2. Myth as an Ingrained Psychostructure and a Form of Human Cognition

The word ‘myth’ is of the Greek origin which does make sense regarding the fact that ancient Greeks developed one of the most advanced mythology systems that was widely used through all European culture.

The most general and broad sense the word 'myth' is taken in is 'a story' but not a trivial one, for it commonly has universal value and resonates with the deepest psychological aspects that are associated with human condition. Вut it certainly has a form of story and it is storytelling that true myths owe their existence to as John Bierhorst states it in The Mythology of North America.

Most commonly, these stories contain gods, heroes, and supernatural forces.

Through the course of history there were taken many different approaches regarding this phenomenon. In particular, the 20th century awoke the surge of interest to myth as a cultural phenomenon. Many scholars tried to define this concept and specify its main characteristics.

David Leeming says in The World of Myth, ‘human beings have traditionally used stories to describe or explain things they could not otherwise' [11]. Leeming goes on to say that ‘ancient myths were stories by means of which our forebears were able to assimilate the mysteries that occurred around them’. From that prospective, myth might be regarded as а precursor of science. Many myths explain natural phenomenon and their origin. But it would be a mistake to misrelate mythology and the beginnings of science for the latter gives an account of an outside world whereas myth uncovers the realm within us.

Biblical scholar Millar Burrows explains that myth is 'a symbolic, approximate expression of truth which the human mind cannot perceive sharply and completely, but can only glimpse vaguely, and therefore cannot adequately or accurately express. It implies not falsehood, but truth; not primitive, naіve misunderstanding, but insight more profound than scientific description and logical analysis can ever achieve.' [5].

In this regard, Robert Alan Segal singles out romantic and rationalist approaches to myth. The latter is epitomized by Edward Tylor. Rationalists regard myth as a primitive counterpart to science. By contrast, romantics, for example, Campbell see myth as an eternal possession that refers to either the human mind or ultimate reality [24].

As for the issue of universality of myth versus idiosyncrasy it bears in different cultures іt's fair to say that scientists in a way split down the middle on the issue. Scholars of mythology can be roughly divided into particularists, who emphasize the differences between myths, and comparativists, who emphasize the similarities. Particularists tend to "maintain that the similarities deciphered by comparativists are vague and superficial", while comparativists tend to "contend that the differences etched by particularists are trivial and incidental".

Comparative approaches to mythology held great popularity among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars. Many of these scholars believed that all myths showed signs of having evolved from a single myth or mythical theme. For example, the nineteenth-century philologist Friedrich Max Müller led a school of thought which interpreted nearly all myths as poetic descriptions of the sun's behavior. According to this theory, these poetic descriptions had become distorted over time into seemingly diverse stories about gods and heroes. However, modern-day scholars lean more toward particularism, feeling suspicious of broad statements about myths. One exception to this trend is Joseph Campbell's theory of the "monomyth". Another recent exception is the historical approach followed in E.J. Michael Witzel's reconstruction of many subsequent layers of older mythologies.

J. F. Bierlein in Parallel Myths states that no "single definition is adequate". He describes myth in four ways: (1) as the "first fumbling attempts to explore how things happen" – the beginnings of science; (2) as attempts to explain why things happen – religion and philosophy; (3) as history – the history of prehistory; and (4) as literature, as imaginary stories [2].

Therefore, myth serves as an object of scientific research for culturology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature study and many others.

Literature regards myth as the source of plots, symbols which remain actual for the contemporary society too. Fantastic literature uses the fantastic material the most actively, where elements of reality are combined in beautiful and supernatural way.

In many literary works the category of hero is transformed first of all. The protagonist is not only a warrior or adventurer, but he also searches for the sense of existence, who can make humane decisions taking for the account the possible consequences. This approach allows us to pay more attention to the development of ethic, philosophy and culture in the "author's myth".

In the culture in general, and, as a result, in the contemporary culture, the notion of myth is truly one of the key-notions.

That's why in our time we can find several dozens of definitions of this notion:

1) a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, esp. one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature; 2) stories or matter of this kind: realm of myth; 3) any invented story, idea, or concept: His account of the event is pure myth; 4) an imaginary or fictitious thing or person; 5) an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution [14];

1) a traditional story about heroes or supernatural beings, often explaining the origins of natural phenomena or aspects of human behaviour; 2) myths considered as a group or type of story; 3) a character, story, theme, or object that embodies a particular idea or aspect of culture; 4) somebody or something whose existence is or was widely believed in, but who is fictitious; 5) a story that has a hidden meaning, especially one that is meant to teach a lesson [8].

Thus, in human consciousness the notion of myth is fundamental, it conveys the basic categories of culture and, first of all, associates with the stories about goods and heroes. We must mention that myth, first of all, is a specific form of culture and conception of the world. According to many researchers, myth is the historically first form of the human culture. Myth is an attempt to value human experience through sensual images, associations and metaphors. That's why the main characteristic feature of the myth is its syncretism, the combination of knowledge, emotions, actions and rituals.

Perhaps, the most exhaustive account of the subject was given by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.

Being a Freudian, Carl Jung described the ‘human personality as consisting of two things: first of consciousness and whatever this covers, and second, of an indefinitely large hinterland of unconscious psyche’.

Each human has a personal unconscious and by the commonality of human experience – birth, sex, death, loss, hunger and so forth – is connected to the universal collective unconscious, the Jungian ‘repository of man's experience’

According to June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung's Psychology, "The collective unconscious is better conceived as an extension of the personal unconscious to its wider and broader base, encompassing contents which are held in common by the family, by the social group, by tribe and nation, by race and eventually by all of humanity" [25].

Jung believed that the collective unconscious, which reflects the cosmic order and the history of the human species, is the most important part of the mind. It contains archetypes, which are manifested in symbols that appear in dreams, disturbed states of mind, and various products of culture.

Myths are, by Jung's definition, the "narrative elaboration of archetypal images". The mind becomes aware of the archetypal image and becomes engaged in mythmaking – myth, being, "the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition". Thuswise, mythology becomes a "mirror of the collective unconscious". According to Jung, myths are our expressions of the archetypes inherent in all of us, as our heritage and part in the collective unconscious, that common realm of darkness where the numinous is made visible.

Myth expresses truths of the human condition in metaphoric and symbolic language.

To put it in a nutshell, Carl Jung was first to apply the term archetype to literature. He recognized that there were universal patterns in all stories and mythologies regardless of culture or historical period and hypothesized that part of the human mind contained a collective unconscious shared by all members of the human species, a sort of universal, primal memory.

Even though he professed not to be a Jungian, Joseph Campbell defines myth in ways that are parallel to Jung. Campbell's archetypes and his collective unconscious are Jungian, and his universal knowledge is also made local: the human psyche is essentially the same all over the world. We al share the same instincts, the same impulses, the same conflicts, the same fears.

Out of this common ground have come what Jung has called the archetypes which are the common ideas of myth. These archetypes or elementary ideas, have appeared in different costumes. The differences in the costumes are the results of environmental and historical conditions.

Campbell, like Jung, sees myth as a tool for the understanding of human psychology. For Campbell, myth is indispensable, it is universal. The hero-myth is the perfect example of this universality as its "ultimate meaning" is "all is one": there is only hero, with no doubt more than a thousand faces, the supernatural and the everyday are the same, as are the psychological and the metaphysical. "Every individual hero symbolizes all mankind …"

The bottom line is, myth is indeed universal notion. Myth encompasses deeply rooted psychostructures that explain human condition in a form of symbolic narration which contains archetypes, universal patterns that constitute collective unconsciousness, and is preexistent to the different forms of human culture.