Taking Note #7: Greek Mythology & Pschology
‘the gods, like humans, are capable of extreme cruelty and intense passion. They are lustful, jealous, cruel, and prideful. They explore human emotions at their most extreme’
Our latest issue, Mythology, has been as much a learning experience for myself as I hope it is for all our readers. My knowledge of Greek Mythology, in particular, was hazy – most of it learned from elusive references by Shakespeare, Keats, and T.S. Eliot, among others. I always had this sense that Greek mythology was slightly elitist and inaccessible, and my knowledge reached as far as the Percy Jackson novels – the epic beloved by so many young readers.
While I was always very interested in these mythological stories, I perhaps never discovered the best way to read about them as an adult. But there are now so many amazing works of contemporary fiction retelling these tales – the Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeleine Miller; Ariadne by Jennifer Saint; Stone Blind and A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. The list goes on and on.
Our editor, Madeleine, spoke to Natalie Haynes about how the Classics are for everyone and that no one should be made to feel like they aren’t good enough for them. Classicist gatekeepers step aside, we’re entering the pearly gates.
Madeleine: In the novels particularly, your characterisation and the relationships you build are so human-centric and incredibly moving, which I think makes it so easy for modern readers to become totally engrossed into the story, even if they don’t have much (or any!) knowledge of the ancient texts.
Natalie: I think you’re right, and I don’t think they require, or at least they shouldn’t require, any prior knowledge. And I think sometimes people feel that they’re sort of not equal to learning Classics, usually because of something they were told at school – that they weren’t put in the top set, so they weren’t allowed to do Latin, even though Latin is much easier, in my view, than French for example. Not least because you don’t have to speak it, and English people tend to be really shy about speaking other languages; not all English people, but lots. Greek, I admit, is hard, but Latin isn’t, and so, what you get, I think, is the sense of it being withheld. And, to a large extent that’s true. Ancient language teaching in this country is largely in the private sector, so that’s just 7% of students, and there’s a sense therefore that it belongs to an elite. But of course, that’s not the case, this is all our history. This is all our cultural background and, if we don’t have access to it at school, which the vast majority of students don’t – in spite of some amazing teachers making the effort to teach in lunch times and after school because they are passionate about Classics – I think it’s really easy to believe that you’re not good enough for Classics.
And actually, that is entirely the responsibility of the people who are gatekeeping it in my view. But, for example, there’s a huge audience for my Radio 4 show, ‘Stands Up for the Classics’ – we get about 1.6 million listeners each episode. Now, you could argue that that’s just the Radio 4 numbers because people have it on like wallpaper, but it’s been downloaded as a podcast more than three million times, so there is obviously a huge audience for Classics, and I think, in a way, it’s because we’re having to make up for the things people missed out on when they were at school. I’m fiercely conscious of the fact that I was incredibly lucky to get to study the languages, in particular when I was young enough to find them relatively easy - well, easier than I would find them now, for sure. And I think it’s lovely to be able to give Classics to people who didn’t have that same stroke of luck.
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Read the full interview with Natalie Haynes in Issue 117, Mythology.
While working on this issue, I decided the time for my Greek education was ripe, so I picked up a copy of Stephen Fry’s hugely popular Mythos and Ted Hughes’ Tales from Ovid to immerse myself in these classical stories (I probably should have added a female-written text to the selection). And what I mostly learnt is that the gods, like humans, are capable of extreme cruelty and intense passion. They are lustful, jealous, cruel, and prideful. They explore human emotions at their most extreme, a sentiment echoed by Natalie:
“I think the reason that they’re very popular today is because they focus our attention on things on a very human level; gods have very human emotions in Greek myths, and there are profound psychological ramifications for all kinds of the conflicts that we see in these myths, and that was obviously recognised by psychotherapy very early on. Freud, famously a huge fan of Greek myth, as a sort of explainer.”
Many emotions and stories from Greek Mythology have found themselves exemplified in modern psychology, notably via Freud, as Natalie points out. It seems the Ancient Greeks recognised complex human traits extremely early, and in many ways, revelled in them, using stories and myths to elevate them.
The story of Narcissus and Echo is one I find particularly fascinating, having found a place in contemporary psychoanalysis as Narcissism and Echoism personality disorders. Narcissus, famously and rather tragically, fell in love with his own reflection, while Echo, talkative and gossipy, was cursed by Hera to only be able to repeat the words of others for eternity. Today, Narcissistic personality disorder is defined by Healthline as ‘a personality disorder in which people have an inflated opinion of themselves. They also have an intense need for the admiration and attention of others’. Meanwhile, Echoism is almost seen as its opposite, sometimes a response to Narcissism, defined as the struggle of people to ‘express themselves. They worry about coming across as needy and may lack a defined self-identity or clear desires. So, they often seem content to simply support others.’
I bring this story up because it shows how intensely relevant Greek myth still is. As mentioned by Natalie, if you want to dig deep into the human psyche, there really is no better place to begin. It is an incredibly human mythology, and these stories are applicable to us all.
In our current issue Mythology, we explore mythology from around the globe, and the cultural stories that shape us.
