Myth, Metaphor, and the Evolution of Self-Awareness

Abstract

Classic myths survive generation after generation, because they teach people how to perceive and respond to the surrounding world. Myths supply a set of embodied metaphors to live by. This paper examines the relationship between myth, metaphor, and self-awareness. The myth of Oedipus is revisited using lenses of interpersonal neurobiology and second-order cybernetics, where observers become self-referentially entangled with the observed. Whereas Freud interpreted the Oedipus story literally, this paper examines the myth self-referentially. By looking inward rather than outward, early relational trauma plus implicit learning provide clues to life's external riddles and uncertainties. Wisdom gleaned from this ancient myth lines up with contemporary computational studies, when the capacity for self-reference is interpreted as a Universal Turing Machine with full memory—both implicit and explicit—for its own past. A cybernetic perspective dovetails with research on the neurobiology of memory and cognitive studies from developmental psychology. The same mental skills required for self-reference and metaphorical thinking within individuals signal internal complexity and mature cognition collectively necessary to enter the modern arena of self-reflective consciousness.