Rollo May: The Cry for Myth
I have just recently finished reading of another book about my favorite topic - mythology. This time it was a book by an American existentialist psychologist Rollo May (1909-1994) called The Cry for Myth and which was published in 1991. Since I do not know much about psychology, I was not sure if I would be able to understand the book. But I must admit that the book turned out to be a big surprise. The book is divided into two major parts. The first part is theoretical. In it, May presents some ideas about the nature of myth and mythology. I did not enjoy this part much because it is based on a very eclectic theoretical approach. He quotes two different Malinowski’s ideas about the nature of myth - once, myth serves deep moral cravings, for the second time, it enforces morality. May then quotes Jung and says that myths express the deep collective unconscious and immediately after this he quotes Lévi-Strauss for whom “the myth describes lived experience”. And finally Ma...