1.1. Basic concepts First of all, let us define the semantic component of the concepts “sex” and “gender” and terms directly related to them. In English-language literature, the concepts of “gender” and “sex” are defined by one word “sex”. In Russian, the word "gender" means

Myth is a legend that periodically appeared in preliterate society. They tell about the life of the first ancestors, the exploits of heroes, the deeds of gods and spirits. The very concept of myth has Greek roots and comes from the word “mytos”, which means “legend”.

First mentions of myths

The set of myths in ceremonial rituals acquired a verbal form, acting as one of the specific ways of systematizing information about the surrounding reality. On the other hand, stories about nature and man in it performed a number of important functions: religious, ideological, philosophical, historical, scientific.

The features of myths include an arbitrary approach to plotting, personification and zoomorphism.

The appearance of ideas about supersensible principles coincides with the appearance of the first burials. Thanks to ancient burials, many elementary forms of fine art have been found.

History of the origin of myths

In the Upper Paleolithic, a stable formation of a syncretic complex took place: myth - image - ritual. Maintaining this structure throughout speaks to its versatility. For many centuries it reflects both the rational principle and the irrational cultural core.

Paleolithic images were myths, and their creation was rituals. “Signified” and “signifier” in myths primitive people existed in absolute unity.

Myth concept

Many sciences have various interpretations the concept of "myth". The meaning of the word is formulated from different positions, which leads to the presence of many vague and contradictory definitions. Among them are the interpretations given in encyclopedic dictionaries, calling fantastic stories of folk origin myths.

There are also expanded modernized versions that say that myth is a syncretic understanding of the surrounding world, expressed by sensory-specific personifications and animate beings that are identified with reality. Philosophical views The interpretation of this concept is based on the understanding of myth as a figurative diagram of the world that explains and prescribes a specific algorithm of actions.

What does the word myth mean? This question can be answered by synthesizing the meaning-forming components from different approaches. This is exactly how we can formulate a complete and precise definition of this concept: myths are texts and images that demonstrate a syncretic reflection of the surrounding reality in different eras development of humanity. Moreover, each culture has its own uniqueness, emphasizing numerous aspects of the development of a particular society.

Typology of myths

IN school curriculum includes myths that can easily be called ancient, biblical or other ancient tales. They tell about events related to the creation of the world and the commission of ancient acts (mainly by Greek and heroes).

Researchers of historical mythology note that in a great variety of works of different nationalities, many basic themes and motifs are repeated. That is, the origin of myths does not completely determine their content. For example, some of the most ancient and primitive tales are tales about animals. The earliest of them only naively describe the characteristics of fauna representatives. And in ancient Australian myths, for example, the theory of the origin of animals from humans is widespread. But other peoples of the world, albeit not so clearly, spread in their legends the mythological idea that man was once an animal. Examples of myths of this kind: ancient Greek tales about the girl-nymph Daphne, about the hyacinth, about the narcissus and others.

The origin of the heavenly bodies was also often sanctified in myths. In the so-called solar, lunar and astral legends, the Sun, Moon and stars were often depicted by people who once lived on Earth and on various reasons subsequently ascended to heaven. Such a myth is an alternative to the formation of the Universe invented by the people. Another common plot is a description of the process of creating the Sun by some supernatural being. In this case, the heavenly body was not spiritualized.

The central place in the totality of myths of many countries was occupied by works describing the creation of the world and the Universe, as well as man. Otherwise they are called cosmogonic and anthropogonic, respectively. Culturally backward peoples wrote little about these topics. In particular, the Australians only casually mentioned that the Earth's surface used to look different, but questions about its appearance were never raised.

Polynesians, North American Indians, peoples of the Ancient East and the Mediterranean viewed cosmogonic processes from two points of view. One of them was based on the idea of ​​the creation of the world (creation), the other - on the idea of ​​its development (evolutionary). According to creation theory, the world was created by a creator, god, sorcerer, or other supernatural being. In myths built on evolutionary theory, the world systematically develops from some kind of primitive existence. It could be chaos, darkness, darkness, etc.

