This article in the form of a lecture considers the question, 'What is psychoanalytic anthropology and why should it be studied?' Racker defines the basic concepts and attempts to clarify criticisms and disagreements. In an introductory study of psychoanalysis applied to mythology, he analyzes myths of two types: some clearly Oedipal and others that show a dreamlike quality of unreality because of failure of secondary elaboration. He also discusses the importance of myths as 'fundamental and universal types of more or less deformed unconscious fantasies'. Characteristics of the primary process such as use of symbols and the extensiveness of memory traces are essential in the formation of myths as they are in the formation of dreams. Illustrations are given of the application to myths of the concepts of manifest content, latent thoughts, and secondary elaboration.