Much has been written about public relations as either a science or an art. Public relations is a phenomenon within society and has existed long before the name was first applied to the work of building relationships between social groups. Public relations deals with the very core of human experience: relationships. If art may be understood as an interpretation of the human experience, then the public relations function is an art because it interprets the culture through the instrument of myth. The degree of success that the public relations practitioner enjoys or which the profession itself enjoys in its effort to interpret culture through myth becomes the basis for constructive criticism. Macro-myth is a process of social self-identification, which has seven stages or characteristics, including an experience shared by a group of people, the institutionalization of the event, and a belief system that formalizes elements associated with the event into religious institutions. The myth experience thus affirms for the socially cohesive group a self-understanding, and because of this it is myth that offers the key to the critical evaluation of the public relations function. (DF)