Myth and Guilt

"What is the origin of the sense of collective guilt that plagues Western man? What is the crime for which man suffers an need for punishment? Dr. Theodor Reik, one of the world's leading psychoanalysts, became absorbed in this problem from many discussions with Freud. Over the years he has examined what he considers the basic myth of our civilization: the story of Adam's Fall culminating in the Passion of Christ. With the suspense of a detective story, he untangles the myth in its many expressions, tracing clues in the Bible, using the findings of psychologists and anthropologists as explanatory evidence for a startling conclusion: Man's crime, committed in prehistory, lingering in his motives and haunting him with inevitable remorse, is the sin of pride, of hybris: the killing of God, the ambition to be God.


MYTH AND GUILT opens new and suggestive avenues for understanding the religious and social motives of man and their expression in the human community."