of the category religion.