There are also many mythological stories about sea ​​creatures(monsters) that were seen by sailors, travelers and fishermen.

Modern myths and science

The essence of this problem is that talking about a myth as a scientific fact difficult. It is safe to say that it is a component of mythology. Moreover, it belongs to the secondary level of consciousness, which covers ideologically, culturally and scientifically processed information. In this context, a myth is a legend artificially created by man, which is based on assumptions and legends that gradually change under the influence of ideological and scientific factors.

Two directions of development of mythology

The appearance of myths is associated with the emergence, formation and development of a nation. This is how people form their individual origin stories. Later in myth-making there appear works intended for the masses (which are created by the elite), and tales created by the people themselves. Thus, we can talk about two directions in the development of mythology: closed and open.

1. Translated from Greek, it means story or speech, a story of unknown origin or whose origin cannot be verified, but which is part of the traditions of a culture or group. Usually a myth contains some explanatory component that supposedly connects historical events, especially important for a given culture. In Junginian theory, myths became one of the objects of analysis of the collective unconscious. 2. A false, unsubstantiated, but widely held belief.

MYTH

a unique form of worldview that arises in the early stages of history, embodied in legends and narratives.

According to S. Freud, myth is the step through which an individual emerges from mass psychology. The first myth was psychological, heroic; the explanatory myth about nature apparently arose much later.

Myths

myths) M. are the legends of ancient peoples who lived in primitive, pre-rational, pre-scientific societies, reflecting their attempts to find answers to such serious questions, exciting people, like the creation of the world, life, death and rebirth - naturally, with the involvement of supernatural forces, ancestors and heroes. For psychology, M. are useful as a source of materials that enrich our understanding of people. behavior. There is no one theory, no matter how important it may be, that would fully explain the entire spectrum of M. or even M. Z. Freud said that M., like dreams, are the royal road to the unconscious. K. Jung argued that M. represent the innate collective unconscious with universal symbols and archetypes, and not the personal unconscious. See also Literature and psychology by R. Zaslow

MYTHS

Myths are attempts to explain difficult-to-understand phenomena (pvistrauss, 1958). Myth typically refers to stories or phenomena that are easier to comprehend. We need images in order to think.

The emergence of hypnosis in the world of science required an appeal to images, metaphors and myths with which the names of the great predecessors are firmly associated. Some myths are nuisances, introducing harmless concepts into everyday life; for example, the myth of possession or submission to the master. “Myths are the active elements of hypnosis” (Godin, 1991).

The images, on the contrary, fit well into the technical mythology of our era; their advantage is that they do not emphasize the power of the therapist: “Your brain works like a computer. You can learn to bracket certain aspects of your Self, in particular, you tune out what is around you in the present moment. Now your energy is completely used for internal work... Your brain may begin searching for memories that you are not aware of ... It is able to turn on programs for finding solutions without transmitting it to the screen of your consciousness, etc.”

MYTH

An ancient story about the life of gods and heroes, the creation of the world, the origin of people and animals, the emergence of customs and rituals.

The emergence of psychoanalysis was accompanied by S. Freud's appeal to the myth of Oedipus. In particular, in a letter to V. Fliess (1858–1928), written on October 15, 1897, he expressed several thoughts about the Greek legend of Oedipus. In his work “The Interpretation of Dreams” (1900), he emphasized that “the myth of Oedipus arose from oldest material a dream, which has as its content a painful breakdown of relations with parents due to the first movements of sexual feeling.” Speaking about the fact that parents play a predominant role in children's mental life of all psychoneurotics, the founder of psychoanalysis proceeded from the position that psychoneurotics, with their friendly and hostile desires towards their parents, embody a picture of exaggeration, intensely and clearly observed in most children. In confirmation of this truth, antiquity bequeathed to us “an extremely convincing myth, the deep and comprehensive meaning of which becomes clear only by establishing the universality of the above-mentioned features of child psychology.”

