Psychoanalyzing Myth: From Freud to Winnicott

Abstract The central difficulty I find in teaching Freud on myth is connecting myth to religion and therefore to the world. Teaching that Freud severs myth from the world by severing myth from religion merely states rather than solves the problem. Students expect myth to be about the external world. It is not that they fail to grasp that for Freud myth involves the projection of human characteristics onto the world. It is that for them myth thereby ceases to be about the world and consequently ceases to be myth. It is not that students fail to recognize the similarities that Freud draws between dreams and myths. It is that for them the similarities miss the key difference: where dreams are about dreamers, myths are about the world. Put bluntly, Freud seems to have little to say about myth because myth is part of religion and religion is about the world.