The Cry for Myth (41 page)

*
Personal communication from Dr. Laing.

*
Personal communication. Ernest Becker himself, after having written several excellent books, died a premature death from cancer. He was a hero himself to many readers.

*
The sad postlude to this heroic act was, of course, the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and Lindbergh’s seeming to side with the Nazis in World War II. This illustrates that heroism does not reside in the flesh and blood of one person, but in a spiritual quality we confer upon him or her.

*
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980. This is a quotation from the summary by the publishers.

*
James O. Freedman, quoted in the
New York Times
, August 23, 1987.

†
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Werke
(Leipzig: Alfred Kröner, 1919), vol. 6, pp. 496-497.

*
Eliot, “The Choir Invisible,” in
One Hundred and One Famous Poems
(Chicago: Cable, 1926), p.137.

†
The quotations concerning this murder are taken from the
New York Times
, September 11, 1986.

*
Our section on the myth of Horatio Alger in
Chapter 7
also discusses the relation between myths and morals in our day.

†
New York: Norton, 1969.

**
Delmore Schwartz,
In Dreams Begin Responsibility and Other Stories
(New York: New Directions, 1978).

*
I spell the term “fantasy” when the subject refers to a conscious event, “phantasy” when it is an unconscious event.

†
I am aware of the various interpretations of this issue, but do not wish to go into them here.

*
Quoted by Elizabeth Simpson, in
Nothingness: Journal of Humanistic Psychology
19, no. 3 (Summer 1979).

*
Ernest Schachtel,
Metamorphosis
(New York: Basic Books, 1959), p. 309. The above mechanical view of memory led Oscar Wilde to make his satirical remark, “The great enemy of creativity is a good memory.” Yes, indeed—when memory works on the basis of nonsense syllables. But this obviously is not genuine creativity. Wilde is referring to the person who reflects back to the professor his exact syllable; the student who strains to recall the assignment as literally as possible; the idiot savant; the antiquarian who omits whatever is original, new, fresh—and delightful. Such students may get high grades but they are never inspired, never catch fire with a new idea.

*
Robert N. Bellah et al.,
Habits of the Heart
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

†
Alasdair Macintyre,
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Therapy
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

*
Lewis Way,
Adler’s Place in Psychology
(London: Macmillan, 1950), p. 73.

†
Stephen Sicari, “Dante’s Wake: T. S. Eliot’s ‘Art of Memory,’”
Cross Currents
(Winter 1988–89).

*
Mann,
Joseph and His Brothers
(New York: Knopf, 1935), p. 33. †Ernest Jones,
The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud
(New York: Basic Books, 1953). p. 325.

*
Ibid., I: 325, 326.

†
Ibid., p. 356.

*
Feder,
Ancient Myth in Modem Poetry
, p. 44.

†
Ibid., p. 46.

*
Lillian Feder, to whom I owe the above quotation, understandably writes, “Freud is never so heroic, never so admirable, than when he is, in his mind, creating the myths.” Ibid.

†
Ibid.

*
When Oedipus is born it is predicted that he will kill his father, King Laius of Thebes. To forestall this prophecy, Laius gives the baby to a shepherd with instructions to expose it on the mountainside so it will die. But the kindhearted shepherd takes the baby home. As a boy he goes to Corinth, where he is brought up in the household of the King of Corinth. When he is a young man, he hears the prophecy that he will kill his father so he leaves Corinth to avoid this prediction. On the road he meets a coach. He has an argument with the driver, and the passenger, who is King Laius, gets out of the coach to help the driver, is struck by Oedipus, and falls dead. Oedipus then continues to Thebes, where he solves the riddle of the Sphinx and as a reward is given the kingship and weds Queen Jocasta.

This Oedipus myth is particularly cogent in our day because it is central both in psychoanalysis and in literature. We find it, for one example, in the much admired drama by Shakespeare,
Hamlet
The hero is charged by his father’s ghost to avenge his death at the hands of the uncle, who has then married Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet, however, is a hero at the beginning of the modern period, and hence in his self-consciousness he always postpones action. When by accident he is killed in the conclusion, he cries out to his friend Horatio,

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath

in pain

To tell my story….

*
Quotations from Sophocles,
Oedipus Tyrannus, in Dramas
, trans. Sir George Young (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1947).

*
Quotations from Sophocles,
Oedipus at Colonus
, in
The Oedipus Cycle
, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).

†
Note by Fitzgerald, ibid., p. 176.

*
This “presence” will come up in a number of myths we will discuss: Solveig’s presence for Peer Gynt, Briar Rose’s presence for the Prince, and so on.

*
Ernst Cassirer has pointed this out in
The Myth of the State
(New Haven. Yale University Press, 1946).

†
Kairos
is a Greek word used by Tillich and others meaning the “destined time.”

**
Robertson,
American Myth/American Reality
, p. 33.

*
Quoted in ibid.

†
Frederick Jackson Turner,
Encyclopedia Brittanica
, vol. 22 (Chicago: William Benton, 1983), p. 62;.

*
Henry Nash Smith,
Virgin Land
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), P.55.

*
When my children were young, I used to take them occasionally to “westerns” for their own interest and amusement—or so at least I told myself. I knew the plot was always the same: when the Indians are galloping around the wagon train, now drawn up in a circle to protect those still alive among the pioneers and their families, just before the wagons are completely overrun, the sounds of a bugle are heard and over the hill we suddenly see the Stars and Stripes and the U.S. Cavalry galloping to the rescue, with a handsome lieutenant at their head. I tell myself I won’t feel anything each time. But when the bugle does blow and the flag and galloping soldiers do come over the hill, I am thrilled as I always was. Such is the power of myth!