In his further research and therapeutic activities, S. Freud repeatedly appealed to both the myth of Oedipus and other myths that illustrate various psychoanalytic ideas and contribute to a better understanding of nature mental illness. His appeal to myths was reflected, in particular, in such works as “The Mythological Parallel of Plastic Obsessive Imagination” (1916), “Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis” (1916/17), “On Making Fire” (1932). As the founder of psychoanalysis emphasized in his work “On Making Fire,” in myth the gods are allowed to satisfy all desires that a person must renounce, for example, the desire for incest.

As psychoanalysis emerged and developed, many researchers followed the example of S. Freud and focused their efforts on the study of ancient myths. Thus, O. Rank (1884–1939) in his work “The Myth of the Birth of a Hero. Experience in the psychological interpretation of myths" (1908) noted that in the question of the origin of myths, the activity of fantasy should be given first place, and also characterized myth as a paranoid formation and emphasized that the myths about the hero he examined "in many of their essential features coincide with manic ideas a certain circle of mentally ill people suffering from delusions of persecution and delusions of grandeur, the so-called paranoids.”

K. Abraham (1877–1925) published the work “Dream and Myth. An Essay on Collective Psychology" (1909), in which he analyzed the myth of Prometheus, drew an analogy between myth and dreams and put forward the statement that "a myth is a fragment of the experienced spiritual life of the childhood of a people" and that "every people surrounded the beginning of its existence with a myth , surprisingly reminiscent of delusional ideas about the origin of the mentally ill.”

In the work of O. Rank and G. Sachs (1881–1947) “ Psychoanalytic research myths and fairy tales" (1913) it was noted that psychoanalysis not only offers a certain method of interpreting myth, but also substantiates the need to explain it using the meaning that the unconscious has in the creation of myths. In their opinion, psychoanalysis replaces superficial comparison with genetic research, which makes it possible to “consider myths as modified remnants of the desires and fantasies of entire peoples.” A myth is not an individual product, like a dream, but also not as stable and finally formed as a work of art. “The creation of a myth is a process that never ends and is adapted by subsequent generations to their religious, cultural, ethical level, or, in psychological terms, to a given stage of repression.”

Subsequent psychoanalysts also paid considerable attention to the study of myths and the use of their material in their interpretative activities in the process of analytical therapy. In modern psychoanalysis, the focus of consideration and rethinking is primarily on such mythological constructs as the myth of Oedipus and Narcissus.

from Greek mythos - word; legend, legend) - a legend that conveys the ideas of ancient peoples about the origin of the world, about natural phenomena, about gods and legendary heroes. Currently, they are talking about the mythologization of known concepts, thanks to which the phenomena that underlie them as rationally incomprehensible and incomprehensible should be presented as reverently accepted; similar concepts are, for example, the concepts of state, people, collective, technology. In contrast to this, they also talk about demythologization.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Myth

lat. mythos - tradition, story, legend) - fantastic, symbolic ideas about gods and legendary heroes, supernatural forces, explaining the origin and essence of the world, the purpose of man. "Myth is the first form of rational comprehension of the world, its figurative and symbolic reproduction and explanation, resulting in a prescription for action. Myth transforms chaos into space, creates the possibility of comprehending the world as a kind of organized whole, expresses it in a simple and accessible scheme that could be transformed into magic action as a means of conquering the incomprehensible. Mythical world endowed with those qualities that color the existence of an individual in his relationship with other people. In myths, the world and the subject are not separated; the symbolic imagination produces images that are perceived as part of reality. Myth is a means of removing sociocultural contradictions and overcoming them. Myth is born at the stage of dominance of archaic consciousness, but does not leave the stage of history with the advent of reflective consciousness, because the anthropomorphic (human-like) vision of reality is constantly reproduced in culture, appealing (addressing) mass consciousness. Socio-mythological constructions meet the aspirations of the masses and often find their completion in the reflective efforts of professional ideologists. Examples include the Nazi blood myth or the myth of Soviet man."62

Before considering a hypothesis about why and on what basis a person has a mythological thinking, it is necessary to determine the meaning of the term “myth”. IN modern language The word “myth” has a double meaning. On the one hand, in everyday speech it is used rather in a “negative” sense, that is, as “fiction”, “untruth”, something without rational argumentation. IN best case scenario, a myth is understood as something like a fairy tale. On the other hand, science, especially in last decades, began to understand myth in a different, “positive” sense.

