Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2009, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 3-93
© 2009 Heart-Centered Therapies Association
The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation:
Models of Higher Development from Mythology
David Hartman, MSW and Diane Zimberoff, M.A. *
Abstract: The first three stages of the Hero’s Journey - preparation, becoming
one’s authentic self, and then claiming the ‘treasure hard to attain’ – can be
seen in Jungian perspective as confronting one’s shadows, working through
the contra-sexual anima/ animus elements within, and encountering what he
called the Mana-Personality. The ego/ persona is incomplete and longing for
the gift of completion, the shadow is the gift giver, and the anima is the gift.
Here we begin to see the symbolism in humanity’s great myths of the dramas
being played out between ego, persona, shadow, and anima/ animus. In our
mythic stories, the one who stands between the hero and the treasure often
mysteriously becomes, in fact, the gift giver: obstructing dragon guardian
transforms into knowledgeable guide. With the treasure come new challenges,
however; the hero can project any of these elements outwardly onto people or
institutions and become entangled, or the seeker’s ego can identify with the
successful search and become inflated. Or, following a path of transformation
to a higher stage of human development, the hero can integrate the previously
hidden and unknown depths of self.
This article is organized into the following sections:
1. The hero’s journey as a map to psychological healing;
2. Examination of each of the sequential stages of the journey;
3. Examination of factors affecting an individual’s journey
a. differences between masculine and feminine approaches
b. differences between introverted and extraverted approaches
c. differences between psychological types
4. Three forms of the journey
5. Correlations between the mythological journey and other paradigms
a. The journey as resolution of conflicting complexes and healing
old wounds
b. The journey as climbing the ladder of ego development
c. The journey as the journey inward for spiritual growth
“A myth is something that never was but always is.”1
_____________________________
* The Wellness Institute, 3716 - 274th Ave SE, Issaquah, WA 98029 425-391-9716
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“Myth is the dream of the people – the dream is the myth of
the individual.”2 Myths were always understood in archaic
societies to be true stories and, beyond that, stories that are a
most precious possession because they are sacred, exemplary,
and profoundly significant.
Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in
primordial Time, the fabled time of the ‘beginnings.’ In other words myth tells
how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence,
be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality--an island,
a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution. Myth,
then, is always an account of a ‘creation’; it relates how something was
produced, began to be. . . . In short, myths describe the various and sometimes
dramatic breakthroughs of the sacred (or the ‘supernatural’) into the World. It
is this sudden breakthrough of the sacred that really establishes the World and
makes it what it is today. . . . the foremost function of myth is to reveal the
exemplary models for all human rites and all significant human activities.3
And so let us refresh our archaic memories about our
mythological history and the lessons to be learned from them
regarding how to (and how not to) reach higher stages of human
development (see Hartman & Zimberoff, 2008, “Higher Stages
of Human Development”4).
Sit back and listen to this timeless story of great adventure
and inspiration. It is a story that has echoed down to us
throughout the history of humankind, from every age and every
civilization.5 This story is full of mystery and intrigue, passion
and violence, wisdom and folly. It is the story of a young man or
woman we will call the hero, someone much like you, and it
takes place “long, long ago, when wishing still could lead to
something”.6
The hero always experiences dissatisfaction with life in the
conventional world of home, family and culture, and is yearning
and searching for something more. The hero experiences a
“call” to enter on a mythic journey, which always involves a
departure from the community and travel to the “otherworld,”
the Land of the Unknown. The journey is from the realm of
limitation to a world wide open to unlimited possibility. The hero
must discover rituals and ceremonies, rites of passage that allow
access to the threshold between these two worlds. At the
outskirts of the conventional world there is a threshold, an inbetween place that belongs to neither world, and here the hero
encounters Guardians. They are fierce, dark and dangerous.
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
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They are the gatekeepers to insure that only the worthy embark
on the journey. They test the strength and resolve of the hero,
and in so doing they test his commitment, fortress his strength,
and build his stamina. The Guardians prepare the hero for the
journey. These guardians often take the form of dragons; they
are dangerous and threatening. And yet they can be an
empowering ally, although it is usually difficult to recognize
them as allies at the time they are threatening you. Reflect on the
Guardians preparing you for your journey, the aspects of your
being that would limit your development: the fear of becoming
lost and of dying, the agitation of a restless mind, the heaviness
of inertia that blunts awareness, and the mental laxity in which
concentration has no strength. These obstacles are in fact allies,
because they force you to outgrow them, to vanquish them and
prevail.
The dragons of darkness may kill and eat the hero, forcing
him to resurrect in a new form. Or they may be killed by the hero
for him to eat their warrior heart and imbibe their strength. Or
the hero may make friends with the dragon, taking him on the
journey as a comrade in arms. Which of your weaknesses or bad
habits or addictions killed and ate you earlier in your journey?
Yet have you ultimately found new life, like Jonah’s deliverance
from the whale? What strengths have you gained from your
struggles with those old demons? The hero’s task is to avoid
being overwhelmed by the adversities in life, or by one’s own
shortcomings, but to assimilate them instead, releasing the
energy that has been tied up fruitlessly fighting them.
The hero’s goal is initiation, to find the treasure, the
princess or the prince, the ring, the golden egg, the elixir of life,
the highest expression of self. Some become seduced upon
finding the treasure and succumb to greed; they keep it all for
themselves, an unfortunate choice that usually leads to misery
and ruin. Most heroes want to bring the treasure back to their
community, and they will undergo additional hardships and
challenges in order to do so.
On returning and approaching the perimeter of the
community, the hero encounters new Guardians at the threshold
of return. These, too, are dragons of darkness. Here the hero
finds fear of being different, fear of being rejected, the lure of
complacency, the self-sabotage of unworthiness. Have you shied
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away from opportunities to teach or lead or write the book you
know you are capable of, to quit your job and start a business, or
to tell your spouse how much you love him/her? Have you
stopped yourself instead, turned back by the dragons at the
threshold of living your optimal life? These Guardians, too, offer
you their power if you will but take it.
The story of the hero’s journey teaches us how to travel
safely and successfully through the challenges of life, and to
achieve our own highest unique potential. The hero is the
potential of every human being to follow the impulse to
‘something greater’.7 The Self (or Soul) is so powerful, so
determined to become wholly conscious, that it continually
haunts and prods us. We crave its depth and breadth. But the Self
is not only personal, not only bounded by our skin, but
transpersonal, a veritable matrix that contains us and all other
people and even the whole creation as well, and tries to actualize
various aspects of itself through us and other people according to
our innate talents.8 And so now we begin to learn the powerful
and ancient lessons this story has to teach us.
Jung knew the realm of the Gods, the mythic realm, to be psyche’s own. For
him, it is in myth that psyche itself may be studied as the objective reality
which is the riverbed of personal experience; without myth, “our clinical
approach to the human mind was only medical, which was about as helpful as
the approach of the mineralogist to Chartres Cathedral” (Jung, 1953, para.
833). In Roderick Main’s (1999) masterly summary: Jung believed that
through myth he could empirically demonstrate the existence of the collective
unconscious and its archetypes, read as far as possible their meaning and
interrelationships, and amplify and make more tolerable the varieties of
psychological contents. Myth was one of the principle mediums through
which he articulated his differences from Freud; it helped him to find
meanings in Christian, Gnostic, alchemical, and Eastern symbolisms and texts
that informed his own philosophical and psychological thinking; it gave him
an empirically legitimate alternative to metaphysics for framing his
speculations about the nature of reality, the origin of consciousness, the
meaning of life, and the possibility of surviving death. In short, “Jung’s
writings on myth are of pivotal importance for his psychological theory and its
many cultural and religious ramifications” (Main, 1999, pp. 160–161).9
Rollo May suggested that myths can serve a progressive as
well as a regressive function. When regressive, myths reveal
repressed longings, urges, and dreads of a person. However,
myths can also expose progressive material about new insights,
hopes, beliefs, dreams, and other potentials.10 The two benefits
together bring healing and growth.
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Examination of each of the sequential stages of the Hero’s
Journey
Christopher Booker has extensively studied the stories of
mankind and found that behind all of them, in all their variety,
lies the same fundamental impulse.
Each begins by showing us a hero or heroine in some way incomplete,
who then encounters the dark power. Through most of the story the dark
power remains dominant, casting a shadow in which all remains unresolved.
But the essence of the action is that it shows us the light and dark forces in the
story gradually constellating to produce a final decisive confrontation. As a
result, in any story which reaches complete resolution (and of course . . . there
are many which do not), the ending shows us how the dark power can be
overthrown, with the light ending triumphant. The only question is whether
the central figure is identified with the light, in which case he or she ends up
liberated and whole; or whether they have fallen irrevocably into the grip of
darkness, in which case they are destroyed. But, whatever the fate of the
central figure, the real underlying purpose of the process has been to show us
how, in the end, light overcomes the darkness. Such is the archetypal pattern
around which our human urge to imagine stories is ultimately centered.11
Within this basic formula for the human capacity for
storytelling, the Hero’s Journey can be seen to always involve
these five phases:
1. The Call: Identify the Ego, the True Self and the Soul
2. Preparation for our Journey: Confronting the Guardians
3. The Journey: Becoming Your Authentic Self –
Generating New Visions
4. Claiming the Treasure: From Vision to Commitment
5. The Return: Transforming Your World
The Call: Recognize that there is more to me than the Ego (the
True Self and the Soul)
James Hillman has said, “Troubles are calls from the gods.”
The first step in any journey is the realization that such an
expedition is possible, and the burning desire to go on it.
Without these, no movement occurs. Some part of us is yearning
for change, growth, development to a new and higher level. We
might experience it as wanderlust, restlessness, fascination with
the distant or foreign. Some part of us is dissatisfied with the
status quo, aware that we have been living in a holding pattern,
not yet fearlessly committed to reaching our full potential. We
feel the absence of a clear path forward, and grief for the loss of
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what is slipping away every day that goes by without “seizing
the moment.” That is the beginning of all great adventures.
Stephen Levine says that “the presence of what is called the
Great Desire, the will toward mystery, the longing for deeper
knowing, the draw toward the sacred heart, redefines life. A
gradual upwelling of the still small voice within is heard. . . It is
an insistent grace that draws us to the edge and beckons us to
surrender safe territory and enter our enormity.”12
What part of us longs for fulfillment? Who issues the call? It
is our soul, our connection to the depth of human experience, the
vast underground inhabited by archetypal forces, the elements
and all the collective wisdom and folly of time immemorial. Just
as the hero finds previously unknown depths in the course of
hearing and responding to the call, so we discover these forces
disguised in the elements of our dreams and the murky contents
of our unconscious. In other words, to be trusted to succeed, the
call must not derive from the ego but rather from a source closer
to one’s soul. The ego is fear-based and safety-seeking, suffering
from what Alfred Adler called “cosmic inferiority.” And so in
general the ego prefers to operate in well-lighted, predictable,
controllable environments. However, in the words of Carl Jung,
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure,
however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”13 Here is a
good description of what the ego is: “the operating system of the
personality, the executive function, . . . the general manager with
a team full of prima donnas trying to coordinate a winning
season. . . . It is the manager of the separate self as well as the
major block to ultimate connection with the Higher Self.”14
And so the individual who sets out to answer the call must
choose how far to go in that response: to fix up the battered ego
to function better, or to “go for broke” pursuing personal
transformation. Stephen Levine assessed those choices for
himself in seeking psychological help, discovering that although
“I thought they fixed minds, I found they didn’t do that sort of
thing. They dealt mostly with the content, which can be helpful.
And sometimes with the patterns, which can be releasing. But
rarely with the process, which can be healing. And never with
the ground of being, the awareness, the presence, it’s all floating
in, which can be transformative.”15 The hero of the great myths
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is a human being who is willing to risk it all to become an
extraordinary human being, to transform himself.
The call comes to the potential hero through some
extraordinary experience, encounter, or epiphany. A messenger
of sorts appears to announce or “herald” the call to adventure.
“The herald’s summons may be to live . . . or to die. It may
sound the call to some high historical undertaking. Or it may
mark the dawn of religious illumination. . . . the time for the
passing of a threshold is at hand.”16 Knowing in what form the
call comes, what the herald is, provides important clues about
what sacrifices will be required as well as where the call will
lead one to follow. Is the call heralded through a friendly
stranger? a dark foreboding? a blinding light? a chance
encounter?
According to the Isis mysteries, one should not “hesitate
when called, nor hasten when not commanded”.17 This advice
keeps one from mistaking boredom, or running away from
problems, with a legitimate “calling.” Too often, however,
people shrink away from a call received because it is challenging
and appears to be difficult. And so one choice an individual can
make when called is to refuse the Call, choosing instead stasis
and fear of the herald, or perhaps holding out for the best offer.
“Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its
negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject
loses the power of affirmative action and becomes a victim to be
saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones
and his life feels meaningless”.18 There is a cost to ignoring the
herald and refusing the call, and paying that cost is itself an
adventure. But the adventure of refusal is ultimately one of
defiance of the higher self, of one’s passions and destiny, of
one’s deities. To justify such defiance and the desertion of the
gift they offer, one turns them into enemies, monsters of
temptation.
Allow me to offer an example of refusing the call in the form
of the ego’s defense against the pain of abuse or neglect. Take
the case of a girl who has been sexually abused or has received
inappropriate sexual attention and uses the defense of reviling
her physical beauty as something bad because it caused her to be
mistreated. She may (unconsciously) make herself fat, or hide
her attractiveness behind deliberately unappealing hair styles or
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clothing choices. The defense is understandable, of course, given
the limited choices available to her as a young girl to protect
herself from further harm. Yet it is tragic that she has turned one
of her strengths, what could be a herald of passion and grace in
her life, into an enemy to run away from and renounce. This is
precisely the story of Daphne’s flight from the Greek God
Apollo recounted in Metamorphoses.19 Eros (Roman Cupid), in a
fit of angry pique, had maliciously shot an arrow to excite love
into Apollo’s heart, and an arrow to repel love into Daphne. The
first arrow was made of gold and was sharp pointed, the second
one blunt and tipped with lead. Apollo was seized with love for
the maiden, and chased her to make her his own. Daphne,
pursued because of her desirability but disdainful of Apollo’s
advances, was terrified of being caught, ravished, and forced into
marriage. She preferred to destroy the beauty that was her
essence, but that prompted the threat she perceived to her self.
She begged her father, the river Peneus, to destroy her beauty
and thus to save her from the love that repelled her.
Now was her strength all gone, and, pale with fear and utterly overcome by
the toil of her swift flight, seeing the waters of her father’s river near, she
cried: ‘Oh father, help! If your waters hold divinity, change and destroy this
beauty by which I pleased o’er well.’ Scarce had she thus prayed when a
down-dragging numbness seized her limbs, and her soft sides were begirt with
thin bark. Her hair was changed to leaves, her arms to branches. Her feet, but
now so swift, grew fast in sluggish roots, and her head was now but a tree’s
top. Her gleaming beauty alone remained.
