Myths, such as the Oedipus myth, are akin to an arsenal of traditional models of action and patterns for the elaboration of desires. Historically as well as currently they have a socializing function. They reflect cultural struggles, progress and its price, and the transformations which the profiles of subjects undergo. As a rule, psychoanalytic approaches to myths ignore their historical meaning; that is, the historical difference between the myth and the present. The historical interpretation usually misses the latent, enduring meaning of the myth. What is needed is an interpretive approach to myths which differentiates historically and yet mobilizes the interpreter psychoanalytically. The psychoanalytic interpreter is himself subject to history (and life history) whose potential is constrained by the prevailing reality principle.