TRANSFORMATION POTENTIAL OF FAMILY MYTH AS A MECHANISM OF RECONSTRUCTING TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES

Abstract

Family myth has not arrived to sociological tradition yet; nevertheless, it has long been appropriated by psychological theory and practice in dealing with dysfunctional families. However, family myth receives a wider interpretation in the twenty-first century in the context of family identity as an idea that unifies all family members, also merging family myth with family history. Thus, we meet an opportunity to investigate deeper the family myth opportunities, including the inclusion of family myth into the body of modern family and modern society. Analyzing mythological potential of family histories in our research, we arrived to the following conclusions. Family history is also a family myth, as it essentially represents an emotionally valent word. Family myth realizes a suggestive function as a coercive mechanism applicable to individuals in authorizing urgent collective behavioral and cognitive norms. Expressing the family unconscious, the myth also realizes the obligations that ensue the norms. Meanwhile the coercion mechanism is supported by trustful mind, the legitimizing apparatuses sanctified by the authority of parents and ancestors. Family myth is an event realized on the border of the immanent and the transcendent. Family mythology is the mythology of quotidian life that also structures the everyday human life worlds. At the same time, family myth appeals to ancestors and transmits transcendental meanings generated by mutual human experiences. The communicative nature of myth and the essential meaningfulness of transmittance within the family myth could explain the probability of autonomy and intersubjectivity while moving from one everyday world to another one. Meanwhile, the inner family transmittance functions as identification, socialization, and empathy with adaptation and reflection that nurture formation and transmission of personal axiological orientations.