Merkur - Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth: Freud and the Freudians

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth

T HEORISTS OF M YTH
Robert A. Segal, Series Editor

K ENNETH B URKE ON M YTH:

An Introduction

by Lawrence Coupe

J UNG AND THE J UNGIANS ON M YTH:

An Introduction

by Steven F.Walker

R ENE G IRARD AND M YTH:

An Introduction

by Richard J. Golsan

T HE M YTH AND R ITUAL S CHOOL:

J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists

by Robert Ackerman

P OLITICAL M YTH:

A Theoretical Introduction

by Christopher G. Flood

C ASSIRER AND L ANGER ON M YTH:

An Introduction

by William Schultz

M YTH AND R ELIGION IN M IRCEA E LIADE

by Douglas Allen

N ORTHROP F RYE ON M YTH

by Ford Russell

T HE P OETICS OF M YTH

by Eleazer M. Meletinsky

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth

Freud and the Freudians

Dan Merkur

Published in 2005 by

Routledge

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New York, NY 10016

Published in Great Britain by

Routledge

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Copyright 2005 by Dan Merkur.

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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Catalog record is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-203-99724-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 0-82405-936-0 (hb: alk. paper)

Series Editors Foreword

In the nineteenth century the model for myth was science. Nineteenth century theorists, of whom E. B. Tylor and J. G. Frazer are the clearest examples, saw myth as the primitive counterpart to science, which was assumed to be exclusively modern. Myth, it was assumed, was about the physical world and functioned either to explain events in the world or to control them. In the twentieth century, myth has been regarded as almost anything but a counterpart to science. The subject matter of myth has been taken to be human beings, individually or collectively, and the function of myth has been taken to be other, or at least more, than explanatory.

The psychoanalytic study of myth, beginning with Freuds analysis of the story of Oedipus in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), evinces this twentieth-century shift. In psychoanalysis here Jungian psychology as well as Freudian the model for myth is not science but dream. Initially, the aim was to show how close to dream myth is. How myth came to be seen as distinct from dream is one of the ways in which Dan Merkur charts the development of the psychoanalytic study of myth.

Merkur brings unusually varied expertise to his task. He is professionally trained in folklore, religious studies, and psychoanalysis. His wide-ranging expertise is conspicuously demonstrated in the work at hand.

Merkur starts with Freud but then traces the course of the psychoanalytic approach to myth through its many permutations. He considers all of the main figures in the movement who have focused on myth: Abraham, Rank, Rheim, Kardiner, Kluckhohn, Arlow, Devereux, Boyer, and Dundes. He devotes much attention to the neglected Herbert Silberer, who, like other early psychoanalysts, paid the ultimate price for originality: ostracism. Not all of the figures whom Merkur considers were or are psychoanalysts by profession. Some were or are anthropologists or folklorists, and some of the psychoanalysts also had anthropological or folkloristic expertise. It is because of Merkurs breadth that he is able to enlist figures beyond the camp of psychoanalysis proper.

It is also because of Merkurs breadth that he is able to assess the figures the way he does. He ventures outside psychoanalysis to invoke the strictures of folklore. He stresses the necessity of placing myths in their cultural context, thereby attending to distinctively local meanings, origins, and functions as well as to universal ones. Likewise he imports the focus the fixation! of theorists from religious studies (such as Mircea Eliade) on the distinctively religious nature of myths. The subject matter of myth is thereby widened from the unconscious to consciousness, and from consciousness of oneself to consciousness of the world around one though not primarily, as in the nineteenth century, to consciousness of the physical world.

Merkur begins to work out his own theory of myth, one that, following Silberer, makes metaphor central to the enterprise. The centrality of metaphor, or more broadly, of symbolism to deciphering myth has been emphasized by the philosophers Paul Ricoeur and Philip Wheelwright and by the literary critic Kenneth Burke, although none of the three tries to link this conscious or manifest side of myth to its unconscious latent side, as Merk does. For Merkur myth becomes much more than, but not thereby other than, dream-like.

Merkur uses myths from Native North Americans, his ethnographic bailiwick, at once to illustrate and to test the universal claims of psychoanalytic theorists. He continually seeks to show not that the theorists are wrong in what they say about myth but that there is so much more to be said. He observes that especially early psychoanalysts as much used actual myths to confirm psychoanalytic theory as they used the theory to unpack the myths. Like other theorists, Merkur himself tends to use his examples reciprocally, but is always aware of the dual uses.

Merkur chose Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth rather than Freud and the Freudians on Myth as the main title of his book to reflect contemporary usage among psychoanalysts, who, for all their indebtedness to the master, view the field as one that has advanced far beyond the purview of its founder. Still, Merkurs book takes its place beside Steven Walkers Jung and the Jungians on Myth and makes a wonderfully comprehensive and creative addition to the Theorists of Myth Series.

Robert A. Segal

University of Lancaster, United Kingdom

Preface

In this volume, I have surveyed and evaluated the methods that Freud and the various psychoanalytic schools have employed in their studies of myths. Consistent with my interdisciplinary perspective in the history of religions and clinical psychoanalysis, I am interested in the nature of myth. My chapters discuss: (1) Freuds use of myths as inspirations for his theories; (2) the classical view of myth as a manifestation of the unconscious, a pathological flight from reality; (3) Gza Rheims reconciliation of classical psychoanalysis with the cultural relativism of anthropology; (4) the ego psychological view of myth as a culturally shared defense mechanism; (5) Herbert Silberers under-standing of myth as metaphor; and (6) Oskar Pfisters recognition that some myths are insightful and potentially therapeutic. Within psychoanalysis, myth is, or can be, everything from a pathological symptom to a vehicle of healing. In all cases, myths are symbolic, and their symbols have unconscious meanings and resonances.

My criteria for regarding a school within psychotherapy as psychoanalytic are nominal, rather than essentialist. My discussion is limited to the several schools that descend from Freud, claim his heritage, and are conventionally recognized within the profession as psychoanalytic. With notable exceptions, however, I have chiefly discussed older contributions. Although I assembled, studied, and considered discussing all manners of recent contributions, I found that they generally did not contribute to the study that I was making. On the other hand, two early and long-forgotten contributions, by Silberer and Pfister, have warranted rehabilitation in perspective of recent work in other areas metaphor theory and play therapy, respectively.