Daphne sacrificed her aliveness and love of life in order to
avoid the love she feared and rejected. What a terrible choice to
be forced to make. It is the story of every one of us who has
rejected a vital part of ourselves to avoid the fulfillment of a
poisoned destiny. Some have hidden (destroyed) their intellect or
their desire for intimacy, others their psychic talent or their
spiritual aspirations because they had been poisoned by ridicule
or contaminated by another’s impurity. How many children
molested by a priest have turned away from their religious
pursuit? How many children shamed for being spontaneous and
gregarious become inhibited and cautious? How many flowering
worlds become a wasteland of dry stones? This is the devastating
cost of refusing the call when it comes. Ultimately, the would-be
hero’s summons transfers his “spiritual center of gravity”20 from
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
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his current life in society to an as-yet unknown realm, and to
refuse the call leaves him separated from his very essence.
Here is the fateful intersection of rising to the challenge and
giving up in retreat. The call always presents a challenge to the
status quo, to one’s comfort with the familiar and secure. What
has been taken for granted is called into question, and what has
seemed simple becomes more complex. That challenge can drive
one to resignation or disintegration, or it can activate resources
within the potential hero hitherto unknown and untapped, or
even denied and rejected.
Jane Loevinger accumulated evidence that individuals grow
when they are exposed to interpersonal environments that are
more complex than the current environment is.21 To encourage
the truly challenging and growth-producing path, the call must
be to leave behind the familiar and the traditional, to be forced to
find one’s own resources. God commanded Abraham to “leave
your father’s house and all that you know and hold dear and go
to the land that I will show you.” Now that is a monumental call.
Often the individual who is reluctant to answer the call is
visited by a protective figure – the Cosmic Mother or a mercurial
figure (Hermes/ Mercury) who lures innocent souls into realms
of trial: one who initiates. “Protective and dangerous, motherly
and fatherly at the same time, this supernatural principle of
guardianship and direction unites in itself all the ambiguities of
the unconscious – thus signifying the support of our conscious
personality by that other, larger system, but also the
inscrutability of the guide that we are following, to the peril of
all our rational ends.”22 The initiate is “hermetically sealed” in
protection, in a realm apart.
The fear of not living fully motivates us to yearn for the call,
and then the call draws us forward into taking the initial risk. But
we need more; we need a stimulating and sustaining vision of the
possibilities that lie ahead. And those visions are not readily
available because they can only come to us once we are on the
journey. The new visions come as we develop the visionary
within, the capacity to “see with new eyes.” That comes as a
third stage of the hero’s journey, after confronting the shadow
guardians at the threshold of leaving home.
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Preparation for Our Journey: Confronting the Guardians
Having roused ourselves from the inertia of the status quo,
we now prepare ourselves for the rigors of the journey to
wholeness. Our yearning has activated the beginnings of a
search; that search must lead us first to discover rituals and
ceremonies, rites of passage that allow access to the threshold
between these two worlds. Such “incubation rituals” heighten
one’s awareness and receptivity, and separate the individual
from the generally accepted everyday consciousness.
Discovering the rituals that create portals to “crossing over” may
involve finding and recognizing teachers, learning to pay close
attention to clues left by other seekers, establishing spiritual
practices, learning to trust inner guidance, or joining with a
group of like-minded and mutually committed seekers. One way
or another, we find and invite closer a Guide, a spirit guide, a
power animal, a guardian angel, a benevolent presence that sees
beyond the duality of hero and demon and of two separate
worlds, who sees instead integration and wholeness. Our rituals
are in fact bookmarks to remind us when we forget to stay
connected to this Guide. And this independent, unique and
individualized approach to initiation and entry into the adventure
of becoming fully human is a cardinal characteristic of the hero.
No follower of orthodoxy is she; no timid feeder in the shallow
lagoon of life is he. The hero is open to learning from every
available source, and to earnestly honoring every available ritual;
yet the hero’s rite of passage is a personal confrontation with
forces of inertia, obstacles in the path. “Angels train in hell for
the ineffable compassion of heaven.”23
The hero is that part of us that says “Yes!” to life, that
embraces life’s challenges and that always wants to grow,
improve, and contribute even at the cost of going through hell.
We each have another part, however, that holds the hero back,
that creates the very hell which must be navigated. The power
that part has over us begins in relationship to the environment,
our friends and family, our cultural expectations, our life
circumstances. At a deeper level, its powers derive from our own
inner struggles. Now we face the deeply embedded fears and
shame, rage and grief that have shaped our choices in life largely
outside our awareness. These are the terrible dragons at the
threshold of transformation that stand in our way, our self-
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
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sabotaging patterns. They force us to find hitherto unknown
strength within. These aspects of ourselves that we must confront
and conquer can become no longer obstacles, but rather allies in
our forward movement. Herein lies the true meaning of the
phrase “the gifts in your adversity.” Now compassion for
ourselves has replaced self-blame and judgment. The child states
within accept the wisdom of the inner elder, just as that elder
embraces the spontaneity, wonder and playfulness of the child.
The inner feminine and the inner masculine recognize each
other’s sovereignty, and form a powerful alliance of
interdependence. Our dreams always contain reference to our
inner saboteurs, and offer emerging visions of potential
reconciliation with them.
Whether in dreams, relationships, or intrapsychically, the
hero must cross the First Threshold into the entrance of the zone
of magnified power. There is a watchman, the prohibitive
guardian who warns against proceeding, the ogre or demon (at
once dangerous and bestower of magical powers). These ogres
“are the reflections of the unsolved enigmas of his humanity.
What are his ideals? Those are the symptoms of his grasp of
life.”24 They may take the form of social inhibition; superego
preventing the breaking through of dangerous impulses and
amoral choices; the cognitive rational mind that cannot process
ambiguities and enigmas. To cross the threshold in spite of the
obstacles is to risk self-annihilation, because one’s identity is
firmly attached to the social self who possesses clear roles, the
ego self who reigns supreme, the known self who no longer
questions. Yet in medieval cathedrals or temples the entrances
are guarded by gargoyles, lions, and devil-slayers, indicating that
passing through and beyond them into the sanctuary is to shed
the worldly and metamorphose into the transcendent. Our
dreams often point to the existence of such obstacles in one’s
life, the objects or beings that hold us back, threaten us or
perhaps even assault us. The ogre’s job is to challenge us to
become stronger, more confident, better prepared for the tests
that lie ahead. Not all who dare to venture across the first
threshold are capable of successful passage, however; “the
overbold adventurer beyond his depth may be shamelessly
undone.”25
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There is a third alternative to success or failure in passing
across the first threshold: to be undone, but then eventually to
triumph. Here is the story of one who seemingly fails, whose
courage fails him, or who cannot let go of his grasping for
security, familiarity and comfort. This hero, “instead of
conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is
swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died.”26
For example, Jonah defies the destiny God has prescribed for
him to prophesy against the wickedness of the city of Nineveh.
Jonah hated the Assyrians and he was angry at God for showing
mercy to the people of Nineveh. He balked at the mission and
stole away on a boat bound for a distant land. The ship ran into a
terrific storm, and believing it to be a sign from the Almighty,
the crew threw Jonah overboard at the prophet’s request. As the
water swirled around him and death seemed at hand, Jonah asked
God to have mercy on him. The Lord, hearing His name uttered
in prayer, sent a whale from the depths to swallow him. After
three days and three nights the whale vomited Jonah out upon
dry land. The prophet had received God’s mercy just as had the
Assyrians. Jonah’s hero journey into the belly of the whale is a
descent into the dark place where digestion occurs and new
energy is created27, into the vast archaic unconscious, from
which he ultimately emerges transformed.
This stage, in the vocabulary of the mystics, is the second
stage of the Way, that of the “purification of the self” when the
senses are “cleansed and humbled”, and the energies and
interests are “concentrated upon transcendental things.”28 The
threshold is either outward beyond the horizon, or inward under
the surface. It may take the form of a forest, a dangerous road, a
sea or lake, inside an animal or fish, into the darkness, the night,
an opening in the ground, the underworld. Or the threshold may
come in the form of being drawn to do “The One Forbidden
Thing.”29 In mythology, it may be an instruction not to open a
particular closet, or travel a desolate road, or eat the fruit of a
particular tree. In psychology, it may be delving back into an
abusive past, or daring to recognize a parent’s faults, or seeking
to develop beyond the limits of one’s social status. The threshold
may come in the form of an encounter with temptation, evil,
seduction, or descent into the “dark side.” From the vantage
point of the familiar consensus consciousness, any reality across
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the threshold is judged to be the dark side because the frame of
reference is that of either/or polarities. Here we divide reality
into good and evil, life and death, mine and yours, real and
fanciful. But across that threshold such divisions are artificial;
instead, polarities exist side by side, paradox and the
inexplicable reign.
At the threshold we must confront the Guardians – our
shadows. Guardians are often represented as dragons, or serpents
with wings: an amalgam of the serpent (i.e., bound to the earth)
and eagle (i.e., in spiritual flight).30 And this dichotomy is highly
significant in the hero’s journey symbology. Guardians are
shadows capable of being transformed into ally or guide. They
crawl yet they also soar. The personal shadow can serve as a
wisdom figure when we allow it to bring light to the hidden
regions of the human psyche, but only if we confront and
befriend that shadow aspect of ourselves. Sometimes, “the
shadow can contain a figure who is benevolent, a kind of guide
who helps one face the shadow, and in doing so, take away its
ability to act autonomously. . . . The shadow, specifically the
personal shadow, contains all aspects of Self that have been
repressed or not admitted to consciousness. This includes
positive traits, aspects of ourselves — such as creativity in men
or assertiveness in women — that are not socially accepted, as
well as the more commonly labeled negative traits. . . . the
shadow becomes a fertile darkness we need to admit to
consciousness in order to prevent it from distorting the way we
view the world. But if we allow that the shadow also contains
positive traits or aspects of our psyches of which we are not
conscious, it then becomes a possible light that can help us lead a
more fulfilling life.”31 We find in the hero’s journey myths both
kinds of shadows – the frightening and threatening ones of
avarice, lethargy, violence, fears – and also the guiding ones that
offer keys to the map, tips on how to navigate the coming
turmoil. In fact, the Guide’s relegation to shadow results in
projection of the turmoil created when unconscious elements of
the psyche seek expression but are thwarted. And “the task of the
Guide is to draw attention to those aspects of the unconscious
that are hidden and are seeking admission to consciousness, and
through confrontation with the shadow, to bring the psyche one
step closer to wholeness.”32
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According to Jung, “complexes always contain something like a conflict—
they are either the cause or the effect of a conflict” (Modern Man in Search of
a Soul, 79). Unless the presence of the complex is so disruptive as to require
intervention, the assumption is that its breakthrough into awareness signals the
psyche’s readiness to resolve that conflict. The integration of a complex into
consciousness, with the corresponding dissipation of its conflict, destabilizes
the ego for a time. This destabilization of the ego is sometimes experienced as
a kind of death. With the transformative energies released in the dying of the
ego, the Guide serves as that aspect of the psyche that can lead one toward the
final stages of growth. Once the Guide presents itself, it will always help the
Hero along the journey (Nichols 253).”33
Confronting the shadows, those guardians at the threshold
between consciousness and the deep unconscious universe,
actually opens the doorway to the emergence of one’s anima/
animus. With the appearance of these contra-sexual elements
within, the journey itself can commence. The anima is the
feminine archetypal influence within the male psyche; the
animus is the masculine archetypal influence within the female
psyche. Jung saw the sequence continuing further: having
worked through the shadow material, and then through the
anima/ animus, one encounters what he called the ManaPersonality. These are stages of the hero’s journey: preparation,
becoming one’s authentic self, and then claiming the treasure.
With the treasure come new challenges, however; the hero can
project any of these elements outwardly onto people or
institutions and become entangled, or the seeker’s ego can
identify with the successful search and become inflated.
Douglass Price-Williams34, in discussing this interpretation,
quotes Jung:
Clearly the man who has mastered the Anima acquires her mana, in
accordance with the primitive belief that when a man kills the mana-person he
assimilates his mana into his own body.
The masculine collective figure [mana-personality] who now rises out of the
dark background and takes possession of the conscious personality entails a
psychic danger of a subtle nature, for by inflating the conscious mind it can
destroy everything that was gained by coming to terms with the mana.35
Price-Williams then goes on to say, “In other words, at this
critical point in the individuation process, the ego rears its ugly
head, appropriating to itself all the victories gained in
overcoming problems with the shadow and the anima. It is not an
unusual occurrence; it is flagrant in a great number of so-called
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17
gurus, spiritual teachers, and even church dignitaries.” The
alternative development is, of course, for the ego to assimilate
the mana while remaining humble; in other words, for the hero to
claim the treasure not for selfish purposes but for the betterment
of the whole community.
There are divergent reactions that can occur upon encounters
with the anima: the ego can attempt to usurp its great power, or
the ego can surrender to the anima as guide and inspiration. The
former is the path of projection and assimilation; the person
projects the anima force outwardly onto another person and then
either struggles with her or surrenders to her. Or he introjects the
anima force into himself, splits it off in order to keep her as an
object, and enacts the struggle or surrender internally. The
second alternative is to recognize the presence of the anima for
the archetypal force that she is, existing within a realm beyond
the comprehension of the ego. Jung discussed this as the dual
mother: one mother being the biological mother, the feminine
existing within the realm of the ego; the other being the divine or
supernatural mother, archetypal, cosmic. Jung wrote that this
second mother “corresponds to the ‘virgin anima’, who is not
turned towards the outer world and is therefore not corrupted by
it.”36 Accepting the anima as guide through the unknown and
unknowable realm of the unconscious, one becomes capable of
acquiring her mana and finding and claiming the treasure.
A similar (usually unconscious) choice exists upon
encounter with the mana personality. As Jung realized, inflating
the egoic conscious mind can destroy everything that was gained
by coming to terms with the mana. The treasure is hoarded
selfishly or lorded over others. Possession of the mana treasure
provides an illusion of value to the ego, because it can only be
used to the extent it is transportable back to the community. The
ego self must assimilate the mana essence in order to transport it,
but the ego must do so without identifying with it, or everything
is destroyed. This is the great dilemma of the return stage of the
hero’s journey: to claim the treasure without corrupting it. And
the next stage in the journey prepares the hero for that ultimate
challenge, to be able to claim the treasure with humility.
