MYTH AND DISEASE

[Triton]

MYTH AND DISEASE


'The link between Gods and diseases is double: on the one hand, giving
the dignity of archetypal significance and divine reflection to every
symptom whatsoever, and on the other hand, suggesting that myth and
its figures may be examined for patterns of pathology… The relations
between myths and psychopathology are elaborated in a series of
studies [in which] the myth is examined for its pathological
implications. The hermeneutic begins with myths and mythical figures
(not with a case), reading them downward for psychological
understanding of the fantasies going on in behavior. Thereby
archetypal psychology follows the epistrophic (reversion) method of
Corbin, returning to the higher principle in order to find a place for
and understand the lesser -- the images before their examples.
Imagination becomes a method for investigating and comprehending
psychopathology…

Precisely because myth presents the exceptional, the outlandish,
and more-than-human dimension, it offers background to the sufferings
of souls in extremis, i.e., what nineteenth-century medicine calls
'psychopathology'. [James Hillman - 'Archetypal Psychology: a breif
account']