Myths are the dreams of a culture

The argument

According to infamous psychoanalyst Carl Jung, our dreams serve as the gateway to our subconscious minds, giving us access to the hopes, fears, and desires we didn’t even know we had. Heavily influenced by the teachings of Sigmund Freud, Jung took his ideas one step further by suggesting that myths are like depersonalized dreams that reflect the collective psyche of all of mankind. Thus, myths are not necessarily specific to a certain time, place, or culture. Rather, various mythologies throughout the world show striking similarities, indicating that the stories we tell run far deeper than mere explanations or metaphors. They are, instead, poignant reflections of the human condition as a whole. Perhaps the most famous example of this effect can be found in Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. This academic spent years studying ancient mythological texts from around the world and throughout history and was shocked to find that a single storyline (with, of course, minor alterations) could be found in most of them. A hero would be called to adventure, and with the help of a spiritual guide, depart from the ordinary world, into an alternate reality where he would experience challenges, temptations, and ultimately, discover his true character, returning to his normal life a changed man. In the simplest terms, this common mythical outline describes the challenges every person faces as they grow up and come to terms with who they really are, facing difficulties and roadblocks on the way to self-discovery. Subconsciously, creators of myths, regardless of time and place, have echoed this same story over and over. Clearly, this is no coincidence. It indicates the extent to which mythology mirrors our internal lives.

Premises

Counter-arguments

While this interpretation may be true for some myths, it is a stretch to apply it to all myths, especially the ones that seem inexorably linked to the culture and context in which they were produced, like creation myths. Moreover, it is fallacious to place too much trust in the works of Jung, whose close ties with Freud have discredited him to a large amount of the academic community.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Jung's account of dreams and the collective psyche is a psychoanalytic hypothesis rather than a demonstrated finding, and much of the academic community treats that tradition as unfalsifiable — which makes it a frame for reading myths rather than evidence about what myths are. [Rejecting P2] Recurring story shapes admit simpler explanations, including shared human circumstances and the borrowing of tales between neighbouring cultures, and the monomyth is reached by selecting and abstracting from thousands of texts, a method that tends to produce the pattern it reports. [Rejecting P3] Even granting the pattern, it does not extend to myths bound tightly to their own setting — creation and origin myths in particular — so the premise cannot support a claim about the purpose of mythology as a whole.