Authors: Rollo May
Spengler, Oswald, 217, 218–219, 260, 261
Spirit of St. Louis
, 55
spite, 185–186, 202, 211, 212
Spitz, Rene, 53
spoiled child syndrome, 181
Stanford University, 21
Statue of Liberty, 94, 96
steam engine, 235
Steinbeck, John, 276–277, 291–292
Steppenwolf
(Hesse), 261
stock market, 119, 126
straight line, as Faustian symbol, 218
strangers:
compassion for, 52
as literary figures, 117
“Struggling Upward or Luke Larkin’s Luck,”
see
“Luke Larkin’s Luck”
students:
memory skills of, 68
value systems of, 56–57
success, myth of:
in
Great Gatsby
, 131–132
Horatio Alger and, 115, 117–119
suffering, necessity of, 166–167
Sufi, 293
suicide:
cult behavior and, 23, 274
threats of, 63
of young people, 21, 121
Sullivan, Harry Stack, 34, 47, 68–69
Super Bowl, 46, 51
superstition, 22
Swaggart, Jimmy, 27, 225
n
Sweden, nineteenth-century emigration from, 48
Sylvia (case history), 197–199, 202, 210–214
takeovers, 119
Teapot Dome scandal, 126
technology:
ascendancy of, 57
spiritual progress vs., 218
television:
ethical emptiness and, 21
Roots
shown on, 48
stereotypical happiness depicted on, 99
n
, 113
violence shown on, 21, 100
Temple of Zeus, 297
Teresa, Mother, 58
Thanatos, 76–77
see also
death
Thatcher, Margaret, 291
theater, 43
therapists,
see
psychotherapy
Theseus, 83–84
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 34
n
Threepenny Opera, The
(Brecht and Weill), 207
Tillich, Hannah, 257
Tillich, Paul:
on acceptance, 157, 187
on art as cultural criterion, 261
on courage to be, 205
on desert imagery, 95
on fear of death, 294
“hero” made of, 54
on
kairos
, 92
n
Mann vs., 257
non-being concept of, 33, 77, 185, 202
in World War II, 257
time, 203, 205–206
mortality and, 294, 297
Tiresias, 75, 79, 80, 85
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 48, 99, 102, 108, 114, 115
Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, The
(Marlowe), 222–232
conscious mind vs. unconscious in, 224–225
divine power usurped in, 222–224, 226, 231
ending of, 219, 230–232
Goethe’s
Faust
vs., 219, 226, 254
humanistic values in, 227
magical knowledge in, 222, 226, 228
Mephistopheles in, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 231, 232
psychotherapeutic models found in, 225, 228, 267, 268, 269
publication date for, 217
sexual love in, 226, 228–230, 244
transference, Virgil and, 156–160
transformation:
EST seminars and, 103–104
feminine traits used for, 246, 247
see also
change, myth of
Transformational Technologies, 104
Treaty of Versailles, 125, 265
trinity, Christian, 220
Trojan War, 244
trolls, 175–178
Trunghpa, 22
n
truth, empirical vs. eternal, 27
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 93, 127
twelve-tone scale, 258, 262
Tyche, 118
type A behavior, 118
Ulysses
(Joyce), 162
unconscious mind:
collective, 37–38, 171
consciousness complemented by, 224–225
evolutionary process and, 20
n
negation and, 251
see also
consciousness
underworld,
see
hell
United States,
see
American culture; American dream; myth(s), American
Unmarried Woman, An
, 152
Ursula (case history), 35–37
Uses of Enchantment, The
(Bettelheim), 28, 194
vagina, symbols of, 195, 206
Van Gogh, Vincent, 262
n
Vasari, Georgio, 250
Victorian period, spoiled child syndrome from, 181
Vietnam, mythic images of, 27
Vikings, 91
violence, 100
Virgil:
Aeneid
, 156, 157, 166
on choice of Gods, 92
Dante’ depiction of, 153, 156–160, 162, 13–14, 273
transference and, 156–160
virginity, loss of, 206
Vita Nuova, La
(Dante), 164
voodoo, 51
n
waiting, creative, 205, 207, 208–210, 287–288
Waiting for Godot
(Beckett), 42, 207, 209, 266
Washington, George, 45
“Waste Land, The” (Eliot), 138
n
, 208–210
Watergate affair, 124
Way, Lewis, 7o
n
Ways to Success
, 115
