Does Myth (Still) Have A Function In Jungian Studies? Modernity, Metaphor, and Psycho-Mythology
The following article by Michael Vannoy Adams is a paper presented at the "Psyche and Imagination" conference of the International Association for Jungian Studies at the University of Greenwich, London, July 7, 2006.
One of the most important novelists of the twentieth century declares that he has no interest in Freudians. "Let the credulous and vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts," Vladimir Nabokov says. "I really do not care" (1973: 66). Jungians may not apply old Greek myths to their private parts as Freudians so notoriously do, but they do apply old myths — among them, Greek myths — in an attempt to cure mental woes. Jungians continue to believe that myth has a function.
If I did not believe that myth still has a function, I would never have written my book The Mythological Unconscious (Adams 2001), and I would never have written the chapter "Mythological Knowledge: Just How Important Is It in Jungian (and Freudian) Analysis?" in my book The Fantasy Principle (Adams 2004). Nor would I continue to teach my courses "Psychoanalyzing Greek and Roman Mythology" and "Psychoanalyzing Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Mythology" at the New School in New York. Not only Jung but also Jungians like James Hillman — and not only Freud and Freudians like Wilfred Bion — also believe that myth has a function. What, however, is that function?
In a book that includes the word "functions" in the subtitle, G.S. Kirk criticizes the proposition that "all myths are about gods" (1970: 9). For example, he says that "the heroes, who play so large a part in Greek myths, are obviously not gods" (1970: 10). I would say that most, if not all, myths are about gods, Even when myths are about heroes, like that favorite Freudian hero Oedipus, they are about those heroes in relation to gods. Kirk notes that myth has many functions. For Jung and Jungians, the basic function of myth is psychological.
Recently, one Jungian, Wolfgang Giegerich, has argued that, at this stage in the history of consciousness, myth no longer has any psychological function. Giegerich asserts that it is a fallacy to resort to "any ancient mythological figures" in an attempt to account for the modern situation. Ancient mythological figures, he contends, "do not suffice." They are insufficient because, he says, "even though they may display certain formal similiarities" to the modern situation, "they are incommensurable" with it (1999: 175).
In effect, Giegerich declares the Jungian method of mythological amplification to be invalid. Amplification is a comparative method. It compares images from the modern psyche to images from other sources — among them, ancient myths — in an effort to identify significant similarities, or parallels. Giegerich, however, maintains that the modern psychological situation is utterly without precedent, without parallel. It is so radically different — or, as he says, so logically different — from the ancient mythological situation that any similarity is merely formal and thus insignificant. Giegerich says that the modern situation has "fundamentally broken with myth as such, that is, with the entire level of consciousness on which truly mythic experience was feasible." The modern situation has "not broken with this or that myth, nor with all myths," he says, but with what "made myths possible in the first place" (1999: 175).
In contrast to Giegerich, who posits a discontinuity between the ancient situation and the modern situation, Jung emphasizes what he calls "the higher continuity of history" (CW 5: 3, par. 1). For example, Freud demonstrates that an ancient myth, the Oedipus myth, continues to exist in the modern psyche as the Oedipus complex. As a result, Jung says, "the gulf that separates our age from antiquity is bridged over, and we realize that Oedipus is still alive for us." This realization, he says, establishes "an identity of fundamental human conflicts" that are "independent of time and place" and refutes the notion that modern people are "different" from (or "better") than ancient people. Jung says that "an indissoluble link binds us to the men of antiquity" (CW 5: 4, par. 1). Oedipus is in ancient Thebes, and Oedipus is in modern New York. "The latest incarnation of Oedipus," Joseph Campbell notes, is standing "this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change" (1968: 4). Of course, the modern (or postmodern) Oedipus is talking on a cell phone and listening to an iPod, but, to the extent that he is like the ancient Oedipus, he is still presumably motivated to commit what Herman Melville calls "the two most horrible crimes" (1971: 351).