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The Journey: Becoming Your Authentic Self – Generating New
Visions
Up till now we have been confronting the outdated beliefs
(early conclusions), deep-seated assumptions (myths), and
immature behavior patterns (shadows) that have been with us
since childhood. And on closer inspection we recognize that all
of it is truly me. I am hero and dragon, I am seeker and wayshower, I live in both the world of limitation and the world of
unlimited possibilities. The hunter becomes what he hunts37; if I
hunt transformation, I become transformed. Now we begin to
open up to new perspectives, more positive, optimistic, and
expansive ones. This step in the journey also involves discerning
what aspects of the old are valuable and worth keeping intact,
and integrating them into the newly evolving self. This requires
an attitude of gratitude for all that has transpired in one’s life, for
it has all contributed to the open horizon of potential before us
today on this current journey. Such humble gratitude for “what
is” becomes the foundation for receptivity to “what is possible.”
These possible selves show up in our dreams, although often not
in a form that we expect or recognize as a further stage in our
growth as a human being. In other words, we often resist our
destiny.
This stage continues the testing of thresholds; it “is a
deepening of the problem of the first threshold and the question
is still in balance: Can the ego put itself to death? For manyheaded is this surrounding Hydra; one head cut off, two more
appear”.38 The ego of the daylight world does not easily give in
to humility, jumping directly from grandiosity to unworthiness
and back again. Actually, humility comes not from attempting to
kill the ego but by changing its diet. We refer here to the
Buddhist concept of nirvana, which means “the extinguishing of
the threefold fire of desire, hostility, and delusion.” The Sanskrit
verb nirvā is, literally, “blown out, gone out, extinguished” in the
sense that a fire ceases to draw. Deprived of fuel, the fire is
pacified.39 Lacking shame or pride, greed or dissociation, anger,
lust or illusion, the ego stops identifying itself as the Self and
quietly assumes its proper role of serving the Self. We will
discuss more fully the lesson of being Nobody and being
Somebody in the section on the Return Stage of the journey.
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19
Crossing the thresholds generally requires meeting the
Feminine, a Goddess who provides potions or secret knowledge,
or intercedes directly with the demanding God. Crossing cannot
be accomplished by direct assault or determined willpower
alone; it requires a collaboration with the intuitive, receptive,
soulful aspect – the feminine. The crossing is an “ego-shattering
initiation”40, arranged by a challenging masculine figure, and
often the hero needs intercession from the feminine, the Mother.
The hero needs the assistance of the Mother to achieve the
Father’s blessing. “When the child outgrows the popular idyl of
the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult
action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the father – who
becomes, for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his
daughter, of the future husband. Whether he knows it or not, and
no matter what his position in society, the father is the initiating
priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger
world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the ‘good’
and ‘evil’, so now does he, but with this complication – that
there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against
the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter
against the mother to be the mastered world.”41
In any case, for the hero’s Visions to be clear,
uncontaminated by personal bias and pathology, she must have
developed the ability to see beyond the polarities.
Claiming the Treasure: From Vision to Commitment
Once found, claiming the treasure may not be as simple as it
sounds. If the hero responded humbly to the call and properly
prepared for this moment, it really means committing to live a
newly treasured life. If the hero is operating from ego,
grandiosity, or is on a political/economic errand, rather than
claiming the treasure he will be stealing it. He will be removing
it from its rightful place in the other world, to become a nemesis
in this world rather than becoming a boon for the benefit of all
the people. Claiming the treasure is an initiation into a new and
different way of life, for “in true alchemy it is the alchemist who
is transformed.”42 The hero can never simply go back to the old
ways. There is bound to be grief about leaving the familiar
behind, and the grieving process is necessary to release any
attachment to it. Yet initiation opens one’s eyes to an awakening,
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reveals the mysteries that have previously been inscrutable. The
treasure brings us newfound assets: inner strength, purposeful
stamina, and a return of long lost or misplaced or stolen
resources. Dedication to the journey of discovery, to the search
for the treasure, prepares us in turn to dedicate ourselves to
bringing it back to the community and wisely investing the
treasure. The mission morphs from searching to distributing.
There are always elements in our dreams to represent newfound
treasure, waiting to be claimed.
Foolish is the seeker who underestimates the true value of
the treasure he seeks, because he will receive only as grand a
prize as he is capable of valuing. “The Japanese have a proverb:
‘The gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth.’ The
boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature
and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a
symbol of life energy stepped down to the requirements of a
certain specific case. The irony, of course, lies in the fact that,
whereas the hero who has won the favor of the god may beg for
the boon of perfect illumination, what he generally seeks are
longer years to live, weapons with which to slay his neighbor, or
the health of his child.”43
Claiming the treasure is often presented as a mystical
marriage. “The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in
every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the
boon of love.”44 The hero has passed through the initiation,
discovered the object of his search, and is now ready to take it
for his own. “Woman, in the picture language of mythology,
represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one
who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation
which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series
of transformations: she can never be greater than himself, though
she can always promise more than he is yet capable of
comprehending. She lures, she guides, she bids him burst his
fetters. And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and
the known, will be released from every limitation.”45 If he can
match her is, of course, a very big if. To claim the treasure
requires the hero not only to be worthy, but to prove his worth.
The guardians of the treasure “dare release it only to the duly
proven. But the gods may be oversevere, overcautious, in which
case the hero must trick them of their treasure. Such was the case
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21
with Prometheus. When in this mood even the highest gods
appear as malignant, life-hoarding ogres, and the hero who
deceives, slays, or appeases them is honored as the savior of the
world.”46
Prometheus was a Titan, a gigantic race that inhabited the
earth before the creation of humans. The god Zeus (Jupiter),
ruler of the gods, entrusted him the task of making man out of
mud and water, which he did lovingly. But man was to be
superior to all other animals, and so Prometheus needed a special
faculty to bestow on man. He went up to heaven, lighted his
torch at the chariot of the sun, and returned to earth with fire for
man. With this gift man was indeed superior to all the other
animals. However, Zeus was incensed at Prometheus’ treachery
of stealing fire from heaven. So he punished Prometheus by
creating woman and sending her to him, which also punished
man for accepting the stolen gift of fire. The first woman was
named Pandora. “She was made in heaven, every god
contributing something to perfect her. Venus gave her beauty,
Mercury persuasion, Apollo music, etc. . . . Another story is that
Pandora was sent in good faith, by Jupiter, to bless man; that she
was furnished with a box, containing her marriage presents, into
which every god had put some blessing. She opened the box
incautiously, and the blessings all escaped, hope only
excepted.”47 Another version of the myth has Jupiter imprisoning
in Pandora’s box all manner of plagues such as Old Age, Labor,
Sickness, Insanity, Vice, and Passion which were let loose on
mankind when she peeked into the box. The hero Prometheus
was forced to sneak into heaven and steal fire from the gods in
order to fulfill his destiny. Neither could he slay Zeus nor could
he appease him. Yet his resourcefulness and courage allowed
him to consummate a mystical marriage which resulted in
creation of man’s civilization. He was punished further for
transgressing the will of Zeus, who had him chained to a rock on
Mount Caucasus. There a vulture preyed on his liver, which was
renewed as fast as it was devoured. He was finally freed by the
hero Odysseus (Ulysses).
The hero in myth is, of course, sometimes a female rather
than a male. The principal roles are reversed here. Instead of the
lover trying to win his bride, it is the bride trying to win her
lover. Instead of a cruel father withholding his daughter from the
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lover, it is the jealous mother hiding her son from the bride.
Psyche is such a heroine: she is beautiful, ambitious, and
although a mortal she is worshipped by human beings as a
goddess. This infuriates Aphrodite (Venus), the Great Mother,
who feels threatened that youthful Psyche may displace her: Am
I then to be eclipsed in my honors by a mortal girl? She
commands of her son Eros (Cupid): My dear son, punish that
contumacious beauty; give thy mother a revenge as sweet as her
injuries are great. Aphrodite represents another aspect of the
feminine: the consuming, competitive, judgmental, shaming
Terrible Mother. Aphrodite is jealous because her followers have
begun to neglect their altars to her and to worship the mortal
Psyche instead. Imagine, Aphrodite fumed, preferring a mere
mortal over me, the quintessential feminine Goddess, fairest of
them all.
In attempting to fulfill his mother’s wishes, however, Eros
accidentally wounded himself with the arrow intended for
Psyche and he now is infatuated with and desires Psyche. His
attention has now shifted from his mother to the beautiful young
virgin. They wed and Eros demands that her only contact with
her husband be in the dark (the instinctual and unconscious
realm of the soul). But Psyche’s sisters, her shadow aspect of
self-doubt and jealously, tell her she is sleeping with a monster.
When she lights a lamp to look at her husband (brings in her
conscious ego-realm self), she frightens him and he flees back to
his mother Aphrodite. In her attempt to recapture the blissful
experience with Eros, Psyche journeys to her mother-in-law
Aphrodite’s castle. Aphrodite, of course, is fearful of allowing
her cherished son Eros to be reunited with his new wife Psyche
because she jealously considers her a threatening rival.
So Aphrodite did everything she could to keep Psyche away
from her son, imposing many impossible tasks for Psyche to
accomplish before the two lovers could be united, with the
provision that should she fail any of the tasks, she faced a death
sentence, either physically or psychically. First she dumped a
huge quantity of wheat, barley, millet, poppy seed, peas, lentils,
and beans into a heap and commanded the girl to sort them
before night. Psyche initially felt hopeless, but she was able to
accomplish the feat with the aid of an army of ants. Next,
Aphrodite told her to gather the golden fleece of certain
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dangerous wild sheep that lived in an inaccessible valley in a
precarious woods. Again despairing of the hopelessness of the
task, Psyche sat by a stream with the intention to drown herself.
A reed in the water instructed her how to gather some of the
golden fleece snagged on bramble bushes as the sheep passed by
in the field. Psyche delivered the fleece as demanded, but
Aphrodite now demanded a bottle of water from a freezing
spring high on a towering rock guarded by sleepless dragons. An
eagle offered to fly to the location to obtain the water for Psyche,
and once again she succeeded in accomplishing the impossible.
The final test required by Aphrodite was to bring from the abyss
of the underworld a box full of supernatural beauty cream.
Psyche received instruction on how to go down to the world
below, and was given what she would need to buy the item there.
In this circumstance, rather than winning the goddess, the hero
becomes the goddess. “And when the adventurer, in this context,
is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities,
her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an
immortal.”48 When Psyche had accomplished all the difficult
tasks set out for her, Zeus himself gave her the elixir of
immortality to drink, to be forever united with her beloved Eros.
Psyche gives birth to a daughter Voluptas (pleasure or joy),
completing her transformation to goddess.
This tale of Psyche’s hero journey is the recounting of her
maturation from maiden to matron, passing through the required
initiation of separation and independence from the Great Mother,
the Terrible Mother.49 While this aspect of the Mother appears to
be cruel and punishing, she also serves to challenge Psyche to
discover greater strength within than she had ever known before,
and to develop her own creative masculine energies. Psyche
prevails in her conflict with Aphrodite, replacing her by
becoming the “new Aphrodite.”50 The feminine soul (the Greek
word psyche translates as soul and also as butterfly) must serve,
suffer, labor, and descend to the depths, before it can finally
achieve wholeness in love. The specific tasks required of Psyche
in her initiation are highly meaningful. First, sorting the grains,
she demonstrated the feminine tasks of discernment and
selectivity. Next, gathering wool from the rams, Psyche used
feminine patience and wisdom to disarm the destructive power
of the masculine. In her third test, obtaining water that defies
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containment, by partnering with the eagle she demonstrates a
new level of integrated masculine-feminine spirituality. The
fourth and final task is the most demanding, descending to the
underworld to confront Aphrodite’s ally Persephone to claim the
beauty ointment that will establish Psyche in her own feminine
essence. Psyche’s spiritual development actually comes through
increased relatedness, not through successful completion of
tasks.51
The Great Mother serves Eros in a similar way, forcing him
to assert his independence in order to achieve his destiny by
establishing a life with Psyche (soul) to create joy.
This tale of Psyche’s hero journey is also the recounting of
her expansion into an immortal being. Otto Rank, in Myth of the
Birth of the Hero,52 concludes that the hero throughout history
and across cultures is portrayed as the type who combines in one
person the mortal and immortal self. He/she becomes dissatisfied
with contemporary cultural mores and taboos, then transgresses
them in an act of individualism, and ultimately transcends them
by bringing the culture itself to a new standard. In this way the
hero assists society to discard old outworn values and beliefs and
revitalize with new ones or with a re-discovery of old forgotten
ones. For the people of that society, the hero now represents the
human capacity to transcend not only the cultural limitations but
indeed personal mortality.
The primordial masculine mysteries concern life and death.
The primordial feminine mysteries concern birth and rebirth,53
therefore the feminine journey is different from that of the
masculine. Whereas the masculine hero must overcome dragon
monsters as an act of courage in his quest for conscious
development to supplant the father and take his place as king, the
feminine must confront life in the material world and in the
depths of the primordial as an act of love to establish
consciousness in her closest relationships. The masculine
journeys to conquer in the realm of consciousness; the feminine
to establish relatedness in the realm of the unconscious.
But one thing, paradoxical though it may seem, can be established at once as a
basic law: even in woman, consciousness has a masculine character. The
correlation “consciousness—light—day” and “unconsciousness—dark—
night” holds true regardless of sex and is not altered by the fact that the spiritinstinct polarity is organized on a different basis in men and women.
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Consciousness, as such, is masculine and even in women, just as the
unconscious is feminine in men.54
The myth of Psyche and Eros offers a profound pathway to
healing and growth, namely through a conscious encounter with
the unconscious, and a reconciliation of the feminine and the
masculine. The greatest obstacles to Psyche’s successful
initiation were feminine: the Terrible Mother and her anxious
sisters. The most helpful guides along the way were masculine:
the army of ants, the reed, the eagle, and ultimately Zeus
himself. “With Psyche, then, there appears a new love principle,
in which the encounter between feminine and masculine is
revealed as the basis of individuation.”55 This is a theme we will
encounter in the journey of Odysseus (Ulysses) as well. His
greatest obstacles were masculine and his most helpful guides
were feminine figures.
The Return: Transforming Your World
On the return home, the hero reflects on the one who
journeyed, realizing that he is no longer the same being who first
ventured onto the journey from the land of the familiar and the
banal. So it was for Psyche, no longer the naïve maiden; so it
was for Eros, no longer the intimidated boy. And so it is for
every hero who has ventured to challenge the status quo and
dared to aspire to greatness – no matter the outcome of the
“tasks”, they have grown to identify with an expanded
perspective.
Ultimately, treasure is only as valuable as what it is used for.