wealth, American preoccupation with, 48, 56,60, 106, 115, 119, 123–124, 131
Weber, Carl Maria von, 258
Weinberg, Alvin, 219
Werke
(Nietzsche), 57
n
West, American:
healing power of, 95
see also
myth(s), American
Western culture:
collapse of, 259
collective guilt of, 266
Faustian aspect of, 218–219, 266
Hitlerism’s assault on, 257–258
Nietzsche’s predictions on, 259
psychology and, 26o
n
westerns, 96–97
“Western Star” (Benét), 92–93
When Dreams and Heroes Died
(Levine), 56
White, R. W., 115
Whitehead, Alfred North, 73
William Alanson White Institute, 47
Whitman, Walt, 109, 124
“Why Is There So Much Depression Today?” (Seligman), 121
n
Wilde, Oscar, 68
n
wilderness, 93, 94–95
Wild West
healing power of, 95
see also
myth(s), American
Will, George F, 120
William Tell
(Rossini), 96–97
Winthrop, John, 115
Wisdom’s Daughter
(Haggard), 165
Wiseman, Richard, 228
n
, 259
Wise Men, 50
wishing:
actions vs., 226
development and, 200
motivation and, 61
mutuality in, 204–205
witch burnings, 274, 283, 288
witchcraft, 22
women:
beauty of, 242, 244–245
in business, 291
Christian view of, 220
communication abilities of, 213–214
as creative inspiration, 244
dependency of, 196–197
Goethe’s four categories of, 253
Jazz Age styles worn by, 126
liberation of, 287–291
motherhood and, 243, 246–247, 291–292
as mythic symbols, 164–165
myths for, 289, 290
passive vs. assertive, 195–196
problem-solving skills of, 291
sexual development of, 196–199, 200, 201, 203, 206, 207, 212
Wordsworth, William, 106–107 work:
existential crisis of, 39
industrialism and, 242
luck vs., 120
World War II, 40, 218–219, 256–257
Yahweh, 47
Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, The
(Wallop), 218
Yeats, William Butler, 25
Ye Shall Be as Gods
(Fromm), 268
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 168, 169–170, 174, 183–184
Yoga, 145
Young, Sir George, 79
n
yuppies, 56
Zeus, 36, 41, 118, 144, 145, 293–294, 295, 297
*
Lucretius,
The Nature of the Universe
(London: Penguin Books, 1951), p. 217.
†
Jerome S. Bruner, “Myth and Identity,” in
Myth and Mythmaking
, ed. Henry A. Murray (New York: George Braziller, 1960), p. 285.
*
Hannah Green,
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1064), p. 55. (Italics mine.)
*
Ibid., p. 12. This description has a curious similarity to Dante’s hell, which we will describe later in
Chapter 9
, “The Therapist and the Journey Into Hell.”
†
Ibid., p. 31.
*
Ibid., p. 56.
*
The myths from China, India, Tibet, Japan, and other parts of the Orient spring out of a different culture from ours, and therefore we can understand them only partially. But they also give us a garden of flowers which we can appreciate at least from the garden gate. Joseph Campbell has given us an excellent survey of these myths of different countries in the world. I intend in this book, in contrast, to deal with the myths
of
Our
own America
, as they are revealed in our present world, in psychotherapy, and in social and religious experience.
*
A Gallup poll indicates that “32 million people in this country believe in astrology.” It is “a search (or meaning in life,” the president of the International Society for Astrological Research holds. “Knowing where your stars are is like having a weather forecast of problems in life.” Particularly during times of stress they look for “answers for their lives”(
New York Times
, October 19,1975).
Carl Sagan spent much effort in his television series attacking astrology as unscientific. Arguing from his position as professor of astronomy, he did not seem to realize that astrology has an entirely different basis. Astrology is a myth and requires the language of the myth. It has both the shortcomings and the positive effects of myths.