Giegerich historicizes ancient mythology and, in the process, demythologizes modern psychology. Ancient mythological figures, he says, are inadequate to the modern situation precisely because they are ancient — that is, anachronistic. In the modern situation, they are obsolete and, as a result, irrelevant. What is the "modern situation?" As Giegerich defines it, it is, in the history of consciousness, the stage of the computer, Internet, cyberspace, and virtual reality. For Giegerich, the modern psychological situation is so technological that it is post-mythological. Jung believes that the more things change, the more they remain the same. In contrast, Giegerich is what I would call a "situationist." He believes that the situation — something technological — has changed so much that nothing mythological remains the same or significantly similar.
Giegerich is a formidable, impressively erudite critic of Jungian psychology. If there is any "post-Jungian," it is Giegerich. Does, however, the digital technology of the computer, Internet, cyberspace, and virtual reality render mythological amplification — which as a comparative method is an analog technology — obsolete and irrelevant? I, too, have criticized amplification. I have advocated an expansive redefinition of amplification to include, in addition to the comparative method, what I call a "contrastive method" (Adams 2004: 62-3). By this redefinition, amplification would not only compare images in order to identify significant similarities but would also contrast images in order to identify significant differences. I have not, however, proposed that Jungians discard mythological amplification as a method.
Mythological amplification is not, of course, the only Jungian method. Mythology is not absolutely indispensable to Jungian psychology. A Jungian might still be a Jungian and not practice mythological amplification. For example, Michael Fordham says that he "never used amplification" as insistently as some Jungians do and "largely eliminated it" as a method (1993: 74). Active imagination is also a Jungian method, and it does not entail any recourse to mythology. "No myths," Sam Harris says, "need to be embraced to commune with the profundity of our experience" (2004: 227). I agree with Harris that myths are not, in that sense, necessary. They may, however, still be psychologically valuable, for certain dreams, fantasies, and experiences of modern people are conspicuously similar to the myths of ancient people, as Jungians continue to demonstrate.
For Giegerich, mythological amplification is not only a nostalgic, sentimental exercise but also an abusive method. In this respect, he criticizes Jungians who attempt, for example, "to reclaim Aphrodite for modern life experience." He says that this reclamation project is "a terrible abuse of poor Aphrodite, who, being dead, has no way to defend herself against this abuse." How, he wonders, can Jungians "seriously want to recognize Aphrodite in, or find her relevant to," the sense of the beautiful, erotic, or sexual in modern fantasy and behavior, when the modern situation has so moralistically distorted and so commercially appropriated and exploited that sense (1999: 181)?
Giegerich does not mention Ginette Paris, but she, more eloquently than any other Jungian, reclaims Aphrodite for modern life experience and, like Woody Allen, demonstrates just how mighty Aphrodite still is. Paris is not naïve. She, too, notes how the moralistic distortion and commercial appropriation and exploitation of the beautiful, erotic, or sexual in the modern situation abuse Aphrodite, but when Paris practices mythological amplification, she does not abuse Aphrodite. She describes how Aphrodite is alive and well in the modern psyche and is still relevant to the modern situation (1986). For example, she recounts an anecdote in which Aphrodite manifests to a modern young woman. On a spring day, the young woman sees a pair of sexy sandals in a store window, and, although the sandals are extremely expensive, she impulsively buys them. The young woman calls the impulse "spring fever." What impels her, she remarks, is "the season for love." Paris says that if the young woman had been a Jungian, "she would probably have said: 'Here comes Aphrodite.'" The young woman, Paris notes, "didn't know Greek mythology and didn't identify Aphrodite by her Greek name." As Paris says, the young woman did not call her "Aphrodite" but called her, equivalently, "the season for love" (1997: 88).
Many modern people are not at all psychological. They remain mythological. That is, like ancient people, they still believe that gods exist, or at least that God with a capital "G" exists, quite literally, in a supernatural dimension — in spite of the fact that, as Harris says, "there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existence of Yahweh" than, for example, "Zeus" (2004: 16). Giegerich says that in the modern situation it is no longer feasible for people to have what he calls "truly mythic experience." On the contrary, many modern people have the same experience of myth as ancient people. These people are "modern" only in the sense that they are in the modern situation. They do not have modern consciousness. They are "ancient" people in the modern situation. Like ancient people, they have truly mythic experience. Of course, these ancient people in the modern situation are, as Harris notes, quite selective in what qualifies as truly mythic experience. For example, they arbitrarily believe in "God," or Yahweh, but not in Zeus. "Imagine," Harris says, "President Bush addressing the National Prayer Breakfast in these terms: 'Behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and a purpose set by the hand of a just and faithful Zeus'" (2004: 46-7). Or, I might say, imagine President Clinton interviewing an intern in the Oval Office of the White House and wearing a W.W.Z.D. — "What would Zeus do?" — bracelet. What, then, would Hera — I mean, Hillary — do? Is not this image hilarious?