If it is hoarded, it is useless. If it is squandered, it creates no
legacy. If it is shared wisely with the community for the benefit
of all, it is worthy of all the blood, sweat and tears that were
required to find and retrieve it. The way of life into which the
hero is initiated in the course of the journey – the way of the
spiritual warrior, the wise magician, the compassionate
caregiver, the magnanimous authority – becomes the blueprint
for the way of life in which the treasure is most wisely shared.
So now, finally, comes the return, “the final crisis of the
round, to which the whole miraculous excursion has been but a
prelude – that, namely, of the paradoxical, supremely difficult
threshold-crossing of the hero’s return from the mystic realm
into the land of common day. Whether rescued from without,
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driven from within, or gently carried along by the guiding
divinities, he has yet to re-enter with his boon the long-forgotten
atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to
be complete. He has yet to confront society with his egoshattering, life-redeeming elixir, and take the return blow of
reasonable queries, hard resentment, and good people at a loss to
comprehend.”56
Thus, the hero’s return can take a number of different forms:
the hero may refuse to return; the hero may be aided in the return
by all manner of help from gods or supernatural patrons; his
return may be accomplished only with Herculean effort against
all odds; or perhaps the world may have to come and get him.
And the returning hero’s reception can take unexpected turns as
well.
Some heroes succumb to the temptation to remain in the
realm where the treasure was found, to “take up residence
forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal
Being.”57 Such a choice may belie a selfish original intention for
the journey, or a lack of commitment to the community from
which the hero departed. Or the hero may have learned
something along the journey to compel him to redirect his
course. Some spiritual seekers, having attained their desired
degree of wisdom, return to share it with the rest of us; some
choose to become ascetic and remain apart from humanity. We
are told that the Buddha, after his enlightenment, doubted
whether the message of realization could be shared and yet chose
to teach what he had learned to those who would listen. And
some do both, that is they return to share the treasure found and
then leave the company of humanity. An example is in the
Navajo culture which incorporates thirty-two major ceremonies
for healing, each an elaborate complex of mythology and
practice.58 Each ceremony is based on a specific myth about a
tribal ancestor who is said to have become afflicted after
breaking a taboo. The ancestor, assisted in learning a curative
ritual by a supernatural being, applied the procedures to himself
and was cured. Then he returned briefly to the Navajo people to
teach them the procedures to use to cure others who become
afflicted after breaking the same taboo.59 After teaching the cure
to the people, each of these ancestors found he could no longer
live in the company of normal humans because of his increased
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spirituality. Each one then goes to live with the Holy People who
helped create the present-day world, leaving the knowledge of
his ceremony behind for the benefit of the community.60
The hero’s return may take the form of what Joseph
Campbell calls The Magic Flight: it may be eased through the
assistance of the gods, guides, or guardians; or it may turn into a
difficult or comical chase. “If the hero in his triumph wins the
blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly
commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the
restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is
supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the
other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition
of its guardian, or if the hero’s wish to return to the world has
been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the
mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit.
This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical
obstruction and evasion.”61
Then again, the hero’s return from the journey may need to
be orchestrated by the community from which he journeyed.
“The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural
adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world
may have to come and get him.”62 Have you ever gotten lost and
needed a search party to come find you? Have you ever required
an intervention by trusted friends to remind you that you
somehow got off-course? That can happen to anyone, especially
to heroes.
Crossing the return threshold presents an intimidating new
initiation, because the hero has yet to confront society with his
newfound and otherworldly treasure, and stand up to the puzzled
questions, derision, resentments, and neighbors unable to
comprehend. To the perspective of the hero before leaving the
land we know, the two worlds of humanity and divinity, or
cognitive consciousness and intuitive unconsciousness, appear to
be separate and distinct from each other – different as life and
death, as day and night. “The hero adventures out of the land we
know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or
again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his
return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone.
Nevertheless – and here is a great key to the understanding of
myth and symbol – the two kingdoms are actually one. The
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realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we
know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or
unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero.”63 Upon
his return, the hero cannot help but see the two worlds as
intricately connected; indeed as one in the same. And therein lies
the challenge to bring back the treasure in a way that the
community can assimilate. “That is the hero’s ultimate difficult
task. How render back into light-world language the speechdefying pronouncements of the dark? . . . How translate into
terms of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ revelations that shatter into
meaninglessness every attempt to define the pairs of
opposites?”64
Returning home may sound innocuous, simple, and easy. As
anyone who has tried it can attest, it is perhaps the most difficult
part of the entire journey. The ten years of adventures recounted
in Homer’s Iliad of going to war with Troy to rescue the
kidnapped Helen were only the beginning of the whole story of
Odysseus’ journey: the Odyssey recounts the ten-year adventure
of returning home to Ithaca after the war had been won. Let’s
retell that tale in order to learn the lessons of this final stage of
the hero’s journey: the return.
The hero of the tale is Odysseus (the Greek name) or Ulysses
(the Roman name). Odysseus fought the good fight at Troy and
emerged victorious. The complexity of his return home from the
war actually began with confusion about what course to take.
Some of Odysseus’ warrior comrades believed it necessary to
make sacrifices to the gods before they could safely begin their
homeward travels. Odysseus and some others felt that no
sacrifices were necessary and decided to lead their weary troops
home as soon as possible. But Odysseus was ambivalent and, on
second thought, turned back to join the others. On the way he
decided to sack a city for booty and provisions. He mistook that
material plunder for the journey’s treasure instead of recognizing
the strength gained through victory to be the treasure. That
turned out to be a costly mistake, because it set him on a
convoluted course rather than the straightforward journey home
that he yearned for. The people of the city fought Odysseus’ men
off, forcing them to flee back into the sea where they were blown
off course. Eventually they washed ashore at the Land of the
Lotus Eaters, peaceful people who were happy to share the lotus
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fruit with the scouting party. Once they ate the fruit, however,
the sailors forgot themselves and their purpose; they forgot their
goal of returning home. Odysseus is forced to go ashore on the
beautiful island, find them and drag them back to the ship.
Throughout the long epic of the Odyssey, the crew represents
Odysseus’ lower impulses, his less developed aspects. We all
have parts that are easily sidetracked and distracted from our
highest priority. Sometimes they want to just “veg out” in front
of the television, or perhaps “relax” with the help of alcohol. It is
only unhealthy to the extent that, in the process, we forget
ourselves and our purpose. Then the part of us that is truly hero
must take charge forcefully, reimpose the rightful priority, and
enforce discipline on the unruly parts who have forgotten. For
some people their seductive lotus fruit is an intoxicant, for some
fame or fortune, for others it may be the gilded cage of security
or the drive to accomplish something important. Each of us
might ask, what is my lotus fruit that makes me forget myself
and my purpose?
Odysseus and his crew set sail for home again, but they are
in need of provisions and so they land on the next island they
encounter. It is the home of the Cyclopes. These beings are huge
one-eyed giants with no perspective beyond eating, sleeping, and
herding the livestock that provide meat and milk. They are
isolated from the world and from each other. They are unbridled,
self-obsessed and ignorant of any self-reflection. They live by
the basest of animal natures. Odysseus and his men seek food in
the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemos while he is away, feasting
on cheese and milk. Just as they are ready to sneak out of the
cave and return to their ship, Odysseus lets his curiosity get the
better of him and he insists that they wait for the return of the
Cyclops. When the mighty Polyphemos returns, he closes the
cave exit with a huge stone and Odysseus’ men are trapped.
Discovering these intruders, the Cyclops asks them “Tell me
your name.” Odysseus replies, “My name is Nobody (or
Noman).” The giant brutally kills and eats several of the men,
gets drunk on a special wine that Odysseus offered him, and falls
into an unconscious stupor, leaving Odysseus and the remaining
crew horrified, planning an escape from the sealed cave. Even if
they could kill Cyclops, they would be doomed because they
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could not move the immense stone that closed off the cave
entrance.
While the giant sleeps, Odysseus and a few of his strongest
men plunge a burning stake into his one eye. Blinded, he raged
in pain, calling for help. Other Cyclopes come and call out,
“What is going on? Are you being attacked in there?”
Polyphemos replies, “Nobody is attacking me! Nobody is killing
me now by trickery and deception.” Convinced there is no
problem, the other Cyclopes go off to their own caves. When
Polyphemos opens the cave to let his herds out, Odysseus and his
men escape, hiding by hanging onto the undersides of sheep.
They reach their ship and begin to sail away from the frightful
island. Not content to remain Nobody, however, Odysseus can’t
resist calling out to Polyphemos that if he wants to know who is
responsible for tricking and blinding him, it is he, Odysseus of
Ithaca. Polyphemos was so infuriated that he scoops up a nearby
mountain and hurls it at the ship, causing a swell that pulls the
ship all the way back to the island. Odysseus barely manages to
escape a second time. And again Odysseus can’t resist calling
out to Polyphemos to gloat about getting away, but this time
from a safer distance. The Cyclops called on his father Poseidon
to curse Odysseus for the next ten years with storms that
frustrate his return home. “There’s no escaping the moral of this
tale: when faced with the violence of overblown egotism, being
Nobody is the best escape. The craft of being Nobody is the
antidote to the dumb brutality of self-centeredness. . . . To be
Nobody is not to enter some fantastic condition of egolessness. It
is simply to be willing and able, when it is time, to drop the self,
to let Somebody go and surrender to circumstances. We do this
as a discipline when we give ourselves over in meditation or in
prayer. We do it, too, in those rare but always absorbing
moments of abandonment that can come in art or work or
love.”65 The story provides a glaring reminder, too, of the ease
with which the ego can come storming back, even in the face of
the dire consequences of allowing it to happen.
These are the lessons to be learned about the difficulties of
the final stage of the hero’s journey: the return home. We can
become sidetracked by indecisiveness, by confused values, by
seduction into intoxication, or by an inflated ego. What further
adventures await Odysseus, and lessons await us?
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Leaving the Cyclops behind (but not the curse brought on by
him), Odysseus sails to the pleasant shore of King Aeolus’ realm
where for a full month he is treated to every luxury and kindness.
When Odysseus is ready to leave, the King gives him a
wonderful gift to take with him: a bagful of ill winds. This is
immensely useful, because as long as the winds are kept in the
bag, they can’t plague Odysseus’ ships. They enjoyed smooth
sailing on their homeward journey for nine days, until at last they
approached the shores of Ithaca. Confident that they had
successfully avoided any more troubles, and exhausted from the
stress of the journey, Odysseus finally rested, falling into a deep
sleep. As Odysseus slept, the men in the crew began to
conjecture what was in King Aeolus’ gift bag, imagining that it
must be silver and gold, and complained that Odysseus shouldn’t
get all the valuables. They are emboldened to open the sack, the
ill winds rush out and the ships are carried by ferocious storms
all the way back to Aeolus. Again Odysseus is sent back to start
over, and he is disheartened. “And while we sleep unruly forces
within us stir up our self-destructive impulses. . . . When the
fatigue caused by inner spiritual conflict grows deep enough, we
fall asleep. And when we’re asleep the inner or outer crew
conspires, and out of their jealousy and perversion open up the
bag of our irrational passions to let fly some destructive wind to
blow us back a million miles.”66
Among the continuing adventures that plague Odysseus and
his small remaining band of men, one of the strangest is on the
Aenian island. They are exhausted, traumatized, and disoriented.
Odysseus sends a scouting party to investigate the island in
search of food and provisions. They come to a house and see
sitting inside the beautiful sorceress goddess Circe, daughter of
the sun. She sings enchanting songs that put the men at ease, and
they accept her invitation to come in and drink the refreshment
she offers. The drink is laced with a potion that erases any
memory of home, and they are changed into swine. When
Odysseus learns of Circe’s treachery, he sets out to confront her
and free his men. On the way to meet Circe, the god Hermes (the
one who initiates) appears and gives Odysseus a new potion to
counter the effects of her memory-deleting potion. When her
deception does not work on Odysseus, she agrees to return the
men to their human bodies and never to harm Odysseus. The
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men are now younger and stronger than before being made into
pigs. Odysseus and his men stay with Circe at her palace for a
year, feasting and drinking. Odysseus has been drawn into
sharing sexual passion with the alluring goddess, and again has
forgotten his purpose of returning home. This time it is his men
who finally bring him back to his senses, urging him to rouse
from the trance of pleasure and return to the journey. And they
do, with Circe’s help. For Odysseus, the encounter on the Aenian
island may have been a detour on the journey, but it was
definitely a necessary one.
There are many enchanting distractions that have the
potential to turn us into beasts, forgetfully oblivious to the
demands of our homeward journey. We can safely navigate what
is enchanting, alluring, and dangerous within only if we have
some form of protection, like Hermes’ counterpotion. For some
that may be a spiritual practice, for others it may be selfreflection. But there is another layer of truth here as well: while
the base impulses (Odysseus’ men) may be the aspects of
ourselves most likely to lead us into mindless animal behavior, it
was Odysseus himself who got lost in the comforts of living in
Circe’s opulent palace. And it was his men who brought him to
his senses, in other words our senses and sensual impulsive
aspects have a wisdom of their own.
The complex relationships that Odysseus had with Circe
(and with Calypso who is yet to come), are also instructive. Each
one seduced him into forgetting the mission he was on and
therefore represented dangerous distraction; yet each one
ultimately became an ally in the forward momentum of his
journey through the intervention of Hermes. This alluring,
fascinating femme fatale exists for all men, and we call her the
anima, just as an alluring and fascinating masculine exists within
all women, which we call her animus. This archetype offers the
quicksand of intoxication and complacency when it is
approached without intercession, and at the same time the
inspiration and encouragement to move forward. She is the muse
and the mentor.
Circe tells Odysseus that he must now go to the Land of the
Dead, and she offers instructions that prove invaluable. The
Land of the Dead is unknown, unknowable, terrifying. It is the
land of the buried past where we encounter people and events
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now long gone, to grieve and forgive, to complete what has been
unfinished and to make peace. Odysseus and his crew enter a
realm of darkness and once onshore begin following Circe’s
instructions on how to make sacrifices that will draw in the dead
with whom he must speak. Overcoming his terrible fear,
Odysseus is greeted by many who are dead including his mother
Anticlea. She tells him that she died of grief during his long
absence in Troy, and he wants to comfort her but cannot. He
cannot embrace her or the others from his past that he meets, for
they are now unreachable. Yet he is able to hear their side of
things and gain a perspective beyond his own narrow selfinterest. In that there is a measure of healing. There is another
poignant lesson for Odysseus in the Land of the Dead, for he has
a tendency to romanticize the death of the hero. When Odysseus
meets Achilles, champion of the Trojan War who died gloriously
in battle, he assumes that he proudly rules the Land of the Dead
as the great warrior he was when he died. Achilles corrects him,
however; “Let me hear no smooth talk of death from you,
Odysseus. Better I say to break sod as a farm hand for some poor
country man, on iron rations, than to lord it over all the
exhausted dead.”67 Idealizing death is clearly a mistake: “death is
no picnic. It is backbreaking and exhausting work. It is not the
solution to life’s difficulties. The realm of life, not the realm of
death, is where our journey takes place. Abandoning our pretty
fantasies about death and facing our fear of death’s
inconceivable strangeness is a necessity: for life. . . . The shades
[dead inhabitants] in the Land of the Dead do not live in a world
of peace or closure. Like us they continue to struggle and
change.”68 When we romanticize death, it can become as alluring
and enchanting a distraction as can Circe’s paradise. And that is
what happened to Odysseus. He becomes fascinated, wanting to
spend more and more time with the buried past. Finally, when
the hordes of dead clamoring for his attention become really
overwhelming, he becomes frightened again and scurries away
to his ships to continue the journey home.
