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Psychoanalytic Approaches to Myth: Freud and the Freudians
The book surveys and evaluates the methods that Freud and the various psychoanalytic schools have employed in their studies of myths. In addition to providing a historical survey, the author argues that modern views of myth as something to be deplored because it is inconsistent with history and science depends on a misunderstanding of the nature of myth. Myth is not a product of unconscious irrationality but is instead a sustained use of metaphor. It expresses ideas in concrete imagery of unconscious inspiration, but the ideas can be rational and profound, as is also the case with poetry and s.