The Prometheus Molds
The Prometheus Molds
An Introduction to an Evolutionary Psychology of the Self
In the Greek Mythology, Prometheus was a Titan that survived the formidable ferocious war between the Gods and the Titans. Prometheus had a vision and a dream: He desired to create a human being. Prometheus provided the newborn being with traits borrowed from the animal world to create human drives and needs. Prometheus borrowed some of the wisdom from Athene, to grant the newborn creature with a meaningful existence. He took some of the sparkling lights from the stars to form human high values and ambitions. Finally, Prometheus had stolen the sparks of fire from Helios chariot to enable the new human to create his human cultures. With this heritage human being forms, mental molds and paradigms to generate meanings in an existentially meaningless universe. The book describes and analyses concepts of the self and theories of the mind construed by prominent theoreticians. The author concludes that the self is conceived as the mental projection of the human organism and that the formation of paradigms of meanings is generated by natural selection and is the basic need of the human being. Consequently, it seems that the human being does not seek meaning as suggested by Victor Frenkel.
Humans are evolutionarily conceived to generate meaning to realize their humanity. The paradigms of meanings derive from evolutionary and personal affective experiences and from unconscious elaboration and cognitive-conscious interpretations that give -sense to these experiences. The author examines this perspective applied to models of psychopathology and psychotherapy. The author analyses the stages in the development of the self, the mechanisms of change in psychotherapy, and the relationships between the self and the formation of the human culture.
