Myths

• • Belief system that provides explanations for personal and social problems.
  • are not falsehoods; rather, they are conscious and unconscious belief systems that provide explanations for personal and social problems.
  • Compared to the support beams in a house-not visible from the outside, but they hold the house together and make it habitable.
  • the stories that unify a society.

  Myths
• Oedipus Story Myth Crises

  1. Birth
  2. separation from parents and home
  3. sexual union with one parents and hostility to the other
  4. Assertion of independence and search for identity
  5. death
• May’s concept of myths is comparable to Carl Jung’s idea of a collective unconscious in that myths are archetypal patterns in the human experience; they are avenues to universal images that lie beyond individual experience.
• And like archetypes, myths can contribute to psychological growth if people will embrace them and allow them to open up a new reality.