My feelings on this book are as mixed as the collection of authors whose essays have been gathered together for each of its chapters. The book boasts that the selection of essays are complementary and lead into the next in an uncanny way, but I did not agree. The essays do not build on concepts that logically follow the next, expand on ideas introduced in earlier essays, nor do they contribute to a uniform interpretation on the role of myth. I do not feel the essays themselves are without value but rather have to be evaluated each on their own merits and their quality weighed absent of the expectation that they (as the book boasts) mutually inform each other.
The writing style of each author and content of these collected essays range from brilliant to boring and the mental rhythm that each must be approached with is often wildly different from the next. A couple essays are penned beneath tantalizingly interesting chapter titles yet quickly proved to be dull and lacking any intellectual contribution aside from the cliche thoughts of their genre's well-worn paths. The thoughts on myth relating to Hebrew and Christian scriptures barely had much to say outside what scholars in churches and synagogues have been saying for centuries, the essay on myth & imagination had nothing of real interest outside of the essay title, and the closing essay by Richard Underwood is a poor example of writing by a well-read scholar who hides behind numerous quotes of philosophers-past yet has no emerging theme or voice of his own and thereby seems more like an undergrad's term paper than an insightful contribution to his field. There are a couple other decent essays, and one wildly offbeat contribution by Norman Brown that brings the rhythm of the book down to snails pace (written in the format of handfuls of short poems that often quote from and fail to translate the Latin, jump around to different culture's spiritual & mythological concepts without adequate references, and I only lucked out in this one because I had finished Ovid's metamorphoses the week before). At the other end of the spectrum are some brilliant thoughts by David Miller, Joseph Campbell and Ira Progoff, whose ideas made this book to me a worthwhile read.
I felt three essays in particular deserve significant praise and individual attention here.
Hamilton's thoughts on Orestes is written in a rhythm that shows the kind of understanding of how a reader/student digests new ideas that only a top-notch teacher possesses. Perhaps he's one of those few teachers who are able to role play the "beginner's mind" when pondering what they wish to say and end up sculpting the type of lecture that encounters no friction with its listeners. He starts with the idea of Freud's famed interest in the Oedipus myth and pits that initially against the idea of the Orestes myth being instead more relevant to modern man. After initially introducing these ideas another ingredient is thrown into the mix: catharsis as it relates to psychotherapy and to the culture of the ancient Greeks. This leads into a discussion of Jungian concepts of catharsis which then get pitted against Freudian ideas, but he then transcends and blends the seemingly contradicting viewpoints and instead shows how they are part of the same process (just different stages) and relevant in their own ways. Scholars who present opposing ideas usually take the easy road by hiding behind pretended objectivity and assume the role of tour guide through those ideas. While that technique offers no real insight and little value other than introducing empty facts, Hamilton leads the reader into seeing each idea through the eyes of its proponents and then zooms out to a macro level that can make use of each idea as part of a holistic process.
Ira Progoff contributes a short essay on depth psychology and the redefining of daemonic urges. Regardless if the reader has true interest in psychotherapy the concepts are quite useful in a practical sense and have philosophical appeal as well. Socrates often referred to his inner "daemon" whose voice he followed and the Greeks in general referred to psychic intrusion or inspiration - be it to good or evil - as being "daemonic". This could be a specific of their popular gods or if the unique deity was unknown at the moment could be referred to generally as "daemonic" (E.R. Dodds goes into great length on this idea in The Greeks and the Irrational). In this essay it is interpreted in a modern psychotherapeutic view as the feelings, urges, and obsessive impulses we often find ourselves bewitched by for any length of time. His point is to recognize the need for both the patient and the therapist to acknowledge, understand, and name these daemonic impulses through the course of therapy. He ventures an insightful point on the need to know the name of the demon before casting it out as being essentially the intended goal of any practicing therapist (whether they subscribe to his theory or not). In the medieval and new testament gospel's model the name of the demon is first learned before casting it out and after digging up a wonderful quote from early 20th century psychologist William James he shows how this is also what the therapist does in their dealings with the patient. James basically says that a patient who struggles with alcoholism is prone to make any and every excuse or source of blame for their habit but the minute they can be convinced that they're simply a drunkard, they're unlikely to remain a drunk for very long. Sometimes coming face to face with an embarrassing label for one's behavior is the type of emotional look-in-the-mirror necessary to alter it. Progoff wraps up the discussion by defining what it means to "name" an impulse and broadening it beyond a mere labeling to the more apt definition of "logos" and coming to true understanding of the behavior. And once the daemon is understood in this way, it can be resolved.
Joseph Campbell's own essay discusses what constitutes the type of art which evokes the transcendent, and is based on a concept James Joyce discusses towards the end of the novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There is a popular clip on this in lecture format which I've seen a few times, but it's nice to have a copy here in print as well. A lot of art or literature is "kinetic" in that it moves you to do something outside yourself. It either excites you with desire to possess/be/do something or it repels you. The former he refers to a "pornographic" and is a pattern employed most often in advertising whose aim is to excite their audience with desire to possess an object or have a certain experience or feeling. And the latter is a theme explored often in literature by authors who wish to repel their readers from a certain political "evil" or any other pattern on a personal or organizational level that they wish to paint as loathsome. Aside from "kinetic" art you have "static" art, of the kind that is proper to oneself. It is not meant to inspire one to go outside of oneself in any show of obedience but rather causes a sort of aesthetic arrest and opens one up to the universe within. In this sense it it transcendent and its goal is to lead one to the the self.
The book is a strange mix of thoughts, but there are major points of interest and its flaw to me is one of editing. Many of the footnotes are helpful in making the book more uniform and coherent, but are not always adequate. It is an insightful exploration of the psyche and specifically the things that can stimulate it toward growth and wholeness, and after all that is the whole point of mythology.