The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

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The Myth of the Birth of the Hero
Myth of the Birth of the Hero (cover; German).png
Cover for the 1922 German edition
Author Otto Rank
Original titleDer Mythus von der Geburt des Helden
Translator
  • E. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe (1914 translation)
  • Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman (2004 translation)
LanguageGerman
Published
  • 1909 (1st ed. in German)
  • 1914 (1st ed. in English)
  • 1922 (2nd ed. in German)
  • 2004 (2nd ed. in English)
Publication placeGermany

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (German : Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden) is a 1909 book by Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank that advances a psychoanalytic interpretation of mythological hero narratives focused on their birth legends. [1] [2] Rank traces recurring motifs across a corpus of ancient and medieval figures, then proposes a generalized sequence in which royal birth, threatened infancy, rescue, and eventual recognition mark the hero's rise. [3] [4] He issued a substantially revised German edition in 1922, later translated to English in 2004. [5] [6] Scholars continue to treat the study as a foundational statement in hero-myth analysis, though structuralist critics dispute Rank's Freudian premises and typological reductions. [1] [7] [8] [9]

Contents

Summary

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero comprises three parts. The first two sections were published in 1909, and Rank added a third when the work was republished in 1922. [10] In the opening section, he introduces the project and writes that "Whatever one's opinion as to their origin, one is struck by an insistent tendency in the myths to make all heroic figures fit the framework of a specific birth legend." [11] He then emphasizes "the role played by unconscious psychosexual life in myth formation." [1] The book closely analyzes birth myths for Sargon of Akkad, Moses, Karna, Oedipus, Paris, Telephos, Perseus, Dionysus, Gilgamesh, Cyrus the Great, Trakhan, Tristan, Romulus, Hercules, Jesus, Siegfried, Lohengrin, and Sceafa. [12] The concluding section presents the outline Rank argues can be applied to most mythical birth stories:

The hero is the child of very distinguished parents, and usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as sexual abstinence, prolonged infertility, or secret intercourse of the parents due to external prohibition or obstacles. During or before the pregnancy, a prophecy, in the form of a dream or oracle, warns against his birth, usually threatening harm to the father. Therefore the newborn child, usually at the instigation of the father or his representative, is doomed to be killed or exposed. As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (herders), and suckled by a female animal or a lowly woman. After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents in a variety of ways. He takes revenge on his father, on the one hand, and is acknowledged, on the other, achieving greatness and fame. [13]

Publication history

The first edition of The Myth of the Birth of the Hero was published in 1909 by Franz Deuticke. [14] An English translation of this edition, prepared by E. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe, appeared in 1914 as the eighteenth entry in the "Nervous and Mental Disease" monograph series from the Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company. [15] Franz Deuticke issued an expanded second German edition in 1922. [16] That expanded text remained officially unavailable in English until 2004, when Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman published a translation through the Johns Hopkins University Press. [17]

Reception

Contemporary reaction inside the psychoanalytic movement was swift and largely welcoming. [18] [19] [7] Members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society read Rank's study as an ambitious extension of the family romance and debated how it linked infantile wishes to public myth. [18] [19] [7] The society's minutes document sustained discussion in the years after publication and note early doubts about whether a single birth pattern could span every culture. [18] [19] [7] Within that setting the monograph served as a programmatic statement for psychoanalytic myth interpretation, even while some colleagues argued that typology had to remain secondary to cultural form. [1] [7] The 1914 English translation drew new readers in psychiatry, folklore, classics, and biblical studies, which fixed the book as a reference point in Anglophone debates about hero legends. [7] [20]

Raglan expansion and Segal popularization

During the interwar years the argument moved into comparative frameworks. [21] [22] Lord Raglan transformed Rank's pattern into a scored list of features for heroic lives, which encouraged checklist comparisons across traditions. [21] [22] After 1945 Joseph Campbell popularized a life course synthesis that acknowledged psychoanalytic precursors and kept Rank visible to a wide readership in the humanities and in religious studies. [23] [7]

By mid century alternative methods challenged the psychoanalytic frame. [9] [24] [8] [25] [26] [7] Formalist and structural approaches promoted ordered motif analysis and narrative morphology as more rigorous than universal psychosexual explanation. [9] [24] Classicists and historians of religion registered related reservations, often noting exposure and foundling motifs while declining clinical interpretations of their persistence. [8] [25] Reference tools such as Stith Thompson's motif index systematized cross-cultural comparisons while leaving Rank's pattern recognizable as a heuristic for heroic births. [26] [7]

