Summary
Carl Gustav Jung, Karl Kerenyi: An Introduction to the Essence of Mythology
If an archetype can be found anywhere in its pure form, it is an ancient story - a myth. To that extent, mythology is, for Jung and Kerenyi, a privileged place in the search for those structures that deeply determine us. But, warn these great writers, mythology no longer shows itself to us in its obviousness because modern man has lost "immediacy towards the great things of the spiritual world". Modern man has completely given his trust to science, so he emphasized efficiency and benefit as the highest criteria, while myth, which explains the world in a different way, is suppressed as slow, naive and ineffective. But with the forgetting of stories, with the forgetting of telling stories - and the predominance of formulas that do not complicate the world, but condense it - we tend to forget about ourselves. Through their immersion in the essence of mythology, Jung and Kerenyi confront, in fact, man with himself, and show him somewhat neglected paths which, with some patience, can still be easily navigated. Kerenyi's analyzes of "divine children" are among the best works ever written on mythology, while Jung's psychology of the child stereotype, done from a mythological perspective, continues to be a source of exciting interpretations.
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