And this is where the difficulties begin. A bunch of scientific schools in different periods they defined “myth” in their own way. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of different definitions and interpretations. Therefore, first we will select from them those that most fully meet the objectives of the study. And let the reader not be confused by the fact that one term is given several definitions. They are all true in their own way and equally important. Later we will separately consider why this state of affairs is normal and even natural for myth.

Let's start with the approach according to which “myth” is a certain way of viewing the world, formed on the basis of a certain type of thinking. A similar approach to understanding myth is proposed by E.M. Meletinsky:

• “Myth is a means of conceptualizing the world - what is around a person and in him. To a certain extent, myth is a product of primitive thinking. His mentality is associated with collective ideas (Durkheim’s term), unconscious and conscious, rather than with personal experience.”

On the other hand, M. Eliade suggests looking at the myth from a slightly different perspective. He's writing:

• “We are finally beginning to realize and understand the meaning of myth, which was embedded in it by “primitive” and archaic societies, that is, by those layers of humanity where myth is the true basis of social life and culture. And now the following fact immediately catches the eye: in such societies it was believed that myth conveys absolute truth, since it tells a sacred story, that is, a revelation standing above man, which took place at the dawn of the Great Time, in the sacred time of beginning in illo tempore. Being real sacred, myth becomes typical, and therefore repetitive, since it is a model and, to some extent, a justification for all human actions. In other words, the myth is true story what happened at the beginning of time, and provides a model for human behavior."

That is, according to Eliade, myth acts as one of the regulators of social life, setting the rules of people’s behavior, determining for them what is good and what is bad, what can be done and what cannot be done. This is echoed by Karen Armstrong, who writes:

• “A myth was an event that, in a sense, happened once, but at the same time repeated constantly. The strictly chronological approach to history that we are accustomed to does not allow us to find a word to describe such a phenomenon. But mythology is special shape art, directed beyond history to the timeless core human existence, helping to break out of the chaotic flow of random events and catch a glimpse of the very essence of reality.”

That is, myth is also one of the ways for a person to organize and comprehend reality. The difference between myth and art is that:

• “Art is an emotional-figurative cognition of the relationship between a person and the phenomena of the world, and myth is an attempt to cognition in an emotional-figurative way of the world itself”

• “Myth is not a symbol, not an allegory, but an emotionally colored event-based understanding of the phenomena of the world”

• “The primary myth (leaving aside the mythical elements of the epic, fairy tale, etc.) is a coherent, “plot” interpretation of the phenomena of the world in the absence general concepts and, if necessary, generalization through tropes. The phenomena themselves that were subject to interpretation can be roughly divided into two groups: 1) phenomenology outside world(at the same time, it was certainly socially significant for ancient man - other phenomena did not need to be understood) and 2) the phenomenology of socio-psychological impulses.”

• “Mythological thinking is objective-sensory, figurative thinking, characterized by weak development of abstract concepts, slowness, and difficulty in developing such concepts and words expressing them.”

Mythological thinking is concentrated on such “metaphysical” problems as the mystery of birth, death, fate, destiny, etc., that is, on issues that are in a certain sense peripheral to science, and for which rational explanations do not satisfy people even in modern society. The “survivability” of mythological thinking is due to the fact that it allows us to eliminate conflicts of consciousness caused by the inexplicability of some events that go beyond the limits of rational explanation. Mythology allows us to convey the less understandable through the more understandable, the incomprehensible through the intelligible, and so on.

Mythology is not simply about satisfying curiosity, its task is different, it complements rational thinking, gives it completeness, providing a holistic approach to worldview, in which there is no place for elements of chaos and disorder and there is an opportunity for every life. important question get answer . According to the assumption of I.M. Dyakonov, the emergence of mythological thinking in humans has psychophysiological prerequisites, which will be discussed in more detail later.

Sergey Vyachesoavovich Savelyev. Russian scientist, evolutionist, paleoneurologist, doctor biological sciences, professor, head
development laboratory nervous system Institute of Human Morphology RAS.