Late twentieth century surveys of myth theory usually position Rank as a pivotal early theorist whose claims are historically important yet methodologically dated. [27] [28] [29] [30] Robert A. Segal, Bruce Lincoln, and William G. Doty describe the book as central to the psychoanalytic current and urge readers to weigh ideology, social function, and textual form alongside it. [27] [28] [29] [30]

Modern scholarship

Scholars continue to cite Rank's monograph as a foundational psychoanalytic reading of heroic narrative. [1] [7] The International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis calls it a key statement, and Robert A. Segal argues that the 2004 edition keeps it essential for hero myth studies. [1] [7] Segal also credits the text with catalyzing later comparative frameworks, including the Rank–Raglan mythotype and Alan Dundes's scoring method, which keep the book in circulation among mythographers and biblical scholars. [7] [22]

Structuralist and comparative scholars fault Rank's reliance on Freudian psychology and his broad typological reductions, and they argue that ordered motif analysis offers a more rigorous path. [8] [9] [22] Later works by structural anthropologists such as N. J. Allen and myth comparativists including Michael Witzel treat Rank as an important starting point while reframing his conclusions inside broader cultural models. [31] [32]

Modern scholars recognize the book as an influential work in psychoanalytic approaches to myth, particularly for analyzing hero birth narratives. [7] [32] [31] While praising its clear identification of recurring narrative patterns, scholars challenge both its claims of universal application and its underlying Freudian theoretical framework. [26] [25] [28] Contemporary comparative mythology research acknowledges Rank's pattern analysis as an important methodological foundation, even as it moves beyond his specific psychoanalytic interpretations. [29] [30] [19]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kaës, René (2005). "Myth of the Birth of the Hero, The". In de Mijolla, Alain (ed.). The International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 1093–1094.
  2. ↑ Segal, Robert A. (2004). "Introductory Essay". The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. viii, xxviii.
  3. ↑ Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 4.
  4. ↑ Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 47.
  5. ↑ Rank, Otto (1922). Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden: Versuch einer psychologischen Mythendeutung (in German) (2nd ed.). Leipzig: Franz Deuticke – via The Internet Archive.
  6. ↑ Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Translated by Richter, Gregory C.; Lieberman, E. James (Expanded and updated ed.). Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Segal, Robert A. (2004). "Introductory Essay". The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. xxi–xxv.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Kirk, G. S. (1974). The Nature of Greek Myths. London: Penguin. pp. 37–51.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Propp, Vladimir (1968). Morphology of the Folktale. Translated by Scott, Laurence. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. pp. 19–25.
  10. ↑ Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 4.
  11. ↑ Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 4.
  12. ↑ The first edition does not include the stories of Dionysus and Trakhan. See: Segal, Robert A. (2004). "Introductory Essay". The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. viii, xxviii.
  13. ↑ Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 47.
  14. ↑ Rank, Otto (1909). Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden: Versuch einer psychologischen Mythendeutung (in German) (1st ed.). Leipzig: Franz Deuticke – via Google Books.
  15. ↑ Rank, Otto (1914). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Interpretation of Mythology. Translated by Robbins, E.; Jelliffe, Smith Ely (1st ed.). New York City: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company – via Google Books.
  16. ↑ Rank, Otto (1922). Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden: Versuch einer psychologischen Mythendeutung (in German) (2nd ed.). Leipzig: Franz Deuticke – via The Internet Archive.
  17. ↑ Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Translated by Richter, Gregory C.; Lieberman, E. James (Expanded and updated ed.). Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  18. 1 2 3 Nunberg, Hermann; Federn, Ernst (1967–1975). Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Vol. II–IV. New York: International Universities Press.
  19. 1 2 3 4 Ellenberger, Henri F. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
  20. ↑ Lieberman, E. James (1985). Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank. New York: Free Press.
  21. 1 2 Raglan, Lord (1936). The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama. London: Methuen.
  22. 1 2 3 4 Dundes, Alan (1990). Segal, Robert A. (ed.). In Quest of the Hero: The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 179–223.
  23. ↑ Campbell, Joseph (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  24. 1 2 Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1955). "The Structural Study of Myth". Journal of American Folklore. 68 (270): 428–444.
  25. 1 2 3 Burkert, Walter (1979). Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
  26. 1 2 3 Thompson, Stith (1955–1958). Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (revised ed.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
  27. 1 2 Segal, Robert A. (1999). Theorizing about Myth. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
  28. 1 2 3 Lincoln, Bruce (1999). Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  29. 1 2 3 Doty, William G. (2000). Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals (2nd ed.). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
  30. 1 2 3 von Hendy, Andrew (2002). The Modern Construction of Myth. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
  31. 1 2 Allen, N. J. (2005). "The Raglan hero". Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford. new series. 37 (1): 1–21.
  32. 1 2 Witzel, Michael (2012). The Origins of the World's Mythologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 327–361.
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