I am often asked what, finally, is myth all about, what is its function? Why is mythology so prominently seated on the psychic fence posts supporting fences which are inevitably, it seems, erected between cultures? After all of my years of study devoted to exploring this question, I am convinced there is no one right answer, that there is no correct, encompassing theory of mythology that answers the question, “What is myth?” satisfactorily; there is, alas, no unified field theory of mythology. Each theory fills in gaps in knowledge or understanding and moves us farther down the road of understanding why mythology, folklore, and even fairy tales are important to human beings, but no one theory alone adequately explains the persistent, and powerful presence of myth.
For instance, Bruce Lincoln convincingly argues that in prehistory, the word mythos denoted “a blunt and aggressive act of candor […] an assertive discourse of power and authority that represents itself as something to be believed and obeyed.” What difference a dozen millennia or so make! The definition of the word mythos as authoritative and truthful speech has, over time, acquired for itself the exact opposite meaning so that in the popular idiom today, myth means something false or untrue; a fairy tale or a “just so story” at best. But Lincoln’s scholarship in this regard touches upon something still relevant to modern men and women: the fact that underneath the fantastic narratives, the improbable beasts, and the arbitrary gods, myth speaks to aspects of the human experience that remain fundamentally enduring and true today, even as they were for those human beings alive twelve thousand years ago.
Where one runs into problems, however, is in trying to understand just what those truths are. Joseph Campbell, for instance, posits four functions of myth:
In the long view of the history of mankind, four essential functions of mythology can be discerned. The first and most distinctive–vitalizing
all–is that of eliciting and supporting a sense of awe before the mystery of being [….]
The second function of mythology is to render a cosmology, an image of the universe that will support and be supported by this sense of awe before the mystery of a presence and the presence of a mystery. The cosmology has to correspond, however, to the actual experience, knowledge, and mentality of the culture folk involved [….] Today we turn to science or our imagery of the past and of the structure of the world [….]
A third function of mythology is to support the current social order, to integrate the individual organically with his group [….]
The fourth function of mythology is to initiate the individual into the order of realities of his own psyche, guiding him toward his own spiritual enrichment and realization.
Scholars often tend to focus on only one function of myth, the one that makes the most sense to them, and proffer that function as the underlying “truth” of the myth. Even Campbell himself most often privileged the fourth function of myth–the psychologizing function–as the most significant. Indeed, Robert Segal comments that:
For Campbell, myth is not only necessary for the deepest human fulfillment, but also sufficient. One needs nothing else, including therapy. In fact, therapy is only for those without myth.
Myth for Campbell contains all the wisdom humans need. They need only learn to interpret it. They need never venture beyond it.
In other words, the most important function of myth, at least, in Campbell’s view of it, is to draw the individual’s attention to unrecognized, innate reserves of heroic psychic energy that may inform one’s life in such a way that one experiences human fulfillment.
On the other hand, Bruce Lincoln takes a view of mythology that is, if not actually representative of, at least closely related to, Campbell’s third function of myth. Lincoln prefers to describe myth as “ideology in narrative form,” and as an example of such ideological transmission, Lincoln cites an old, Irish myth:
To accomplish its end, the Táin does not just differentiate the categories of male and female, or the others with which these are brought into association…It also ranks these, and misrepresents the ranking it offers as the product of nature and necessity rather than as a contingent set of human preferences advanced by interested actors, some of whom are responsible for the text. This misrepresentation is an ideological move characteristic of myth, as is the projection of the narrator’s ideals, desires, and favored ranking of categories into a fictive prehistory that purportedly establishes how things are and must be.
I find it very hard to argue with Lincoln’s thesis. His book, Theorizing Myth, is well argued and well researched, and one may easily imagine any number of historical situations in which ideology informed the transmission of myth. Yet, Lincoln’s theory is also incomplete. Myth may also be used as a means to understand and reflect upon cycles of nature, to create order from chaos, and through analogy relieve anxiety. As a psychiatrist, C. G. Jung believed that myth facilitated attempts to probe into the mysteries of existence, explore the apparent limitlessness of psyche, and, through mythology’s mythopoetic power, endow individuals with a sense of awe and wonder as they gaze upon, and ultimately embrace, the incomprehensible marvels and horrors of life.
Myth establishes a bridge that brings the relationship between human beings and psyche into a more fully conscious, though not literally black and white, or even (oddly, it seems) comprehensible realm. Jung writes:
It is possible to describe this [unconscious] content in rational, scientific language, but in this way one entirely fails to express its living character. Therefore, in describing the living processes of the psyche, I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations.
And, more forcefully that
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings [….] Myths […] have a vital meaning. Not merely do they represent, they are […] psychic life [….]
If myths are the stuff of psychic life, as Jung has asserted, they are not mere nothings and therefore valueless; the myths themselves are shifted into and embodied upon the field of psychic reality, and so established, operate as facts. Psychological facts are as real as any other facts one may take into consideration. They only lack a material substance, and so lacking are often confused with nothing; but psychological facts are indeed something, and they often establish motives for the most extraordinary of behaviors.
The logos of mythology appears to be able to describe and give significance and some limited understanding to the condition of being human better than other approaches, precisely because myth, as Campbell observes, “does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact.” Myth, because of its indistinct, metaphoric, poetic nature offers a more discriminating and more personally relevant explanation of the world to individuals than does the language of discrimination itself, science. This is why people will often reject documented evidence obtained through scientific inquiry in favor of their own feelings or beliefs.
However, one needs be mindful, as Dogen has cautioned, to not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. In other words, one myth standing alone does not, nor can it possibly, hold all of the archetypes or distill the mysterium into a tidy, succinct, authoritative narrative. Therefore one must take pains to try and understand an entire oeuvre of myth before the mysteries might possibly begin to yield, ever so uncertainly, to understanding. Even the achievement of such great understanding may, in and of itself, not be enough: a fractured, two dimensional reflection of the one, holographic, essential mystery is not enough to supply a coherent “unified field theory” of myth. Consequently, lacking the big picture, one is left to suffer from feelings of incompleteness, inadequacy, and incomprehension because a telescope big enough to see that has not yet been invented.
Such a lack of understanding is often felt within oneself as a lesion on the soul, or a perforation in psyche, and one’s awareness of carrying such a wound instills a hope that the healing balm might be found over that next hill, or just around the next bend, and all that matters for now is to go in search of them. Beverly Zabriskie writes:
Psychologically, they [the characters of myth] showed that deeply felt suffering may transcend the limits of outer events. The one way journey of the natural law, of life as affliction and pain, becomes the two way crossing wherein one may return to oneself with a sense of greater strength and meaning.
Though they may lead us away from who and what is loved, the soul’s migrations also lead us more deeply into ourselves, and into a better understanding of what it means to be a human being held within, and holding onto, psyche.
Often, the “who” or the “what” that has become one’s treasure has been grounded in a crude, material, one-dimensional notion of reality and looks like an accumulation of power or financial success. The leave-taking movement asks one to step outside these parameters and chase after uncannily familiar energy, a presence that has suddenly dropped off one’s radar. Choosing to examine myth from a psychological perspective employs a model that describes the reality and functions of psyche while at the same time allows human beings to more consciously participate in it: Jung wrote, “Myths and fairytales give expression to unconscious processes, and their retelling causes these processes to come alive again and be recollected, thereby re-establishing the connection between conscious and unconscious.” By advancing the connection between consciousness and unconsciousness, the inner and outer worlds are now more harmoniously attuned to one another, and each is imbued with more meaning, with more relevance, and with more value.
