20th century theories

Many 20th century theories of myth rejected the 19th-century theories' opposition of myth and science. In general, "twentieth-century theories have tended to see myth as almost anything but an outdated counterpart to science […] Consequently, moderns are not obliged to abandon myth for science."^[49]

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873–1961) tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung asserted that all humans share certain innate unconscious psychological forces, which he calledarchetypes. Jung believed that the similarities between the myths from different cultures reveals the existence of these universal archetypes.^[50]

Joseph Campbell believed that there were two different orders of mythology: that there are myths that, "are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in the human being", and that there are myths, "that have to do with specific societies".^[51]

Claude Lévi-Strauss believed that myths reflect patterns in the mind and interpreted those patterns more as fixed mental structures — specifically, pairs of opposites (i.e. good/evil, compassionate/callous) — than as unconscious feelings or urges.^[52]

In his appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, and in The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade attributed modern man’s anxieties to his rejection of myths and the sense of the sacred.

In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies.