"Freud’s unconscious is the repressed recollections of one’s infancy. The contents of the unconsciousness, for Freud, once were conscious and can be made conscious again through analysis, and that is the cure."
Thus, the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell states in what is the Introduction to a collection of his writings and lectures on James Joyce in a posthumous collection entitled, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words. Freud, Jung, and the other depth-psychologists of the early twentieth century were vital and essential to Campbell’s theories about comparative mythology, for it is in the world of the unconscious that was probed by these pioneers of the psyche that Campbell found the root and basis for all of humanity’s mythological roots and substructures. Using the same insights that Freud discovered and employed for psychotherapy, Campbell put to use to devise his life-long, insightful analysis of mythological texts and themes.
Campbell was convinced that modern global humanity, with its ongoing enlightenment brought on by the massive successes of science, as well as the shrinking borders of formerly isolated cultures, was reaching a critical breaking point. The problem, according to Campbell, is that we, as a species, are progressively and rapidly outgrowing the structuring and ordering powers of our traditional mythologies, leaving us with nothing to make our individual and collective lives functional and meaningful. As Campbell often argued, human society and civilization is ultimately doomed to self-destruction if we cannot discover a new "global" mythology which will transcend and replace all of the "local" mythologies which we are increasingly abandoning.
Such a new mythology cannot be consciously created, he argued. It must, like Freud’s vision of personal human complexes, spring naturally from the unconscious realm itself. Following an old religious tradition was no good, he argued, especially in the West, because people tend to interpret their inherited mythological heritages in a literal and historic manner, rather that reaching to the deeper hidden meanings that bind all of the word’s mythologies together into one vast complementary system of metaphorical images. Hence, modern humanity looks at its own religious inheritance, determines that it collides with the truths of modern physics and sociological studies, and rejects it as being a "lie" or an "idle fable" - something of value only for the pre-scientific minds of ages past.
Contrarily, those who cannot give up the basic spiritual messages embedded in the various faith systems of our planet, tend to cling to them, fearfully and irrationally, insisting against all arguments of reason that their particular tradition contains the whole and complete truth in every detail. This defensive, reactionary position creates immovable minds and pockets of culture which we commonly label as "fundamentalist," whether the individual tradition be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or whatever. But "fundamentalism," as British author Karen Armstrong has pointed out, is merely a name for a hardened orthodoxy which has solidified into a defensive stance due to the threatening advances of modernist thought. In a post-9/11 environment, we all must be acutely aware of the massive danger brought on by such hardened, "faith-based" thinking.
However, if Campbell is correct - as I believe he is - that all religious faiths and traditions are ultimately the local and historically conditioned versions and symbols of one, holistic, transcendent experience of the shared life of the human race, do we not potentially possess - simply in the fact of our being able to realize and elucidate the basic truth of this universal phenomena - the very instruments by which we can move forward, advancing through our inherited narratives to reach the core of the meaning that lies beneath each story and symbol?
While Joseph Campbell remained convinced that our inherited faiths would inevitably serve as stumbling blocks and hindrances to our advancement as a species, I fail to see this as inevitable. If the source of all our mythological structures are fundamentally the same, linked as they are to our own unconscious realms, can they not be, as Freud sought to do with personal complexes, be analyzed and in effect, decoded, so that we can understand their very nature and function? If we bring our unconscious mythological life into consciousness, where we can apprehend it and understand it, is that not potentially our cure for the cultural malaise in which we find ourselves today?
Basically, what I am asking is simply, isn’t it about time that we, as a species, begin the serious process of growing up and becoming adults, especially as regards our inherited mythologies and belief-systems? Is it not ridiculous that we, as a culture, as a species, are becoming increasingly polarized into two fractious groups, each of which maintaining unjustifiable and incompatible positions?
On the one side, we have hordes of religious "fanatics" who absolutely refuse to budge an inch in the belief that their particular inherited mythological narratives are completely literally and historically factual, no matter how much that belief conflicts with other narratives or the rational arguments of physical science. And on the other hand, we have (quite understandably) a growing contingent of individuals and organizations that are dead-set in their opposition to anything that people of any religious tradition might happen to believe, value or wish to live by.
This is an appallingly ignorant standoff. And what is worse is that the anti-religious reactionary forces do absolutely nothing but increase the "fundamentalists’" deeply grounded fears that social forces are actively at work to undermine and destroy everything that they hold sacred, meaningful and life-affirming. The situation is intolerable, and what’s much more important is that it is dangerous. In a world in which weapons of mass destruction are indeed a reality, can we, as a species, afford to keep such a self-defeating polarity actively engaged? What we may ultimately have here is not simply a difference of opinion or attitude - we have the key to ignite Armageddon!
Fortunately, I believe, we also possess the key to extricating ourselves out of this horrible mess - though whether we will actually put it into practice and save ourselves from ourselves is another question. Personally, I do not see why on earth we cannot use the tools of the psychoanalyst to reach into the depths of what Carl Jung called our "collective unconscious," in order to bring up to the surface the hidden, universal sources of all of our shared fears, aspirations, as well as a sense of awe and wonder at the great mystery of Being.
And just as in classic psychiatry, the first step to solving a problem is to recognized that we have a problem. We all do - it is universally shared by the population of the planet. And this problem must be named and identified, clearly, distinctly, and as fully as possible. So let’s state the main thesis to which we all must ultimately submit if we are to be completely honest with ourselves and hold it ever in front of us if we wish to move forward in the progress (and survival) of the human race:
All religions are mythology. They are all sets of symbols that are utilized by human beings to express the inexpressible, to visualize that which we may intuit but cannot know for certain because of our purely human limitations. No one is in complete possession of the truth, and no one person can comprehend the entire truth of Reality. All mythological systems are valid symbolic statements of expression that embody real and fundamental aspects of being human, conscious and possessing a sense of morality and a conviction of worth. We must go beneath the symbols of our religious traditions to seek the eternal verities that are represented there and which all religions share. In this sense, all religions are equally "true." It is our future task and goal as human beings to seek to understand and appreciate more fully our own inherited mythologies and to see how they align with and complement all other systems. We must at all times strive to understand, respect and accept alternative ways of viewing life and reality.
Easier said than done, I agree. But we’ve got to start somewhere. And it all begins with each and every one of us lying back on the couch and confronting our own inner assumptions, aspirations, and fears.
Then let the dialogue begin.
petey
