Does Myth (Still) Have A Function In Jungian Studies?
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