Odysseus and his crew had barely departed when they
encountered the Sirens, enchanting sisters whose eerie songs
irresistibly pull you in until there is no escape. Fortunately, Circe
had given Odysseus instructions not only for navigating through
the Land of the Dead but also for avoiding the treacherously
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seductive songs of the Sirens. He was to plug the sailors’ ears
with wax so they could not hear the Siren songs. She understood
Odysseus well, and knew that he would be unwilling to stop
himself from listening, so he was instructed to have his men lash
him to the ship’s mast and no matter what he said that they were
not to untie him. The song of the Sirens romanticizes the past
through sublimely nostalgic melodies. Once in the clutches of
this deadly seduction, the hero is doomed: the Sirens’ island is
littered with the bones of those who did not see the danger of
indulging in wishful thinking and sanitized memories, of the
“comfortable fantasy of refuge in a past that never was . . . To fix
and sentimentalize the past is to seal the present’s doom.”69 Both
of these adventures carry lessons about dealing with the past: it
is dangerous to the forward movement of our journey home to
become enmeshed in guilt and regret for the past, or to indulge in
a romanticized or nostalgic version of the past. Follow Circe’s
advice and lash yourself to the mast of your spiritual discipline
or contemplative practice to keep from being seduced into a past
that never was. Here ends the adventures for which Circe gave
Odysseus clear instructions. Now he is truly on his own.
He must sail his ship through a narrow strait, with a terrible
fate waiting on either side. On one side is Scylla, a terrible sixheaded and twelve-armed monster who grabs up six sailors at a
time to eat in those six gluttonous and ravenous mouths. Circe
herself had earlier changed Scylla from a beautiful maiden into
the snaky monster. On the other side is Charybdis, a terrifying
whirlpool that appears and disappears without notice, sucking
everything in its clutches down to certain death in the deep
darkness below. Odysseus must choose which of these two
sickening fates to avoid by coming dangerously close to the
other. He faces an impossible choice, because either way lies the
risk of destruction. Odysseus chooses to take his chances with
Scylla; he loses six good men to her, and avoids the potential of
losing everything in the whirlpool of Charybdis. Sometimes we
are forced to make a choice when there are no good choices
available. Faced with such a dilemma, it may be tempting to hold
back, not wanting to proceed. If I don’t move forward then I
don’t have to make the difficult choice. But then, of course, I
remain stuck in a holding pattern, agonizing over the dilemma
endlessly. This is one of those times in our lives when we are
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35
truly on our own; we are forced to rely on our own judgment,
and we must live with the consequences of that choice.
Odysseus and his remaining crew now sail to Thrinakia, an
island where the sacred cattle of Helios, the Sun, live. He has
been warned not to slaughter these cattle under any
circumstances, and Odysseus makes his men swear that they will
not. Because the winds remain idle, they cannot leave the island
for a month. They have no food, so Odysseus goes off by himself
to make offerings to the gods and pray for good weather, and
then he falls asleep. The men are starving and, in his absence,
decide to kill the cattle and feast. When Odysseus returns, he is
mortified that the men have defied the warnings of disaster. As
soon as a wind comes up they hurriedly sail away. Almost
immediately, however, a fierce thunderstorm comes up and sinks
the ship in icy seas; all aboard except Odysseus perish. He clings
to a makeshift raft, alone and desolate, drifting helplessly back to
Charybdis. Having made the impossible choice once, he now is
forced to experience the other alternative as well. The whirlpool
swallows the raft and Odysseus barely manages to save himself
by clinging to a fig tree on the cliff over the abyss. After waiting
desperately for a long, long time, Odysseus drops onto a small
log and, exhausted, drifts aimlessly. This is not the first time that
Odysseus’ men have defied him, fulfilling their base impulses
while he sleeps, AWOL. Each time it leads to disaster. These
aspects of ourselves, unchaperoned by a higher and wiser self,
inevitably sabotage “doing the right thing” and moving forward
in our homeward journey. They are our childish parts, impulsive,
impatient, whining and constantly demanding, “Are we there
yet?”
Odysseus’ lessons are becoming unavoidably clear to us:
“When we appreciate our experience as it is, engaging with it
fully, but not trying to possess or control it – looking but not
eating – then whatever life throws our way will be all right. We
can look to our heart’s content, we can even complain all we
want, but if we don’t eat – don’t, that is, swallow Circe’s potion
without a counterpotion, or listen to the sirens’ songs without
being lashed to the mast, but instead appreciate and move on for
the rest of the journey – then we avert disaster. Sometimes this is
the way it ought to be. But there are other times, as with the
sacred cattle, the lotus blossoms, and the Cyclopes’ food, when
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we can’t help but eat, to our great sorrow. . . . We are not simply
supposed to forgo eating the fruit and the cattle, or swallowing
the potion, or allowing ourselves to be seduced by sound and
sight: of course we need to do these things, we are human, we
eat to live, and we must pay the price of our eating. This also is
our destiny, and our path home.”70 These trials and disasters
strengthen us and bring us wisdom. They truly are our pathway
home.
Odysseus drifted hopelessly on that small log, lost and alone,
until he washed ashore on Ogygia, where he becomes captive of
the beautiful goddess Calypso for seven long years. She pampers
him, showers him with luxury and affection, hoping that
eventually he will fall in love with her and choose to remain
there for the rest of his life, even perhaps becoming immortal.
But Odysseus sits on the beach gazing out toward the distant
Ithaca, pining for his family and his home. While there have
been interim periods of forgetting, he cannot totally forget that
ultimately he is on a homeward journey. And so once again
Hermes, sent by Zeus, delivers to Calypso the decree that she
must set Odysseus free to resume his journey and return home.
He builds a raft and sets out. Just as he is approaching the land of
his beloved home, a great storm comes up sent by his nemesis
Poseidon, dashing his raft to pieces and leaving him clinging to a
tiny piece of driftwood. A violent wave crashes Odysseus into a
rock on the shore, and then carries him back out to sea, helpless
and discouraged. Despairing at coming so close to home and
then being denied, Odysseus begs the gods for mercy.
Sometimes that is the only thing left to do. Eventually a gentle
tide washes him up on the shore of Skeria, land of the
Phaiakians, hospitable people who welcome him. They are
known to guarantee safe passage home to anyone who washes
ashore on their land, and so before setting out to take Odysseus
home, they feast and drink and enjoy music and athletic contests.
Odysseus recounts for his hosts all of his adventures since
leaving Troy, and the retelling is cathartic, allowing him to
express all the deep grief and despair that has been building for
these years of wandering. King Alcinous and the Phaiakian
people are so impressed with Odysseus’ adventures that they
shower him lavishly with gifts, and he now has more booty than
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all that was lost at sea. Then they set sail to finally bring
Odysseus home.
Reaching the shores of Ithaca after being gone twenty years,
Odysseus is overcome with emotion and exhaustion, and he falls
into a deep sleep. The sailors must carry him ashore and lay him
under an olive tree: “Odysseus lands on Ithaca not as a
conqueror, or a pilgrim, or a king: he arrives like a baby or one
as yet unborn.”71 As often as Odysseus has sabotaged himself by
falling asleep, allowing his baser impulses to act thoughtlessly,
this is not one of them. Now his sleep represents full recognition
of the importance of the intuitive mind, the unconscious which
exists outside of time and reaches beyond reason. “And this is
how we too must return home: we must return with all the
experiences we have had in our waking lives throughout the
years contained now in a fuller, more mysterious state, a state in
which we are more open, more suggestible, and less in control
than we would probably like. We all come home asleep.”72
Home at last, Odysseus now faces the greatest challenge of
the entire journey to get home. He must now introduce the new
Odysseus to those he left behind, and re-create his relationships
with them based on who he is now. He is a different person than
the one who departed on the journey of self-discovery so many
long years before, and they have changed, too. His wife
Penelope has been putting off suitors that wanted to marry her in
Odysseus’ absence by weaving a death shroud by day and
unweaving it each night. The suitors, more than a hundred
noblemen from nearby lands, had been competing for Odysseus’
kingdom through Penelope’s hand in marriage and had made
themselves at home in Odysseus’ palace as if they owned it. She
can no longer hide from life behind the uncertainty of her
husband’s whereabouts or whether he is even still alive. And so
Odysseus recruits the help of his son Telemachus, who has
grown into a man in his own right, to kill all those who would
usurp Odysseus’ place in life. He stands on the threshold of his
home and fights all the suitors who want him dead for their own
convenience, to block their escape and force them to deal with
his return. He kills them all, and claims Penelope as his own.
Victory over the suitors is essential before re-creating the deep
intimate new relationships: “the suitors are entropy, inertia, inner
profligacy, the tendency in each one of us toward weakness and
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the gradual dissipation of our spirit as life goes on. . . . Years,
possibly decades go by while the suitors eat us out of house and
home, but all the while we’ve been busy with other concerns and
have not noticed – until, possibly, it is too late. So, yes, we must
finally recognize and admit that we stand at an important
threshold; we can’t avoid it any longer. We must recognize here
that a battle is necessary to root the suitors out of our house once
and for all, so that we can be ready to face with full creativity
what is to come, and so that we will be able to love.”73
There remains one final challenge for Odysseus to meet
before he can finally and fully move beyond the threshold and be
at home again. He must seek his father Laertes and reconcile
with him, gaining his blessing and his forgiveness, as he had
already done with his deceased mother in his visit to the
underworld. With that accomplished, Odysseus is at peace with
his past and ready to be fully present now that he is truly home.
The gods allowed the night of Odysseus’ reunion with Penelope
to be longer than any other night, timeless, intimate, and
mysterious. And so the long journey home is complete, and yet
Odysseus knows that he continues to journey as long as he lives,
and that returning home allows the next great adventure of
departure to commence.
The story of the hero’s journey is, of course, a metaphor for
the various experiences we have throughout life. Examples are
the nightly journey into dream world; the longer term evolution
of our relationships, such as with parents, children, or life
partners; the course of one’s mental health treatment; an
academic career; establishing a career or life’s work; the
pilgrimage of spiritual development.
Needless to say, the hero’s journey never really ends. For the
true hero continues to hear and heed the soul’s call to reach new
heights and depths of authentic living. With enough practice, we
bridge the chasm between our hero and our Demon Guardians,
between the world of limitation and the world of unlimited
possibilities. We can easily come and go at will, embracing it all.
Such a hero we recognize as Master of the Two Worlds.
“Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from
the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal
deep and back – not contaminating the principles of the one with
those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by
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39
virtue of the other – is the talent of the master.”74 Mastery is
elusive, even for the successful hero, and requires, as we shall
discover, the integration of one’s polarities: feminine with
masculine, introvert with extravert, psyche with cosmos, left
brain (thinking and sensation) with right brain (intuition and
feeling). The true hero continues constantly to journey toward
mastery.
Now we will investigate these polarities within, and the
ways in which they affect our journeying.
Factors affecting an individual’s Journey
We will briefly examine a number of factors that influence
the approach that a given individual will tend to take in his/her
Hero’s Journey, specifically masculine/ feminine forces,
introversion/ extraversion, and psychological type.
Masculine and Feminine
We need to acknowledge and honor that there are basic
differences between a masculine and a feminine approach to the
hero’s journey, even though there are many commonalities. In
general, the masculine approach to life’s challenges is goaloriented, is to objectively identify and isolate all the tasks that
need to be done, to attack each necessary undertaking with
strength and determination, and to control elements in the
environment in order to achieve the desired result. Just so do
legendary heroes set out on their journeys of transformation, and
in the process invent technologies, build infrastructure, explore
uncharted territories, and conquer threats. Life is made
meaningful by accomplishing one’s mission, by knowing one’s
purpose and fulfilling it.
In general, the feminine approach to life’s challenges is
process-oriented, is to immerse in the situation so as to become
consciously aware of the ambiance of the environment, to gather
experiential knowledge through relationships, and to submit to
the wisdom and guidance from deep within that is only
accessible to feminine receptivity. Inherent in a feminine
approach is tolerance of the uncertainty of not-knowing and of
the tension of not-doing. Life is made meaningful by unfolding
one’s essence and expressing it within significant relationships.
Feminine heroism traditionally has had less to do with physical
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strength and daring than emotional fortitude and selflessness,
and is based on a different archetypal foundation than masculine
heroism.75 Authors Magdala Peixoto Labre and Lisa Duke offer
an interesting analysis of this difference, and the social basis for
it:
female heroism is “more optimistic and more democratic and equalitarian than
her male counterpart’s” (Pearson 1986, xvi) and most often associated with
the Martyr/Caregiver rather than the Warrior archetype. The Caregiver/Martyr
is the “feminine” heroic archetype that incorporates traditional social
expectations of “feminine heroism”—for example, connection, fairness,
responsibility, persuasion, nurture (Polster 1992)—and is encouraged in girls’
early socialization experiences with family, peers, educational institutions,
and the media. These categorizations correspond with Harvard psychologist
Carol Gilligan’s (1982) identification of a female-based principle of
ethical/moral judgment she calls “an ethic of care.” Compared with males,
who tend to be guided by an “ethic of justice” or a relatively impersonal,
abstract value system of right and wrong, Gilligan attests that girls are more
apt to judge situations individually, taking into consideration the impact of
their decisions on others, and they have a greater tendency than boys to place
importance on connection and relationships in determining what is “right.”76
Symbolically, the masculine image of development is
ascending a ladder, valuing competition and autonomy, with the
goal being to get to the top of the ladder. The comparable
feminine symbol is a net or web of human interconnection,
valuing care and relationship, with the goal being the collective
good of everyone within that web.77 Men tend to struggle with
intimacy, fearing engulfment and loss of autonomy in the
feminine web. Women tend to struggle with assertiveness,
fearing isolation at the top of the masculine ladder. Each finds
personal transformation by risking what they most fear: for
women, to establish personal boundaries and face the terror of
being judged, rejected, and ultimately alone; for men, to risk
vulnerable intimacy and face the terror of being swallowed up by
feminine connectedness, losing himself and ultimately being
annihilated.
