Readercon 15, Burlington, MA, 11-13 July 2003
Psychology, Myth and Fantasy
Panel Description: "...the genre [at the time The Fianovar Tapestry was written] seemed to be utterly lacking of any awareness of psychological underpinnings of myth and legend forms....the contribution of Freud is to suggest that these myths and legends are powerful for reasons that Tolkien would have been very uncomfortable with." ... Is a psychological understanding of myths and legends necessarily helpful?
Greer Gilman
"I think being psychologically aware is not a very good thing for a writer of fantasy."
"Much of the psychological theory of the last century of so, from penis envy to recovered memory, is speculative fiction."
Don Keller
"It's all Freud's fault."
Elizabeth Hand
on mythic narrative:
"This is in our brain!"
Judith Berman
"[My son] started telling me this whole story -- when he was about two and a half -- about how the dark was broken, and it wasn't going to get dark. And he had to go to the mountains to fix the dark! I thought, holy shit -- an epic fantasy, and he's only two and a half!"