You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
As I read through Harry Slochower's book on Mythopoesis,* dealing with some of the peaks of Western literature, my wonderment grew at having been asked to review it. What could I—what could any psychoanalyst—bring to this repository of literary and philosophical erudition? I have reassured myself with the thought that the book clearly demands a review in American Imago, and the editor has exercised good judgement in requesting a psychoanalytic assessment for this audience. The book should serve as a pattern for efforts in the application of depth psychology to mythic themes in literature, and the analytic community needs to have brought to its notice the import of this contribution.
Slochower has previously made the distinction between myths—i. e. systems of existing belief that serve as guides for living—and mythopoesis (1970). The latter denotes the creative utilization of an outworn myth by an artist in such a way as to crystallize the meaning of the current social and cultural situation of his people. This basic differentiation has seldom been maintained within the psychoanalytic literature dealing with mythology, causing much confusion that can easily be avoided.
In his new book, Slochower confines himself to the discussion of mythopoesis; it is a study in the realm of art, not in that of religion, if such a crude dichotomy may be set up for expository convenience. The art from which Slochower has drawn all of his examples is that of the written word, although mythopoesis is equally conceivable in any medium and has been present frequently in painting, in the musical theater, and recently in films.
What I am professionally qualified to assess about this book is but a narrow facet of it: the appropriateness of the author's use of the constructs of psychoanalysis in his examination of the way in which various prototypical mythopoeic