ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the author's theoretical formulations regarding the development, maintenance and evolution of personal, conjugal and family myths. Family myths were also seen as providing ritual formulas for action at certain crisis points in the family's development. The study of family myths draws its strength from a variety of theoretical and clinical orientations including anthropology, object relations theory and cognitive psychology. The chapter also introduces readers to the empirical research, assessment procedures and some of the intervention strategies that the authors have developed after a decade of working from a mythological perspective. The view of mythological systems proposed in most of these papers also emphasizes the unconscious, or out of awareness, components of families shared experiences. Clinical attention to these alternative levels of experience, through analogical and symbolic forms of communication, can play a direct role in modifying family member's behaviors while bypassing the logical, conscious, left-hemispheric aspects of the cognitive system.