†
There are dozens of these cults—led by Rajnesh, Trunghpa, Da Free John, Radachristian, Muktananda, the Moonies, etc. New ones spring up every year. I do not wish here to make judgments about the value or lack of it of these groups; I only cite them as groups to which people flock in order to get some way of handling their lives, some pattern for managing their anxiety and achieving some meaning and purpose in life.
*
Archibald MacLeish, “Poetry and Journalism,”
A Continuing Journey
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), p. 43.
*
Clyde Z. Nunn,
The Rising Credibility of the Devil in America
. (See also
Chapter 15
.)
†
Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture
9, no. 3 (Autumn 1974): 94.
**
Isaac Asimov, “The Threat of Creationism,”
New York Times Magazine
(June 14,1981). (Italics mine.)
*
John Brockman,
About Bateson
(New York: Dutton, 1977), p. 92.
†
Max Muller, “The Philosophy of Mythology,”
The Science of Religion
(London, 1873), pp. 353–355.
**
Henry Murray,
Myth and Mythmaking
, 1960, p. 114.
*
Those who wish to read more on this topic are referred to Ernst Cassirer,
An Essay on Man
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944).
*
Lillian Feder,
Ancient Myth in Modem Poetry
(Prhere are dozens of these cultinceton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 28.
†
Bruno Bettelheim,
The Uses of Enchantment
(New York: Vintage, 1977), p. 35. (Italics mine.)
*
See
Chapter 14
for further description of the origin of the myth of Satan.
†
Tillich,
The Courage To Be
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952).
*
Faust
(New York: Norton, 1076), 1. 1335.
†
Murray, “The Personality and Career of Satan,” in
Endeavors in Psychology
(New York: Harper & Row, 1981), p. 531. Murray continues his fascinating description:
Originally the Devil was “full of wisdom and perfect in beauty,” … St. Thomas Acquinas taught that Satan was one of the pure angels of God probably “superior to all.”
But Lucifer was jealous of his elder brother, Christ, and this sibling rivalry made him evil. Thus resentment was “engendered by envy of God’s supreme position of power and glory.” Satan proclaimed, “I will be like unto the Most High.” Thus envy, or hubris, was present in original sin.
*
Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
(Princeton: Bollinger Press, 1959), p. 50.
†
Ibid., p. 512.
*
Claude Lévi-Strauss,
Myth and Meaning
(New York: Schocken Books, 1979), P.3.
*
Highet,
The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature
(New York: Oxford University Press/Galaxy Books, 1957), p. 540.)
*
For these purposes, the ancient cities of Argos and Mycenae are synonymous,
†
Barnes,
The Key Reporter
41, no.4 (Summer 1986): 3.
*
Beckett,
Waiting for Godot
(New York: Grove Press, 1954).
*
New York Times
, May 8, 1984.)
*
New York: Hill and Wang, 1980.
*
Italics mine. The carryover of the theme is shown toward the end of the book: “Grandma would get on that subject sometimes … and Mama would abruptly snap … ‘Oh Maw, I
wish
you’d stop all that old-time slavery stuff.’ … Grandma would snap right back, ‘If
you
don’t care who and where you come from, well,
I
does!’“
Roots
(New York: Dell, 1980), p. 704.”
*
Clyde Kluckhohn, “Myths and Rituals: A General Theory,”
Harvard Theological Review
35 (January 1942): 45–79. Kluckhohn goes on to say, “Myths, likewise, give men ‘something to hold to.’ The Christian can better face the seemingly capricious reverses of his plans when he hears the joyous words ‘lift up your hearts’”(New York: Norton, 1075, pp. 77–79).
†
See my
Meaning of Anxiety
(New York: Norton, 1975, pp. 77–79) for a description of “voodoo death” in primitive tribes. When the whole community believes the victim of voodoo will die, the man lies down and, in two or three hours, expires. He has been “cut dead” by his community, as William James explained it, and by this power exerted on him, he himself believes he will die. It is an illustration of the function of the myth held by the community to take over the mind and will of the victim.