ABSTRACT
There is a commonality in the myths of all nations and cultures. As these myths are externalisations/projections of our own unconscious phantasies and desires, dreams and myths are interrelated; in that they both spring from the deep reservoir of the unconscious; one from the individual and the other part of a culture and race. The myths may differ in manifest content, but share a common latent content. The defence may be different, but the anxiety has a common root. These myths therefore are also part of our personal myths and they shape our idea of ourselves, our objects and therefore our object relations. Understanding the development and the psychical element in the myth, also leads to the understanding of the psychical development of the human mind from the time of birth to adulthood and that is the universal truth embodied in myths of all nations and cultures. I share my clinical work to show how patients use myths and fairy tales, which have become part of their psychic framework, to communicate, the communicative use of projective identification. The commonality of different myths and the psychical truth they contain in analytic theory makes psychoanalytic practice relevant in whichever corner of the world it is practiced in. 266It also forms the dialogue between analyst and analysand, irrespective of their different originating cultures.
I use the word myth here, to denote a story or belief, that is metaphoric and not necessarily factually true, yet contains the kernel of truth. I refer to two kinds of myths, the external and the personal. There are two kinds of external myths. One relating to natural phenomena, the other kind deals with man’s psyche, made into stories of man’s struggle and his attempt to control his early instinctual wishes and desires in relation to his earliest object relations.
These myths, hold a universal truth and run through every society and individual like capillaries, pulsating and alive. There is a personal version of these myths, within each one of us, developed out of a slurry of early instinctual impulses, sense impressions, experiences and phantasies. The neonate, like primitive man, builds a system of beliefs—the beginning of thinking—so that he can somehow, feel he has some control of his world and manage to live in it. This then forms the endoskeleton of his personal myths. As we know, much of it has to do with mental pain; how to deal with actual, or perceived helplessness, vulnerability, separation, loss, etc.
Our psyches are based on the mental food we receive. The first from our parents, the second from the society we live in; its history, its culture and its myths. The external myths shape our identity as a race or a nation, its ethnicity. The personal myth shapes our character, which shapes our destiny. Our patients bring us their own personal myths, projecting them onto the narration of the external myth, as a means of communicating the state of their internal world and object relations. Winnicott writes of culture as, “the inherited tradition … of something that is in the common pool of humanity, into which individuals and groups of people may contribute and from which we may all draw, if we have somewhere to put what we find”. (Winnicott, 1971: p. 99).
Because of their primitive, unacceptable latent content, these myths, like dreams, have been subject to primary censorship. The latent material is transformed into its manifest content by the dream work of distortion, displacement, symbolism, condensation, and over-determination. The story of the myth, (as told by the patient in the session), has been triggered by some “day residue”. It is brought like a dream to be transformed by the alpha function of interpretation to an understanding and digestion of unmetabolised psychic elements; a link between the external and the internal world. Since the personal myth is full of 267instinctual repressed wishes, the symbolisation in the external myth makes “An acceptable package wrapping by which contraband articles are smuggled across the border” (Jekels & Bergler; 1940: p. 407). The external form of the myth is the container that holds the meaning of the personal myth, the contained.
For psychoanalysts, two myths are of central importance, the myths of Narcissus and Oedipus. Hidden in these myths are universal truths, common to all man. I cite two Indian myths that show how the oedipal rivalry is dealt with in Hindu culture and religion. These myths are full of symbolism and metaphors, which lend themselves to rich interpretations and can be grist to the psychoanalyst’s mill. However, I wish to focus on the theme of idealisation of the parents that is demanded and revered in Indian culture and the part it plays in the oedipal situation and how these myths have formed an important part of the psychoanalytic work with some of my patients.
