ABSTRACT
Neither the classical nor the ego psychological approaches to myth satisfactorily addressed the religious dimension of myth. Neither psychoanalytic methodology makes a distinction among the genres of myth, legend, and folktale. The legend of Oedipus, an ostensibly historical king of the very real ancient city of Thebes, has repeatedly been discussed as though it were a myth because the classical and ego psychological methodologies have nothing more to say about myths than they have about legends and folktales. For the same reason, the studies that to my mind represent the modal personality approach at its best are two writings by the psychoanalytic folklorist Alan Dundes. Like Boyer, Dundes blends the best of the ego psychological approach with a return to Róheim’s emphasis of unconscious psychosexuality. Although Dundes’s (1975, 1980, 1987, 1997a) many articles include work on myths, the volumes that I consider his best (Dundes 1984, 1997b) happen to address folktales. The distinctively mythic features of myths are neither necessary to, nor captured by, the classical and ego psychological methodologies.
