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Comment on Dr. Hacker's Paper. Richard Sterba. Pp. 444-445.
The history of the elaboration of the psychic apparatus and the stages of personality development is intimately bound with the history of myth making, i.e., one myth rises, declines, and gives way to another. Hacker suggests that the therapist is, at some stages, necessarily a mythological hero or villain and possibly even a myth maker. Acknowledgment rather than denial of this new, ancient role might improve his skills as well as his integrity. Freud recognized much of this in speaking of the instincts as 'our mythology'.
Sterba points out that Freud's famous statement is said only as an exclamation of regret at our ignorance and can be countered with numerous quotations asserting his conviction that his and all science brings us closer to reality. Sterba