A review by the_lobrarian
Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry

F/U: Jung & myth as "collective unconscious"

Let's face it, even today we cannot understand or explain much of what drives us. Take love for example. To say "she fell in love" is to describe a mystery. One might as well say, "Eros pierced her heart with his arrow," and "gametes fizzed, hormones seethed, psychological affinities and sexual connections were made" . . . the gods in Greek myth represent human motives and drives that are still mysterious to us. Might as well call them a god as an impulse or a complex. To personify them is a rather smart way - not of managing them perhaps, but of giving shape, dimensions, and character to the uncontrollable and unfathomable forces that control us. Do "superego" and "id" reveal any more about our inner selves than Apollo and Dionysus? Evolutionary behavioralism and ethology may tell us more about who and how we are as scientific fact, but the poetic concentration of our traits into the personalities of the gods, demons, and monsters are easier for some of us dull-witted ones to hold in our heads than the abstractions of science. Myth can be a kind of human algebra which makes it easier to manipulate truths about ourselves. Symbols and rituals are not toys and games to be dispensed with on our arrival at adulthood, they are tools we will always need. They complement our scientific impulse; they do not stand in opposition to it." (p. 584, eBook)