We are speaking about basic forces at work in the world, not
men and women or male and female, but masculine and feminine
or yang and yin. In earlier generations of human history, men
carried most of the masculine energy for the culture and women
carried most of the feminine, and both genders were narrowly
proscribed. In our contemporary cultures, men and women have
more freedom to explore and develop both their own masculinity
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
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and femininity. Jung spoke of these two great universal patterns,
“found both in the unconscious and in nature in the characteristic
form of opposites, as the ‘mother’ and ‘father’ of everything that
happens.”78 In the archetypal nuclear family, the father
(masculine energy) builds a house, contains and protects its
sanctity, and brings into it material nourishment from the outer
world. The mother (feminine energy) is a home-maker, that is
she makes the house into a home, and she develops within it
nurturance, a capacity to digest and embody the nourishment
from outside, utilizing the containing safety to relax, deintegrate,
and renew.79
The Greek myths of Psyche and Jason provide a clear
illustration of this difference in the context of the hero’s journey.
Jason, in the story of the Argonauts, was called to many
pilgrimages. One was to retrieve the golden fleece from fiercely
destructive golden rams of the sun. He set out boldly and
courageously, determined to encounter and overcome the
frightening enemy. Jason has a long series of wild adventures on
his journey, accomplishing many seemingly impossible tasks,
overcoming imposing obstacles, and finally returning with the
golden fleece to be declared a hero and a conqueror by his
community. His successful completion of the goal-oriented
journey contributes to increased sense of autonomy, power, and
potency. Yet it must be said that Jason ultimately succeeds in the
impossible tasks required to obtain the golden fleece through the
intervention of a beautiful woman, Medea, daughter of King
Aeëtes. She provides Jason with the juice of a certain herb which
puts the dragon guardian to sleep, allowing him to snatch the
prize and escape to his ship for the return home (with his
captivating new lover Medea).
Compare this with the separate myth of Psyche’s call to
retrieve the golden fleece. As we have already seen, her
approach to the journey was very different from Jason’s. Psyche
waits patiently observing the situation for clues about how to
proceed, and is rewarded by a reed which advises her on how to
accomplish the task. She hides in the shade until the early
evening when the beasts sleep following their frenzied activity of
the day (in the depths of unconsciousness when the distracting
forces of everyday life are dormant); then she gathers wisps of
fleece that have been caught on nearby bushes. Her motivation
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for the journey was to be reunited with her lover Eros; her
reward was to live happily ever after with Eros and their
daughter Bliss. Her successful completion of the journey results
in a heightened sense of connection with the world, and attuned
relationship to other living creatures and to the ever-flowing
processes and rhythms of life.80
In general, female responses to stress are to “tend and
befriend,” whereas male responses are to “fight or flight”.81
Traumatized girls tend to sacrifice themselves in return for the
connection with others that is so vitally important. Traumatized
boys tend to prefer avoidance and emotional distance, sacrificing
the connection with others in return for the illusion of autonomy.
Some of the gender differences are accounted for by oxytocin, a
predominantly female hormone which prompts labor as well as
milk production in the nursing mother.82 Oxytocin is also
released during stressful events, prompting the uniquely female
stress response of tend and befriend, i.e., tending to children or
others perceived as dependent, even while seeking out social
support. In an interesting experiment recently, human subjects
(male and female) who inhaled oxytocin in a nasal spray showed
increased trust in social interactions with unfamiliar
individuals.83 A complication is that oxytocin’s effects are
enhanced by estrogen, but are antagonized by androgens, male
hormones. Winners in human hierarchical contests experience
triumph, power, and a sense of dominance. Losers experience a
sense of defeat, submission, and being crushed. Not surprisingly,
defeat in males leads to marked increases in the female
stimulating hormone oxytocin,84 and female competitiveness is
enhanced by testosterone.85 Further, victory enhances
immunocompetence whereas defeat compromises it.86 As a
result, defeated animals may die of infections, whereas injecting
them with testosterone can lead to recovery.87 We see these
patterns reflected in mythic stories of male and female heroes,
and in the people who advance to higher levels of development.
The male hero learns to incorporates his inner feminine qualities
not through defeat but through humility and ego surrender. The
female hero incorporates her inner masculine not as
competitiveness but as respectful assertive confidence.
Another clear distinction between a masculine and feminine
approach to the hero’s journey is the direction each takes on that
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journey, and the direction from which assistance is solicited. The
masculine is oriented in the direction of upward, ascent toward
higher aspirations and seeking help from higher powers transcendence of the mundane. The top of the mountain is a
customary place of revelation and redemption, of enlightenment.
The feminine is oriented more in the direction of downward, a
descent into the underworld of the dark watery uterus where a
seed can germinate, an embryo can develop.88 And assistance is
sought from forces that inhabit the underworld; after all, it was
reeds that live in the water that told Psyche how to get the golden
fleece, and it was an army of ants that helped her to sort the
grains. The final test required of Psyche by Aphrodite was to
bring from the abyss of the underworld a box full of supernatural
beauty. This challenge is appropriate to a feminine hero,
certainly; additionally, it is clear that it takes a feminine
authority to command it. The masculine hero is sent out into the
world and challenged to ascend to a higher realm to prove
himself; a feminine hero is sent inward and challenged to
descend to the depths to prove herself. The feminine opens up to
the “sensible transcendental”89, a transcendence-in-immanence
which, rather than separating the flesh from spirit, discovers
divinity in the depths of the flesh.
A consistent lesson in many of the ancient myths is how the
masculine and feminine interrelate: connecting, separating, and
reconnecting in a new and healthier way. For example, in the
Iliad, Odysseus went to war with Troy because they had stolen
Helen (the Feminine) from Greece. The Greek King
Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the gods in
order to obtain prevailing winds that would take his warriors’
ships to Troy. “In order to undertake this masculine task of
making war the men must absolutely sever their connection to
the Feminine. . . . The Odyssey tells the tale of Odysseus’s return
to Greece from Troy; one element in Odysseus’s 20-year journey
involves his need to become reconnected to the Feminine before
he can successfully return to his wife, Penelope. Odysseus must
encounter a variety of female figures – Circe, the Sirens, Calypso
and finally Nausicaa – before he manages to find a successful
way back to civilization where the Masculine and the Feminine
must live in harmony with one another.”90
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And in the same myth we learn how Penelope deals with her
separation from the Masculine. During Odysseus’ long absence,
she was hounded by suitors who became more and more
intrusive into her inner life. They moved into her home, ate her
food and became more demanding of her resources. Her method
of coping was to patiently occupy herself with weaving by day
and unraveling her work by night, only to weave again the next
day. “A feminine approach is not primarily goal-oriented. . . .
There is a mixture of attentiveness and contemplation as one
tries to attune oneself to the current of one’s development, to let
one’s growth process happen, to avoid blocking a journey that is
trying to proceed. The ego turns toward the unconscious, letting
itself be guided by the organic processes of the psyche,
immersing itself in its own depths rather than trying to direct the
psyche.”91 And when Odysseus returns, Penelope cannot be
reunited with him until he has evicted the suitors, until the newly
wise and humbled masculine conquers the pretenders of
aggression, greed, entropy, laziness and entitlement. Only then
are the two long-separated lovers finally reunited in that night
longer than any other night, timeless, intimate, and mysterious.
The masculine need not be careless and violent in its
subjugation of nature and pursuit of spirit; the masculine can be
forcefully in service to both. The feminine need not be passive in
its surrender to the rhythms and currents of life and the
relationships with nature; the feminine activates the very life
force that animates everything. The wise hero calls on both the
masculine and feminine strengths within, that of doing and that
of being, to grow in health and wisdom through life’s journeys.
Another way of saying this is that attention is receptive, a
feminine quality.92 Attention is first the product of one’s
intention, which is projective, masculine. Then it must be
nurtured, cajoled into persistence.
A hallmark of high ego development is an integration of
both masculine and feminine strengths: “Self-development at
higher levels apparently goes hand in hand with an awareness of
emotional interdependence and granting of appropriate
autonomy to others as well as to self. If this seems a complex
blend of caring and autonomy, . . . it is precisely this complexity
that the individual at higher ego levels is successfully
mastering.”93 More evidence for this integration of masculine
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and feminine characteristics comes from McAdams et al.94, who
showed that ego level was related to having both instrumental
and interpersonal goals.
Extravert and Introvert
In a similar way to the polarity of masculine/ feminine, there
is a fundamental difference between an extraverted and an
introverted approach to the hero’s journey, even though there are
once again many commonalities. An extraverted approach tends
to embrace what the world offers while relegating the inner
reaction to a lower priority; an introverted approach deals first
with the inner reaction and only secondarily with the outer
reality. “Mother Nature herself metaphorically goes through
cycles of introversion and extraversion: the inwardness of
autumn and winter, followed by the bursting forth of spring and
summer. On a more person level, each night begins with the
introversion of sleep, proceeds in the morning awakening to the
external demands of daily life, and in turn is followed by a
slowing and quieting introverted orientation at dusk and evening,
which progresses once more into sleep. The extravert is more
likely to neglect times of reflection while the more introverted
person is apt to neglect extraverted relationships with others.
Nature and human life demand both introversion and
extraversion.”95
Characteristics of extraversion are outward orientation,
strongly assertive, sociable, flexible, liking variety and action,
deciding before reflecting, and using teamwork; negative traits
of the one-sided extravert are being excessively loud,
aggressively invasive, impulsive, driven by time and speed, and
having an insatiable need for diversity and drama. In situations
that involve another person, extraversion moves to create a
shared experience, by reaching out to “merge” in some way with
the other person. Characteristics of introversion are inward
orientation, prefers solitude, intense, concentrated, reflects
before deciding, communicates better in writing than in
conversation, works alone, quiet, and is puzzled or threatened by
extraverted aggressiveness, which is experienced as psychic
invasion; negative traits of the one-sided introvert are being
aloof, secretive, moody, judgmental, and indecisive. In situations
that involve another person, introversion steps back from the
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experience to see if it “matches” a remembered experience or an
archetype within to allow understanding of what an experience
like this is supposed to consist of.
An analogy to explain the difference between the two basic
attitudes uses a general and his aide. “In an extravert, the general
(dominant function) is outside the tent dealing with affairs while
the aide (the auxiliary) is respectfully in the background or in the
tent. In the case of the introvert, the roles are reversed: the aide is
outside ‘fending off interruptions’ while the general is inside the
tent ‘working on matters of top priority’.”96 To be healthy and
effective, men need an activated and healthy feminine, just as
women need access to their healthy masculine. Introverts need a
developed extroverted ‘aide’ to keep from becoming isolated or
dominated, just as extraverts need an available introverted ‘aide’
to keep from becoming a bully or superficial.
Most people are able to select a dominant mode depending
on what the current circumstance calls for. A normally
introverted person may have learned to activate the ‘inner
extravert’ when she is teaching in the classroom, but then
indulges her preference for quiet reflection when she goes home
at the end of the day. A healthy man can call on masculine
aspects of himself when appropriate and on feminine aspects as
well. It is similar to the way in which we all use the left brain for
linear, logical problem-solving and the right brain for a more
holistic perspective, sometimes at the same time.
When an individual becomes one-sided in these polarities
(masculine/ feminine or introversion/ extraversion), his/her
unconscious attempts to compensate and rebalance the conscious
ego complex, and becomes more extreme in an opposed
direction.97 The one-sided extravert tends toward manic
excitability and aggressive invasion of others’ personal space.
When the undeveloped and unused introverted tendencies erupt
into the life of a one-sided extravert, the more infantile and
archaic these unconscious attitudes are. “The egoism which
characterizes the extravert’s unconscious attitude goes far
beyond mere childish selfishness; it verges on the ruthless and
the brutal.”98 The one-sided introvert tends toward isolation and
depression, but when their undeveloped and unused extraverted
tendencies erupt into the open, the pent-up fury or fears of
psychic invasion may explode in rage and hatred.
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Approximately 70% of Americans are extraverted and 30%
introverted. More females are extraverted than males.99
Three forms of the journey
The journey we speak of can take any of three forms, each
one an individual pilgrimage dedicated to the healing and
spiritual regeneration of the greater community.100 One is the
path of questing for and discovering access to the hidden inner
intelligence of elemental nature – the path of the shaman, of
intuition and mystical empathy with nature. A second is the path
of knowledge by remembering, remembering the lessons of our
ancestors, the creation stories of our culture, and the inspiration
of our sacred scriptures about the gods, prophets and saints. The
third path is one of reconciliation of opposites, of peacemaking,
alchemy, integration – the path of creating wholeness.
The journey of self-sacrifice in search of truth follows a
classic pattern of quest, ordeal, discovery, and liberation. It is the
same pattern exemplified by the vision-questing North American
native peoples and the Australian aboriginal cultures of fasting,
isolation, and entry into a portal connecting the lower, middle,
and upper worlds. We also look for instruction to the
mythological Odin, “the Germanic god of ecstatic trance, of
shamans, poets, warriors, and seers. Odin was known as the
truth-seeking wanderer, the vision-quester or questioner, who
wandered through many worlds seeking knowledge and
wisdom.”101 The mystical wisdom and animistic-shamanistic
worldview of pre-Christian Northern European mythology is
descended through the aboriginal Germanic, Anglo-Saxon and
Celtic peoples.
Odin’s journey is thus a metaphorical image of the
relationships between nature, humanity, and divinity, revealing
Earth wisdom through experiences of magic and sorcery. Like
the Native American Sun Dance ceremony of piercing, fasting,
and dancing in homage to a great Tree of Life, Odin’s initiation
consisted of hanging on a great Tree, the World Tree, the axis
mundi, fasting and piercing. He was rewarded with secret
knowledge of the Runes divination method, told in this song:
I know that I hung
on that wind-swept tree,
through nine long nights,
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pierced by the spear,
to Odin sacrificed,
myself to my self,
on that great tree
whose roots
no one knows.
Neither food nor drink
did they give me.
I looked downwards –
took up the runes,
took them up with a cry.
Then I fell down.102
Odin the man is telling the story of how he offered himself
in sacrifice to Odin the god in his quest for wisdom. This
shamanic self-sacrifice – “myself to my self” – teaches how the
lower mortal self sacrifices (makes sacred) itself by offering
itself to the higher immortal Self. In one of the myths of Odin, he
willingly paid the price of sacrificing one eye in his search for
knowledge. The image of him as one-eyed is a reminder that
following this path requires one to devote attention to both the
outer world of people and nature, and the inner world of
visionary intuition and invisible forces.