An important aspect of a correct understanding of the role of myth is its adequate correlation with rational knowledge (logos). Very often one is contrasted with the other. This approach is fundamentally wrong. Myth and logos in human consciousness complement each other, providing the “multitude of knowledge” with completeness. Even during the period when mythological thinking was prevalent in human culture, this did not mean that people lacked rationality. Both forms of thinking most likely arose simultaneously, but it was thanks to rational thinking that people learned to compensate for physical disadvantages, develop technology, and accumulate practical knowledge, thereby providing themselves with an advantage in the struggle for existence.

And although rational thinking has come a long way since then, at some stage even becoming the leading form, it is still unable to give a satisfactory answer to many questions of the universe that are important to humans. Rational knowledge can hardly ever provide consolation, reconcile a person with death, or inspire self-sacrifice. What can we say about prehistoric times, when logos, even in language, did not yet have the necessary tools for full functioning? Therefore, it is natural that, both then and now, a person, not finding rational answers, strives to obtain them with the help of myth and mythological thinking.

Even at the physiological level different types thinking is based on different areas of the brain, although to one degree or another all areas always work simultaneously. In rational thinking, a major role is played by the second signaling system, unique to humans. In the mythological, a significant load falls on the emotional centers, that is, on the more ancient limbic system. The psychophysiological basis of thinking will be discussed further. Here I would like to once again draw attention to the fact that even at the physiological level, rational thinking and emotional thinking are not opposed, but complement each other.

Both myth and logos have their limitations, their strengths and weak sides. But intuitively people, still in ancient times, realized that there is no contradiction between them, that they complement each other, and that for humanity to survive, it is necessary to maintain the right balance. In societies where such a balance was disturbed, as a rule, destructive processes began, often leading to disasters.

And second important point, resulting from the relationship between rational and emotional thinking, is that both of these types of thinking are always present in the human mind, only their ratio changes. And the less rational there is in the consciousness, the more emotional it will inevitably become. And the more emotional there is, the easier it will be to influence consciousness from the outside. We will look at how and why this happens in the next part.

To summarize, let us once again note the key points for a correct understanding of the myth:

1. Myth is one of the forms of knowledge of the world by primitive man and the starting point for the development of human thinking;


2. Myth does not oppose logos, but complements it, providing completeness to the “multitude of knowledge”;


3. Myological thinking is an integral part of human consciousness. Humanity has formed and most time existed within the framework of mythological thinking;


4. Mythological thinking originated and developed as a way of emotional and sensory knowledge of the world in conditions of underdevelopment primitive man abstract and cause-and-effect thinking;


5. Mythological thinking is focused on “metaphysical” problems, such as the mystery of birth, death, fate, destiny, etc.

1. Meletinsky E.M. Poetics of Myth, 3rd ed., - M.: Vost. lit., 2000. - 407 pp. - ISBN 5-02-017878-0 (10)


2. Meletinsky E.M. From myth to literature, - M.: Publishing center of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU), 2001. - 168 p. — ISBN 5-7281-0095-3. (V)


3. Eliade M. - Myths. Dreams. Mysteries. Translated from English - K. Wakler, 1996. - 288 p. Series “Current Psychology”. ISBN 5-87983-027-6, series 5-87983-038-1 (“Refl-book”) ISBN 966-543-015-7 (“Wackler”) (14)


4. Armstrong K. Short story myth, trans. from English A. Blaze. - M.: Open World, 2005. - 160 p. - (Myths). ISBN 5-9743-0009-2 (3)


5. Dyakonov I.M. Archaic myths of East and West. - M.: Main editorial office of oriental literature of the publishing house "Nauka", 1990. - 247 p. — ISBN 5-02-017016-Х (7)


6. Weinberg I.P. Man in the culture of the ancient Middle East, M: Nauka, 1986, 208 p. { 4 }


7. Savelyev S.V. The duality of primate behavior, from the collection “How Man Populated Planet Earth”, 2006, 318c, ISBN 5-7728-0145-3 (I)