Nellie Curtin – Irish Myth – Culture and Psychic Structure
 
The Letter No57 (Autumn 2014) pages 55-62
 
The relationship of myth and psychoanalysis is present in Freud’s writing from the beginning. He uses myth to help explain his theories of infantile sexuality and the interpretation of dreams. His references are to stories from Greek literature, as for instance the myths of Oedipus and Narcissus. This paper draws on an Irish myth which deals with a culture in transition as well as the structuring of a human subject. Using this myth, the paper attempts to identify remnants of prehistory which are likely to remain in the unconscious and how these are woven into analytic experience.
 
Keywords: primal scene, Irish myth, phylogenesis versus ontogenesis, products of construction,  refusal, oral subject