Popular Art Styles iu Mariachi Festivals

Interest in folklore as an artistic representation of symbolic behavior reflecting unconscious psychodynamics has been present in psychoanalytic thinking since its origin. As early as 1908 Freud noted that the poet's productions bear a striking resemblance to daydreams. In 1911, with the folklorist Oppenheim, he demonstrated that the same symbolism and psychological mechanisms that existed in folktales were present in dreams. Freud and Oppenheim proposed the basic theoretical concept that dreams and folklore were both the products of the unconscious and that the source of folklore itself might often spring from dreams. In discussing similarities between compulsive obsessive behavior patterns and certain aspects of religious ritual (1907 and 1928) and again in a discussion of the unconscious meaning of the motif of the three caskets , Freud showed further awareness of the peculiar relationship between the unconscious and folklore.

Freud was not alone in his interest. In a classic study, Abraham (1913) pointed out the relationship between myths and dreams, and also suggested that myths may originate in dreams. He especially noted the striking similarity between the symbolism and psychological mechanisms which one could find in both myths and dreams. Rank (1912 and 1952), in analyzing a series of myths about culture heroes from all over the world, proposed that the structure of such myths could most easily be explained in psychoanalytic terms as reflecting the oedipal conflict which Freud had proposed as basic to human development.

Ricklin (1915) suggested that fairy tales could be seen as wish fulfillment, and that the symbolism found in them is much the same as the symbolism found in dreams. More recently Jones (1951a), in an exhaustive cross-cultural investigation of the symbolic meaning of salt, used folk beliefs the world over to substantiate the psychoanalytic interpretation which had been suggested by clinical experience. In another cross-cultural investigation, J