Mythology as the Form-Giving of the Unconscious: Gods, Intermediate Space, and Social Expression

I understand myths as a product of the collective unconscious, as the result of a deep and unconscious intuition of the human psyche. Ancient people did not possess psychoanalytic language; they did, however, possess the experience of the body, of fear, of desire, of violence, of mourning, of law, and of rupture. The unconscious, on this collective scale, did not produce theory, but produced forms: it produced scenes, figures, relationships, conflicts, returns, punishments, reconciliations, and movements. Mythology is the collective form-giving of the psychic field, that is, the organization of unconscious psychic states into a scene that becomes commonly recognizable and psychically bearable within a shared system of relations.

mythology as dream and as interpretive scene

Mythology functions the way dreams function, because, as in the dream, the unconscious does not speak through abstract concepts, but through images, displacements, condensations, and forms that unite or split apart. In the dream, psychic experience is organized into scenes so that it may appear without dissolving the subject. In mythology, the same function appears at a collective level, as a shared narrative that seeks interpretation through conflict, loss, return, restoration of measure and rupture of measure, attraction and rejection.

Every myth is a scene where the forces of the psyche collide and move. Excess provokes reaction. Punishment regulates arrogance. Union condenses the desire for completeness. Loss opens mourning that immobilizes or transforms. Return creates a new rhythm. Thus, mythology organizes unconscious experience as a sequence of relationships and renders ambivalence psychically bearable.