“The first reason for psychology's failure to understand what people are and how they act, is that clinicians and psychiatrists, who are generally the theoreticians on these matters, have essentially made up myths without any evidence to support them; the second reason for psychology's failure is that personality theory has looked for inner traits when it should have been looking for social context.” PeopleShouldFirstsHas BeensMadeMatterReasonSocialSupportPsychologyTheoryPersonalityEvidenceShould HaveMythTraitsShould Have BeenPsychiatristClinicians Author:Naomi Weisstein
“Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.” GivingEnergySocialNovelPoetAncientMythAccessNovelistsMuseMysticalHomosexualEroticStand AloneEmilyGreat PoetSubordination Author:Camille Paglia
“I think it's a bit of a myth that black Americans need one leader. We're not a monolith. And now that legal segregation and discrimination has been pretty much abolished there isn't the sort of universal mandate that a black leader would have. Black folks live in a wide variety of social situations right now.” ThinkingNeedsHas BeensSocialBitsBlackSituationLeaderRight NowUniversalFolksWideMythDiscriminationVarietySegregationMandates Author:John Legend
“Prostitution myths justify the existence of prostitution, promote misinformation about prostitution, and contribute to a social climate that exploits and harms not only prostituted women but all women.” SocialExistenceClimateHarmMythJustifyExploitsProstitutionMisinformation Author:Melissa Farley
“There is a sort of myth of History that philosophers have.... History for philosophers is some sort of great, vast continuity in which the freedom of individuals and economic or social determinations come and get entangled. When someone lays a finger on one of those great themes--continuity, the effective exercise of human liberty, how individual liberty is articulated with social determinations--when someone touches one of these three myths, these good people start crying out that History is being raped or murdered.” PeopleHumansThreeIndividualSocialLibertyHistoryEconomicCryExerciseDeterminationLaysFingersPhilosopherMythThemeGood PeopleContinuityIndividual Liberty Author:Michel Foucault
“Every new social structure strives to come up with some kind of mythology of divine origin for its values and aims.” KindValuesSocialDivineAimStructureStriveCome UpMythMythologyStrifeSocial Structure Author:Zsuzsanna Budapest