An Example of Legend Distortion from the Apaches of the Mescalero Indian Reservation

Abstract

DURING THE PERIOD when their knowledge was dominated by the topographic viewpoint, psychoanalysts studied myths, frequently without knowledge of the cultures within which the myths had been produced. Using their newly acquired knowledge concerning unconscious mechanisms and especially symbolism, they sought simultaneously interpret myths from their manifest contents and use the interpretations support psychoanalytic concepts, particularly those related infantile sexual wishes.2 Social scientists of varying persuasions objected such manipulation of data,3 and some went so far as reject totally psychological approaches the study of even the expressive aspects of culture.4 As Arlow5 has indicated, since the introduction of the structural theory and the growing emphasis on ego psychology, anthropologists' objections psychoanalysts' having approached the study of mythology from the topographic viewpoint have become less meaningful. His point has been implicitly demonstrated in the work of social scientists who set out validate various psychoanalytic hypotheses, as for example, the proposition that personality is an intervening hypothetical variable determined by child rearing which is determined by maintenance systems and which is finally reflected in projective systems.6 Such researchers have concluded that social structure has a determinative influence upon socialization processes which in turn have a predictable and causative effect upon expressive cultural phenomena and even crime rates.7 The recent works of many social scientists attest the growing acceptance of modern psychoanalytic investigations of elements of expressive culture, including myths. Slater,8 who stresses the roles of multiple determination, finds arguments over which interpretation of a myth or its components is the correct or best one constitute an academic luxury. He deems Fromm's9 attempt repudiate Freud's interpretation of the Oedipus myth and substitute a nonsexual one be a gratuitous waste of a not inconsiderable talent. Slater has approached the use of the myths of ancient Greece in a novel and stimulating manner: rather than interpreting myths, he has employed them draw inferences about the family life of the early Greeks. Dundes5 suggested that myths can be analyzed both with and without knowledge of the cultures which produced them, to the extent that there are human universals (1036), and submitted that while one myth found in many cultures may have as many meanings as there are cultural contexts,10 it is not a fallacy analyze a myth as if it were intrinsic all cultures within which it appears. Muensterberger1l has illustrated how the social scientist can use psychoanalytic knowledge for the