Compare structuralism's view of myth (Levi-Strauss) with psychoanalytic views (Freud/Jung).

• A. Psychoanalytic approaches view myths primarily through collective narratives and social contracts.
• B. Structuralism focuses on developing personal psychological growth through myths.
• C. Structuralism sees myths as systems of binary oppositions and cultural codes; psychoanalytic approaches read myths through unconscious desires, Oedipal themes (Freud) or archetypes and collective unconscious (Jung).
• D. Both schools suggest myths are literal historical records.

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is how two different theoretical lenses read what myths do in a culture. Levi-Strauss’s structuralism treats myths as systems of meaning built from binary oppositions and cultural codes. Myths are not about individual growth or literal history; they are structures that encode how a society organizes difference, resolve tensions, and generate coherence by pairing concepts like nature/culture, raw/cooked, male/female, or chaos/order. This approach looks at the relationships among elements within the story and how those relations create an overall, intelligible pattern shared by a culture.

Freud and Jung approach myths from the psyche. Freud reads myths as expressions of unconscious desires, often repressed wishes, with themes like the Oedipal complex shaping characters and plot. Jung extends that idea with archetypes—universal imagery and motifs residing in the collective unconscious that recur across cultures, such as the hero, the mother, or the sage. So the psychoanalytic view treats myths as outlets or manifestations of inner drives and shared psychic templates rather than as coded social structures.

That makes the selected answer the best: it accurately pairs structuralism’s focus on binary oppositions and cultural codes with psychoanalytic takes on unconscious desires and archetypal patterns. The other descriptions wander from how these theories actually frame myths—one misattributes social-contract or collective narratives to psychoanalysis, another assigns personal growth to structuralism, and none reflect the idea that myths aren’t being read as literal historical records in these approaches.