ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates through clinical material, myths, like dreams, symptoms, artistic creations and other products of mental life have their origin in private daydreams, in the secret fantasies, conscious or unconscious, that are the earliest organized purveyors of childhood wishes. Because daydreams are derivatives of powerful wishes, there is constant pressure on the mind to transform such fantasies into action. The poet presents his audience with a preformed fantasy onto which they may project their own unconscious fantasy wishes and elaborate them in keeping with their own psychological needs. The members of the audience become a temporary group brought together by sharing a common set of wishes, expressed in the form of a modified, unconscious fantasy. By evoking derivatives of an unconscious fantasy shared in common and giving it concrete representation in the form of an appealing mythic configuration, the political or religious leader is able to potentiate the powerful emotional drives latent in the individual members of the group.
