Abstract

PEREIRA, Henrique de Carvalho. On the metamorphosis of the gods: capitalism and archetype on the 21st century. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2009, vol.9, n.2. ISSN 1808-4281.

The present article deals with the dominant fantasies in the contemporary western world, namely, the “myths” that support us. At other ages (or places), it had been ascribed to the mythical beings, as the deities, the power of creation and of action upon reality. For us, westerners, science has occupied the mythical place before due to the gods. This is a hypothesis already suggested by S. Freud and C. G. Jung. In that sense, the techno-science and the capitalistic economy, which is related to the former, constitute the myth of the modern western individual. According to the sociologists R. Sennett e Z. Bauman, labor and love relationships in the “flexible capitalism” obey an imperative of constant renovation, variety and short-term temporality. Those features, for the Jungian psychology, would be expressions of the youth pole of the senex-puer archetype. One could state that we are living through a pathological process of puer inflation, worthy of consideration.

Keywords : Myth; Capitalism; Archetype.

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