The second path, that of remembering our origins, is the
regression journey of accessing source experiences to explain
and resolve current conflict. Hypnotherapy, dreamwork, and
depth psychology allow one to descend closer to the depths of
the unconscious and from those depths to “well up” images from
the past, both personal and collective. This is the path of
honoring the elders in the community as still-living ancestors
who carry our cultural wisdom and share it with those who take
the time to listen. This is the path of rites of initiation into
traditional ceremonies and time-honored technologies, learning
the “old ways” from the “old ones.”
The third path, that of creating wholeness, is the Jungian
journey of individuation, of bringing to resolution the warring
psychic elements of ego and shadow, conscious and
unconscious. It is the path of selfless seeking for social justice
taken by Gandhi, and the path of Reconciliation offered to the
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fragile post-Apartheid country of South Africa by Nelson
Mandela and Desmond Tutu. And it is the path each one of us
takes as we seek ways to incorporate both our masculine and
feminine sides, to harmonize the left and right hemispheres of
our brains, and to balance the tendencies to introversion and
extraversion.
We are mostly caught up in a web of our own making, one
which we do not understand well because we are unconscious
about how it came into existence. We do not generally know the
territory very well or the construction of the web. So, like a fly
captured in an invisible spider’s web, we struggle to gain
freedom from the limitations imposed on us, without a clear
understanding of what we are struggling with. The irony is that
we are, in reality, the spider that spun the web in the first place
as well as the unfortunate fly. In order to discover the true self
hidden deep within, we must become familiar with the
complexities within so that something new can emerge. Yet if
we only attempt to observe ourselves with the everyday
conscious mind, the ego, we fail because it is the fly caught in
the spider’s web, the observer within the observed.
First we need to understand our shadows. Then we need to
discover our strengths.
Both are reflections of the archetypes at work in our lives.
Carl Jung recognized that elements often occur in our dreams
that are not individual and that cannot be derived from the
dreamer’s personal experience. These archetypes are primordial
centers of organization that transcend the psyche but are
nevertheless experienced by individuals. Jung felt that we can
learn, though dreams and other modes, to cooperate with
archetypes in a way that contributes to our wholeness. That is,
we can learn how we may be cooperating with destructive forces
(like greed, envy, aggression, etc.) and change those patterns of
behavior; we can learn how to reclaim our rightful connection to
powerful strengths (like courage, leadership, gratitude, humility,
etc.).
These archetypes, positive and negative, must be seen for
what they are: archaic images, collective memories, the lexicon
of ancient myth and species’ instinct. This is a vast underworld
of dream and archetype and soul. At some point in our spiritual
development, we gain the strength to face our own hidden
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complexity, including the darkness, and to consciously take
responsibility to dissolve and transmute it into good. When this
occurs, our spiritual power blossoms. Because the integration of
shadow elements into consciousness is the first step toward
individuation (the process of accessing and integrating
unconscious elements of the psyche into consciousness), the
shadows are truly our guides.
The shadow is the part of oneself that sabotages, one’s inner
demons, the dark side of our essence. It is the unconscious parts
of our basic nature which consist of our projections onto others,
repressed desires, ignorant or gluttonous inner urges, and the
unpleasant parts of ourselves we have attempted to deny,
disguise, neglect, reject, hide or separate from self. The shadow
exists not only individually, but also collectively: the dark side
of human nature. So long as the individual, or the society,
remains ignorant of and separate from the dark power, they are
condemned to incompleteness. Completion arrives with the
resolution of our dark and light aspects, when the primal power
of the shadow is harnessed for the purposes of the self, when
“myself” is sacrificed to my “self”.
The Hero’s Journey as resolution of conflicting complexes and
healing old wounds
“You could say much of therapy is about the conflict
between cultural mythology and individual mythology, or about
the conflict between different personal myths.”103
“Less do we know that we follow him whose shadow we are,
as our own shadow follows us.”104 We usually have an idea
about who our shadows are, but whose shadow am I? That is the
hero’s journey to discover. The dragons and trolls and monsters
that we encounter make up a mosaic that, taken together, forms
the totality of who we truly are. They are not, as it turns out,
separate from us; indeed, “we have met the enemy, and he is
us.”105 Poet Rainier Maria Rilke has said that our deepest fears
are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.106
Donald Sandner, a Jungian analyst, studied primitive healing
practices such as the work of medicine men and shamans in
many indigenous cultures. He differentiated symbolic healing
from scientific healing: the former “explains, or at least provides
a context for, the sufferings of [the patient]” whereas the latter
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does not.107 The structural pattern of all such healing processes,
and the experiences that symbolic healers commonly take with
or for their patients, parallel the myth of the hero’s journey. The
healing process in this cultural context is an individual’s journey
deep into not his/her own individual unconscious, but rather
down into the tribe’s collective archetypal patterns. Sandner
identifies five stages in symbolic healing within the Navajo
tradition, which parallel the stages of the hero’s journey108:
1. Purification
2. Evocation
3. Identification
4. Transformation
5. Release
The journey begins with a purification in which the healer
and patient cleanse themselves and create a space safe enough to
contain the healing experience. The container for the journey or
the healing exploration is set apart from the ordinary world in a
transitional between-worlds space.
Fairy tales and myths always view the solution to the
proponent’s impossible task as magical, relying on powers that
ordinary people do not really possess. The other-worldly forces
necessary to sanctify and empower the mystical processes must
be evoked from their habitat in the Lower World or the Upper
World, a return to humanity’s deeply embedded origins. Such an
evocation requires access to these other realms through ritual and
ceremony, often through the efforts of a designated intermediary
(priest/ doctor figure). These forces may be perceived as
guardian angels, power animals, benevolent ancestors, spirit
among us, divinity. The powers evoked manifest through
metaphorical forms and symbolic images, which themselves may
require interpretation by a knowledgeable facilitator.
The second stage of a psychotherapeutic healing journey is
really a return to origins, to the source of pathology where one
encounters all sorts of negative underworld forces. Yet it is
unknowingly (and to be learned only later, upon retrieval of the
treasure) also a return to the source of power which will fuel the
healing process. This is so because a return to origins is,
archetypally, a descent into the unconscious where one always
finds a confrontation of polarities such as good and bad, weak
and strong. In that confrontation, one is forced to take sides, to
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identify with the good and strong, in which case he or she ends
up transformed, liberated and whole; or to fall irrevocably into
the grip of darkness, in which case he is destroyed. In regression
therapy one returns to the parents’ wrongs and other wounding,
and identifies as a victim; calls on deep inner resources of
outrage to confront the transgressors psychically; and eventually
confronts one’s own self-sabotaging shadows. The final stage of
release, if the journey has been successful, brings a new rebirth
of optimism, invigoration, and confidence – the restoration of the
collective belief in tribal traditions and a “triumph of the human
spirit.”
And so the hero’s mission is to explore the dragons and trolls
and monsters, and the princesses and wizards, that are
encountered along the journey, and to finally discover that,
having met them, they are me. “Psychologically, the dragon is
one’s own binding of oneself to one’s ego. We’re captured in our
own dragon cage. . . . The ultimate dragon is within you, it is
your ego clamping you down.”109
John Beebe, a Jungian analyst, writes about subpersonality
complexes: “the psyche consists of different centers of agency
and identity capable of entering into meaningful relations with
each other.”110 Jung’s study of Pierre Janet’s ideas of
“simultaneous psychological existences,” and of William James’
concept of a “rivalry and conflict of the different selves,” led to
Jung’s conception of complexes as fragmentary personalities or
splinter psyches, within which there is perception, feeling,
volition and intention, as though a subject were present which
thinks and is goal-directed. The ego is only one complex among
many, and consciousness is a consequence of the ego’s capacity
to appropriate as one’s own and use effectively and freely the
various complexes that already populate one’s existence.111
Without the ego’s self-reflection, the complexes function
automatically and have a compulsive quality.112
These complexes have a tendency to exist in opposed and
conflicting pairs and to operate with an archetypal quality. In
fact, “a complex is a concrete internalization or incarnation of
the archetype.”113 Complexes always contain something like a
conflict—they are either the cause or the effect of a conflict.
First we will take up what Jung considered the fundamental
complexes: persona, ego, shadow, anima/ animus, and mana
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personality. Then we will consider our mythic hero’s journey as
metaphor for the interactions between these intrapsychic forces.
Indeed, James Hillman suggests that we interpret archaic Greek
myth psychologically, seeing the various gods and goddesses,
heroes and heroines as representing these inner complexes.114
The following discussion of Jung’s fundamental complexes persona, ego, shadow, anima/ animus, and mana personality – is
an abbreviated version of that to be found in “Dream Journey: A
New Heart-Centered Therapies Modality” by Hartman and
Zimberoff, 2008.115
Complexes are dissociated parts of the mind holding clusters
of memories together in an unconscious grouping which is
dissociated from the rest of mental functioning and serves
healthy as well as pathological purposes.116 Our complexes are
created to allow us to multi-function, to operate on autopilot, and
to provide cover and deniability to the ego who wishes to appear
innocent. “Jung thought that whatever its roots in previous
experience, neurosis consists of a refusal - or inability - in the
here and now to bear legitimate suffering. Instead this painful
feeling or some representation of it is split off from awareness
and the initial wholeness - the primordial Self - is broken. . . .
This splitting is a normal part of life. Initial wholeness is meant
to be broken, and it becomes pathological or diagnosable as
illness, only when the splitting off of complexes becomes too
wide and deep and the conflict too intense. Then the painful
symptoms may lead to the conflicts of neurosis or to the
shattered ego of psychosis”.117
The ego creates two colleagues along the way of its
development. One is the persona, a projection of all the
acceptable qualities to be displayed to others, a mask to hide
behind and an autopilot to allow effortless social intercourse.
The other is the shadow, a repression of all the qualities to be
hidden from others (and oneself), either because they are
shamefully unacceptable or they are unattainably out-of-reach.
The shadow also provides a convenient actor to “do the dirty
work” for the ego, who can then maintain the hero’s blameless
self-image: “the shadow made me do it.”
In order to deal successfully with the shadow, and reach the
second stage of individuation, we must face and resolve two
seductive options. First, because it is considered either
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unacceptable or unattainable, we may want to disown our
shadow by projecting it onto other people. Creating a scapegoat
to carry the blame for our own self-sabotaging aspects only
delays our confronting the clear messages about what we need to
change in ourselves to grow and heal. The second temptation to
be resisted is that of suppressing the shadow, which means
putting it back into the cellars of the unconscious and locking the
doors on it. Jung said, “Mere suppression of the Shadow is as
little a remedy as beheading would be for a headache.”
Acknowledging the existence of the shadow is a good beginning,
but only the beginning. “If the encounter with the shadow is the
‘apprentice-piece’ in the individual’s development, then that
with the anima is the master-piece’.”118
An elaborate dynamic exists between the ego, persona, and
shadow. The ego believes itself to be master of the others, and
that is the grand illusion. To be sure, the ego has fashioned the
persona as a social mask, a convenience behind which to hide.
And the ego also creates shadows through judgment, shame and
repression. But shadow is an active player with a mind of its
own, and a proclivity toward the depths, darkness, the lure of the
netherworld. “Shadow, then, in psychology is not only that
which the ego casts behind, made by the ego out of its light, a
moral or repressed or evil reflection to be integrated. Shadow is
the very stuff of the soul, the interior darkness that pulls
downward out of life and keeps one in relentless connection with
the underworld.”119 Shadow provides the link between worlds,
the seedy part of town that we must traverse in order to reach the
outskirts on the way to leaving town altogether. Shadow, the
active player, directs itself also toward uptown, toward the ego/
persona collaboration, “literalizing an ego in front of it and
behind which it can remain hidden.”120 Just as the ego creates
and uses the persona as a shield against the world, so the shadow
creates and uses the ego as a shield behind which to hide.
And that is the ego’s grand illusion. Far from being master
of the others, ego is propped up by them, pulled in different
directions by them, and the foil behind which both persona and
shadow hide.
The second stage of the individuation process means
encountering what Jung calls the ‘soul-image’, the archetypal
images of the contrasex. For a man this is the ‘anima’, the
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feminine aspects of a male psyche; for example, gentleness,
tenderness, patience, receptivity, closeness to nature, readiness to
forgive, but also moodiness, possessiveness, vanity. For a
woman, the ‘soul-image’ is the ‘animus’, the male side of a
female psyche; assertiveness, the will to control and take charge,
to build, to lead, a fighting spirit, but also aggression, selfabsorption, manipulation.
“If the image of the shadow instills fear and dread, the image
of the anima/us usually brings excitement and stimulates desire
for union. It engenders attraction. Where there is anima/us, we
want to go, we want to be a part of it, we want to join it, if we
are not too timid or afraid of adventure. The charismatic charge
that electrifies an audience when a great orator casts his spell
enlists the anima/us and constellates its presence.”121
When the anima or animus has not yet been distinguished
from the shadow, the same two seductions lure us away from
integration: projection and suppression. In this case, the male
may be tempted, through fear and neglect of his own femininity,
to repress the feminine in himself, but also to project his
idealized or pathological conceptions of femininity onto the
females in his life. If his unconscious conception is fearful,
castrating, or engulfing, the man may suppress those females in
his life, keeping them subordinate and powerless. If the
unconscious conception he projects is idealized as sexy (femme
fatale) or chaste (mother), he may create unrealistic demands on
the females in his life. If, instead of projecting his own soulimage onto members of the opposite sex, the man acknowledges
and becomes acquainted with it, he expands into a balanced
expression of his total human potential.
The female, too, can project or suppress her own soul-image.
She may suppress her own masculine and express the figure of
the damsel in distress, or the seductive nymph. And surely she
will attract a man whose anima leads him to rescue every damsel
in distress, or a man whose anima compels him to succumb to
the nymph’s guile and lose himself to her powers. Jacoby122
suggests that “in using the term animus Jung tried to give an
appropriate name to an autonomous Logos principle operating
out of a woman’s unconscious. This autonomous, unconscious
Logos may manifest itself in a creative spiritual or intellectual
quality, or in bold initiative and energy. But it may also show
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itself in an overly critical attitude toward one’s surroundings and
a compulsive need to indulge in destructive self-criticism.”123
When the anima or animus structure has been denied or
projected, it is undeveloped and inadequate to do its job when
called upon. Men will then typically look for a woman to help
them manage their emotions, and women will typically find a
man who can receive their inspired thoughts and do something
with them, manifest them into the world.
“The natural function of the animus (as well as of the anima)
is to remain in place between individual consciousness and the
collective unconscious; exactly as the persona is a sort of stratum
between the ego-consciousness and the objects of the external
world. The animus and the anima should function as a bridge, or
a door, leading to the images of the collective unconscious, as
the persona should be a sort of bridge into the world.”124
The soul-image is a mediator, a go-between who establishes
communication between the conscious persona and ego and the
unconscious soma and self. When allowed to, the soul-image
reconciles the two realms.