*
This surprising phenomenon of loneliness in the midst of gay and happy Americans was pictured in the deservedly popular book,
The Lonely Crowd
, ed. David Reissman et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).

*
Oriani Fallaci,
Interview with History
(New York: Liveright, 1976), p. 41.

*
On returning from Europe, Philip Slater remarks in his
Pursuit of Loneliness
that everyone looks lonely in America. “These perceptions are heightened by the contrast between the sullen faces of real people and the vision of happiness television offers: men and women ecstatically engaged in stereotyped symbols of fun—running through fields, strolling on beaches, dancing and singing. Americans know from an early age how they are supposed to look when happy and what they are supposed to do or buy to be happy. But for some reason their fantasies are unrealizable and leave them disappointed and embittered.” Philip Slater,
The Pursuit of Loneliness
(Boston: Beacon, 1976).

*
Mark Dowie, “The Transformation Came,”
Image
(San Francisco) (October 12, 1986): 22–26.

*
Ibid., p. 16.

*
Homer,
The Odyssey
, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1963) p 66.

*
Lillian Feder, “Myth in the Poetry of W. S. Merwin,” in
Poets in Progress
, ed. Edward Hungerford (Evanston, 111.: Edward Hungerford, 1962), pp. 412–413.

*
Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much with us”.

*
Henry Nash Smith,
Virgin Land
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p.63.

†
Walt Whitman,
Leaves of Grass
(New York: Heritage Press), p. 25.

*
Bellah,
Habits of the Heart
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 33. This book is a strong indictment of our overemphasized individualism in America.

A speech of mine to a psychiatric convention was picked up by several newspapers around the country, and while the editors agreed with most of my points, they took radical exception to my proposal that individualism in this country needs to be mitigated. Without exception they could not conceive of becoming less individualistic. It seemed so central to their moral system that it could have become their eleventh commandment.

*
Christopher Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism
(New York: Norton, 1979).

†
Two psychiatrists have been central in describing the narcissistic type of personality, Hans Kohut and Otto Kemberg.

**
Lasch,
The Culture of Narcissism
, pp. xvi–xvii.

*
Ibid, p. 11.

*
R. W. White,
Lives in Progress
(New York: Dryden, 1954).

†
Robertson,
American Myth/American Reality
, pp. 165-168.

*
New York Timet
, February 14, 1984.

†
That this emphasis is still active is shown by a “sign-off” of a TV program every night with the words, “Americans don’t want to survive—they want to succeed.”

**
New York Times
, June 29, 1983.

*
I am told by an authority that this great gain in the Dow-Jones average was due to the pouring of Japanese money into the stock market rather than actual gains in American industry.

†
Moira Johnston,
Takeover
(New York: Arbor House, 1986), p. 1.

*
All George F. Will quotations are from
Newsweek
, May 8, 1989.

*
From James Buie, “‘Me’ Decades Generate Depression,”
Monitor
(American Psychological Association) 19, no. 10 (October 1988), summary of the research of Dr. Martin Seligman.

†
These summaries are from a report, “Why Is There So Much Depression Today?” given by Martin E. P. Seligman to the American Psychological Association, 1988. These investigations were supported in part by NIMH grant 19604, NIMH grant 40142, NIA grant AG05590, and a grant to Seligman from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Determinants and Consequences of Health-Promoting and Health-Damaging Behavior.

*
See
Chapter 3
, in which the relation between crime and the weakening of family influence is discussed.

*
The great sums of money, such as Michael Milken being fined for $600 million, add to the idea that the attraction in contemporary life lies in making these great sums. See
New York Times
, April 25, 1990.

*
Smith,
Virgin Land
, p. 259. But Turner is obviously anxious about the future; his remark smacks of reassurance.

*
The Great Gatsby
(New York: Scribners, 1925), pp. 111–112.

*
Ibid., p. 99.

†
Andre Le Vot,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Biography
(New York: Doubleday, 1983), p. 142.

**
Cody, we remember, is the true name of Buffalo Bill. In this Fitzgerald also shows his tie to American mythology.

*
Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
, p. 2.

*
Ibid., p. 169.

*
Ibid., p. 111.

*
Ibid., p. 135.

†
Ibid., p. 162.

*
Ibid., pp. 180-181.

†
Ibid., p. 178.

*
See Rollo May,
Love and Will
(New York: Norton, 1969), p. 290.

†
Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
, p. 152.

**
Ibid., p. 154.

†
Ibid., p. 2.

*
Ibid., p. 56.

†
Ibid., p. 57.

**
Ibid., p. 136.

*
Ibid., p. 165.

*
This “wasteland” makes an obvious connection with T. S. Eliot’s poem by that name, also written in this Jazz Age.

†
Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
, p. 23.

*
Ibid., p. 160.

†
Le Vot,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
, p. 156.

*
Ibid., p. 158.

†
Ibid.

*
Le Vot forgets Eugene O’Neill, but his point is clear.

*
Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
, p. 177.

†
Le Vot,
F
.
Scott Fitzgerald
, pp. 147–148.

*
Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
, p. 181.

†
Ibid., p.182.

*
Ibid., p. 182.

*
Homer (Pope’s translation), in H. A. Guerber,
Myths of Greece and Rome
(London: George Harrap, 1907), p. 144.

†
Ibid., p.6o.

*
Albert Camus,
Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
(New York: Random House, 1959).

*
Shakespeare,
Macbeth
, act. 5, scene 3.

*
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach,” in
A Treasury of Great Poems
(New York: Norton, 1955), p. 922.

*
Quotations from Dante are from
The Divine Comedy: Dante Alighieri
, trans. John Ciardi (New York: Norton, 1970).