Shlomo Giora Shoham

A new approach to culture and cultural patterns is elucidated through relating a theory of personality and social characters to the genesis of myths and religions. Cultures are classified along a continuum and their relationship to a given personality structure is based on the assumptions that cultures possess generalized traits, and that these traits relate to characters of individuals. Cultures, like man, pass through the age phases of childhood, youth, manhood, culminating in old age. It is the cultural goals and the means to achieve them that become the culture pattern. What are these cultural goals? How do we achieve them? Every society and culture has its own indigenous mythology. Myths move in time from sacred myths recorded before history to modern myths, like master detectives Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, or the master spy, John Le Carré’s Smiley, or even Superman, who realizes the dreams of omnipotence among the downtrodden, henpecked inhabitants of Metropolis. Thus myths provide meaning and motivation for human behavior.

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