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This book is a translation from the German Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie, published in Zürich and Amsterdam. It is
not necessary to introduce Jung to readers of this QUARTERLY but few will have heard of Kerényi, formerly Professor of Greek Philology at the University of Budapest and now undoubtedly the foremost international authority on Greek mythology. For this reason every psychoanalyst should read this book, since a psychoanalyst can read with critical judgment and notice how the authors (Kerényi more than Jung) manage to approximate the truth and then to obfuscate it in a kind of Platonic philosophy.
For instance, Kerényi in discussing Hermes writes about the 'herm': 'Sacred emblems of this kind, in which it is easy to recognize the naked phallus, were said in ancient times to be "in the Kyllenic manner", no doubt because Hermes possessed these emblems not only in the Elian port of Kyllene but also on the Arcadian Mount Kyllene, his birthplace'. Kerényi then explains that Hermes is the phallus, and proves his close relationship with Eros and Aphrodite (pp. 72, 73), but now come 'mythologems', a favorite word of this school; whether it means simply myth or belief or something 'unutterable' I am at a loss to say.
He discusses the episode of the tortoise and the lyre and writes, 'But can we not say that the invention of the first lyre which the Hermes child gave to Apollo as a gift is in a certain sense "cosmic"? We have been speaking of a cosmic content that can express itself in a mythological, philosophical, mathematical, musical, or any other way… Of the pictorial wealth of mythology we can best speak in terms of music' (p. 79). To my mind this just makes no sense at all.
Let us see what Jung has to say on the same subject. 'The "eternal child" in man is an indescribable experience, an incongruity, a disadvantage, and a divine prerogative; an imponderable that determines the ultimate worth or worthlessness of a personality' (p. 135).
I am tempte