Is myth a reputable halfway house between religion and psychology?
As Kai’s post underlines, I see disctint similarities between religion and psychology. They are both structured around the philosophies; they are both essentially about people, about understanding their behaviors in order to control the outcomes of those behaviors, be it social, moral or personal, and they do so within a framework of versions of reality; they both purport to give people a better life. Myth does not link them so much as it is put in play by both of them. I would point to philosophy as the significant link between them. Joseph Campbell once pointed at a simple metaphor as ‘myth’ –what myth is is contained in the image that represents an idea that cannot be communicated literally. In a sense, the whole world to us is a representation in images: what we “see” literally through experiences of sensation is no different in form* from that what we understand (“see”) in words and ideas. Two concepts, linked through function, and in knowing one (the physical) we understand the
