The author calls existential literary criticism (EL) the study of a literary text by methods that were discovered by the analytical psychology of Z. Freud and developed by his followers. The study of the literary (mythological) plots of EL has brought satisfactory explanations of their material source. As a result, discoveries were made both in the field of mental illness (which required a change in views on the nature of the inner life of a person and, thanks to this, the meaning of well-known literary texts), and in ideas about the modern phase of human history, determined by the changing position of a woman in the social life of peoples.
existence; plots; illness; mythology; text; humanity; position of a woman; peoples.