Myths to Live By

by Joseph Campbell

Myths, according to Freud’s view, are of the psychological order of dream. Myths, so to say, are public dreams; dreams are private myths. Both, in his opinion, are symptomatic of repressions of infantile incest wishes, the only essential difference between a religion and neurosis being that the former is the more public.

The peculiar thing about man, which distinguishes us from all other beasts of the kingdom, is that we are born, as already remarked, twelve years too soon.