It is the genius of Jung to argue that "gods" exist, but only metaphorically and only in a natural dimension. That natural dimension is the psyche. "All deities," William Blake says, "reside in the human breast" (1976: 153) — or, as Jung says, in the psyche. From this perspective, the gods are dead, but the "gods" are alive and well — or, I would say, the literal is dead, but the metaphorical is alive and well. As Hillman says, "Nothing is literal; all is metaphor" (1975: 175). The "gods" continue to "exist," as they always have, in the psyche. In this respect, to be psychological is to be metaphorical. It is to realize, once and for all, that the "gods" are metaphors — personifications (or deifications) in the psyche.
Some people in the modern situation have modern consciousness. They do not have what Giegerich calls "truly mythic experience" but, like Jung, they have psychic experience of myth. As they experience myth, it is a projection of the psyche. Jungians psychologize the experience of myth. They deliteralize the gods, metaphorize them. They punctuate the "gods" in quotation marks. Rhetorically, they regard ancient mythological figures figuratively. The decisive difference between people with modern consciousness — among them, Jungians — and people with ancient consciousness is a capacity for metaphor.
Harris says that "it does not seem out of place to wonder whether the myths that saturate our discourse will wind up killing many of us" (2004: 47). As Harris says, "That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen" (2004: 129). What is dangerous, even deadly, I would argue, is not myths but an incapacity for metaphor in relation to myths. When people in the modern situation take myths literally rather than metaphorically, they have an all too convenient excuse to take lives in the name of the gods.
"Mythology is a psychology of antiquity," Hillman says. "Psychology is a mythology of modernity" (1979: 23). Jung says that the psyche is intrinsically mythopoeic. The psyche, he says, spontaneously projects myths — or produces modern dreams, fantasies, and experiences similar to ancient myths. Freud employs a special term for this process: "Psycho-mythology" (1985: 286). In this respect, Jungians are neither exclusively mythological nor exclusively psychological but are inclusively "psycho-mythological." Jungian psychology is not a "psychology" in the conventional sense but a "psycho-mythology."
References
Adams, M.V. (2001) The Mythological Unconscious, New York and London: Karnac.
Adams, M.V. (2004) The Fantasy Principle: Psychoanalysis of the Imagination, Hove and New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Blake, W. (1976) Complete Writings, ed. G. Keynes, London: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, J. (1968) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fordham, M. (1993) The Making of an Analyst: A Memoir, London: Free Association Books.
Freud, S. (1985) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, ed. and trans. J.M. Masson, Cambridge, MA, and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Giegerich, W. (1999) The Soul's Logical Life: Towards a Rigorous Notion of Psychology, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Harris, S. (2004) The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, New York and London: W.W. Norton.
Hillman, J. (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology, New York: Harper and Row.
Hillman, J. (1979) The Dream and the Underworld, New York: Harper & Row.
Jung, C.G. All references are to the Collected Works (CW), by volume, page number, and paragraph.
Kirk, G.S. (1970) Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Melville, H. (1971) Pierre; or The Ambiguities, ed. H. Hayford, H. Parker, and G.T. Tanselle, in The Writings of Herman Melville, vol. 7, Evanston, IL, and Chicago: Northwestern University Press.
Nabokov, V. (1973) Strong Opinions, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Paris, G. (1986) Pagan Meditations: The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia, trans. G. Moore, Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.
Paris, G. (1997) "Everyday Epiphanies," in P. Clarkson (ed.), On the Sublime in Psychoanalysis, Archetypal Psychology and Psychotherapy, London: Whurr Publishers, pp. 85- 95.