So it is with the engagement between ego and anima/us. This is the work
of raising consciousness, of becoming aware of projections, of challenging our
most romantic and carefully guarded illusions. To have an
Auseinandersetzung (German word that means literally “taking something to
pieces”) with the anima/us is to dismember the illusory world of unconscious
fantasy. It is also to allow oneself to experience most profoundly the heights
and depths of one’s own mental universe, the unconscious assumptions that
keep us salivating for more when we are already overfed, that keep us lusting
although we should have long since been satisfied, that drive us to repeat
endlessly the emotionally engorged patterns in our iron chain of stimulusresponse sequences.125
“What we can discover about them [anima and animus] from
the conscious side is so slight as to be almost imperceptible. It is
only when we throw light into the dark depths of the psyche and
explore the strange and tortuous paths of human fate that it
gradually becomes clear to us how immense is the influence
wielded by these two factors that complement our conscious
life.”126
Mario Jacoby warns that it is self-delusion to believe that
“one need only plunge into the mythic depths and existence
would be transfigured into a kind of Paradise – psychic deep-sea
diving, as it were.”127 But the bridge across which
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communication between the conscious and the unconscious
occurs is a two-way bridge. To reconcile the two realms, they
must first be intermingled, which is as difficult as mixing oil and
water.
So let us not imagine anima bridging and mediating inward only as a
sibylline benefactrice, teaching us about all the things we did not know, the
girl guide whose hand we hold. This is a one-way trip, and there is another
direction to her movement. She would also ‘unleash forces’ of the collective
unconscious, for across her bridge roll fantasies, projections, emotions that
make a person’s consciousness unconscious and collective. . . . As mediatrix
to the eternally unknowable she is the bridge both over the river into the trees
and into the sludge and quicksand, making the known ever more unknown. . .
. She mystifies, produces sphinxlike riddles, prefers the cryptic and occult
where she can remain hidden: she insists upon uncertainty. By leading
whatever is known from off its solid footing, she carries every question into
deeper waters, which is also a way of soul-making.
Anima consciousness clings to unconsciousness, as the nymphs adhere
to their dense wooden trees and the echoes cannot leave their caves.128
Stage three of individuation is the fruition of the
reconciliation between conscious and unconscious, in which
one’s journey through the underworld has succeeded. The
treasures of intuitive powers and wisdom that reside in the
depths of our psyche are brought back to conscious, everyday
life. This is recognized and honored as wisdom that is not
directly accessible to intellect, but can only come from the
unconscious. Man meets the Wise Old Man and woman meets
the Great Mother. Jung calls them ‘mana personalities’, because
in primitive communities anyone with extraordinary power or
wisdom was said to be filled with ‘mana’ (a Polynesian word
meaning ‘holiness’ or ‘the divine’). Jung took the term from his
contemporary, Marcel Mauss, an anthropologist, who explained
mana in this picturesque way:
mana may be communicated from a harvest stone to other stones through
contact… It may be heard and seen, leaving objects where it has dwelt. Mana
makes a noise in the leaves, flies away like a cloud or flame… there is mana
to make people wealthy and mana used to kill… Mana is the magicians’
force… Mana is the power of a rite… Mana… causes the net to bring in a
good catch, makes the house solid and keeps the canoe sailing smoothly… On
an arrow it is the substance which kills… It is the object of a reverence which
may amount to a taboo… It is a kind of aether, imponderable, communicable
which spreads of its own accord… It is a kind of internal, special world where
everything happens as if mana alone were involved.129
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If the ego over-identifies and becomes ‘possessed’ by these
‘mana’ personalities, it can result in ego inflation and arrogance.
If the ego disowns and projects these mana personalities onto
someone else, it can lead to idolizing that person and following
blindly. When properly integrated, the conscious and
unconscious complement each other and unfolding of the wise
self arises harmoniously with healthy ego transcendence. After
all, individuation is the attainment of a personality at midpoint
between the ego consciousness and the unconscious.130
Jung speaks of stage three as the second liberation from the
mother (the first liberation from mother being stage two, when
anima or animus is integrated into conscious life). This second
and fuller liberation means achieving a genuine sense of one’s
true individuality. This is the liberation from the mother, the
Great Mother, the Terrible Mother, that both Psyche and Eros
finally achieved.
The fourth stage of individuation deals with the Self, which
is both “guide” of the process of individuation, the unconscious
regulating center of the personality, and “goal” of the process of
individuation, the symbol derived from the deepest levels of the
collective unconscious of realization of all potential. Because of
its unconscious, transpersonal nature, the Self can never be truly
integrated by the ego. Instead, the ego must learn to surrender its
need to always be in control by recognizing the value of the
Self’s guidance and deferring to its superior wisdom, without
either projecting it onto others (idolizing), over-identifying with
it (arrogance), or becoming overpowered by it (annihilation).
The ego, Jung says, is the center of the conscious, and if it
tries to add unconscious contents to itself (i.e. collective
contents, not the personal unconscious or shadow which does
belong to the ego) it is in danger of destruction, like an
overloaded vessel which sinks under the strain.131 The self,
however, is the function which unites all the opposing elements
within, and thus can include both the conscious and the
unconscious, good and bad, male and female, and a unity of all
four functions of thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. The
self appears to act as something like a magnet to the disparate
elements of the personality and the processes of the unconscious,
requiring the anima/ animus, the soul-image, as a mediator and
go-between since the ego cannot do so.
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“So the realization of what Jung is speaking of . . . is
reserved for the few individuals with the kind of subtle
psychological discernment that pertains to Kundalini masters and
others like them. For the rest, the anima/us is Maya, the creator
of illusions, the mystifier, the trickster, the ever-receding mirage
of the eternal beloved.”132 There is always a part of our selves
that will forever elude us and be outside our will. So powerful is
the anima/ animus that it has the ability to completely enchant us
and make us believe what the ego believes (positive or negative).
Or the anima/ animus can become our guides to the unknown,
the mediators of the deep unconscious. Since they lurk around
our undeveloped parts, they are our guides to what we don’t
know about ourselves and lead us along the path of wholeness.
Since they are connected to deeper layers of the unconscious,
they can also be the mediators of our journey towards the Self.
The anima and animus are each unique influences, however, that
manifest differently in our lives.
An exciting observation is that “by paying careful attention
to the motifs of archetypal appearances within their dreams,
individuals should be able to estimate which stage in the process
of individuation they have reached.”133 In other words, we can
assess our current location on our hero’s journey by the dragons,
guides, gods, and fellow journeyers that we find ourselves
surrounded by at a given time in our life.
Jung’s view of the psychic configuration between ego,
persona, shadow, and anima is that the ego/ persona is
incomplete and longing for the gift of completion, the shadow is
the gift giver and the anima is the gift.134 The shadow’s function
is to lead the conscious personality to the anima, to serve as a
“bridge” and a mediator between consciousness and the
unconscious.135 The individual’s shadow aspects can only serve
the function of bridge and mediator once they have been openly
recognized and assimilated by the ego. Until then, the shadow
stands between the ego and the anima, producing “an isolating
layer of personal unconscious”,136 a literal shadow that hides the
anima.137 Until then, the anima may be indistinguishable from
the shadow because they are contaminated with each other. In
this psychic situation, the masculine shadow takes on feminine
characteristics, while the feminine anima takes on masculine
characteristics. Likewise for a woman, the feminine shadow
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takes on masculine characteristics, while the masculine animus
takes on feminine characteristics.
Here we begin to see the symbolism in humanity’s great
myths of the dramas being played out between ego, persona,
shadow, and anima/ animus. In our mythic stories, the one who
stands between the hero and the treasure often mysteriously
becomes, in fact, the gift giver; obstructing dragon guardian
transforms into knowledgeable guide. What is at first feared
becomes revered. There are other possible outcomes, however,
in the encounter with the monstrous guardian. One is that the
dragon consumes the hero. Jung cautions repeatedly that the
assimilation of unconscious contents by the ego, necessary
though it is for mature individuation, carries with it a very real
danger. It may go too far: “a liberated unconscious can thrust the
ego aside and overwhelm it”,138 an unmitigated psychic disaster
that Jung equates symbolically with being “devoured by the
monster”.139
Another possible outcome of the assimilation of unconscious
contents is that the hero kills and consumes the dragon,
becoming overconfident, arrogant, and lost. The guardian,
destroyed through the hero’s belief that he has become the
guardian, is no longer available to provide its essential service as
gift giver to the hero. Who now can give directions to
circumventing the remaining obstacles and finding the treasure?
This overreaching of the ego leads to a “psychic inflation,” or the
“state of being puffed up”.140 The conscious ego, or worse yet
the unconscious persona, has identified itself to be the totality,
what Jung calls the Self. Thus “the great psychic danger which is
always connected with individuation, or the development of the
self, lies in the identification of ego-consciousness with the self.
This produces an inflation which threatens consciousness with
dissolution”.141 He sees this inflation as an almost literal blowing
up, the personality likened to an overinflated balloon that bursts.
The personality comes apart, breaks into pieces, when the
conscious personality “takes too many unconscious contents
upon itself.” The ego needs a bridge to approach the
unfathomable totality that is “bright and dark and yet neither”.142
The ego is not that bridge, even less is it that totality. The hero in
our mythic tales is usually humbled into recognizing this truth
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that he/she needs guidance and direction and protection and
mediation in order to survive, let alone find the treasured gift.
In Homeric terms, the hero faces his own Scylla and
Charybdis, a crucial choice between two forms of certain loss; in
Jungian terms, the shadow first comes between the ego and the
persona, and then between the ego and anima/ animus, also
presenting crucial choices. In the first case, the ego must face the
loss of an idealized personality: either that or hang onto denial of
reality and face the loss of the potential to grow into an expanded
self. To cling to the persona’s roles and self-beliefs and
entitlements, denying the reality of one’s shadow parts, is
ultimately to stunt the individual’s psychic growth. In the
subsequent case of shadow standing between the ego and anima/
animus, the choice is equally profound but more difficult
because it is more subterranean. Confronting the persona is
easier because it is the conscious ego’s own creation, and the
extent of what can be lost is convenience, comfort, and station in
life.
Openly confronting the anima/ animus, without the
protection of the shadow standing between, requires journeying
into the underworld of sexuality and relationship with parental
figures. The mother is, after all, the “first incarnation of the
anima archetype”143 and, Jung says, “the numinous qualities
which make the mother-imago so dangerously powerful derive
from the collective archetype of the anima, which is incarnated
anew in every male child.”144 The hero must separate from her,
and separate her from shadow contamination, in order to proceed
on the journey and find and claim the treasured gift of selfrealization. Now the Scylla and Charybdis crucial choice is the
loss of the original anima: “the relation to the mother must cease,
must die, which itself almost causes man’s death” (Jung’s
emphasis). Either that or lose the promise of eventual
reconciliation with one’s own anima, and expansion into a
transfigured hero self returning home carrying the treasured
prize.
The progression, then, is from confronting the persona to
acknowledging the shadow to approaching the anima/ animus.
The shadow stands between ego and persona, then pivots to
stand between ego and anima. And a crucial initiation must be
passed: before reconciliation with anima, the male must flee
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from identification with mother’s world to identify with father’s
world; before reconciliation with animus, the female must
identify as an equal with mother’s world and accept the
exclusion from father’s world, recognizing that she has now
entered the reproductive phase of her life, with access to a sacred
realm of experience that man can never know. In many cultures
the task of awakening this new feminine consciousness falls to
the initiated male; for example, the myths in which the heroine
lies inert, the Sleeping Beauty, till a prince comes to awaken her
with a kiss (awakening his own anima in the process).145
The archetypal tasks of childhood, adolescence and initiation
into adulthood for male and female are symbolized in the hero
myths. For males, these tell how the hero leaves home and is
subjected to a series of tests and trials, culminating in the
‘supreme ordeal’ of a fight with a dragon or a sea monster. The
hero’s triumph is rewarded with the ‘treasure hard to attain’, i.e.
the throne of a kingdom and a beautiful princess as a bride. To
achieve all this and to win a bride, he must overcome the power
of the mother complex still operative in his unconscious (the
fight with the dragon). This amounts to a second and final
severing of the psychic umbilical cord: “victory over the dragonmonster often involves the hero being swallowed into its belly
from which he cuts his way out in a kind of auto-Caesarian
section: as a result, he ‘dies’ as his mother’s son and is ‘reborn’
as a man worthy of the princess and the kingdom. . . . Failure to
pass the ordeals of initiation or to overcome the monster signifies
failure to get free of the mother: then the princess (the anima) is
never liberated from the monster’s clutches. She remains trapped
and inert in the unconscious in the custody of the mother
complex.”146 Jung identifies the dragon as the Terrible Mother,147
who guards the “incomparable treasure” of the son’s libido, so
that the son is forced to do battle with the mother dragon to gain
this “source of life and power”.148
Separating from the mother and acculturating to a new life
and role within the greater community is a central focus of
development in the transition from childhood to adulthood. This
is largely a process of the growth and stabilization of
consciousness, and the activation of the unconscious which is
“literally turned ‘inside out’ through the natural processes of
assimilation and projection”.149 The adolescent’s unconscious is
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projecting outward onto new relationships in the world one’s
archetypal mother and father, the anima and animus. These
archetypal forces are actively directing the initiate adult to invest
inordinate energy on the outside world. The adolescent and
young adult is creating a life, an identity of his own, and
progressively adapting to and ultimately mastering the world.
And in the second half of life we face a mirror-image of this
natural process; that is, the overriding tasks are to free oneself
from worldly attachments, to turn consciousness ‘outside in’
through reflection and deep self-observation, and to master the
unseen world of the unconscious. This is the lifespan pattern of
Jung’s individuation process.
Whereas the childhood-to-adulthood transition led to the
development of the ego and to the differentiation of the psychic
system, individuation
brings development of the self and the integration of that system. But,
although the transformation process runs in the opposite direction to the
development which took place during the first half of life, the ego and
consciousness are not disintegrated; on the contrary, there is an expansion of
consciousness brought about by the ego reflecting upon itself. It is as though
the ego were restored to its original position: it emerges from its monomaniac
self-obsession and becomes once again the vehicle of the totality function.
The unconscious activity of the self dominates the whole of life, but it is
only in the second half that this activity becomes conscious. While the ego is
being built up in early childhood there is a gradual centering of consciousness,
with the ego as the representative organ of wholeness. In puberty the
individual, as an ego, feels himself to be the representative of collective
wholeness. . . . Then, with individuation, comes the mastering of the inner
dialectic between the ego and the collective unconscious.
In the integration process the personality goes back along the path it
took during the phase of differentiation. It is now a question of reaching
synthesis between the conscious mind and the psyche as a whole, that is,
between the ego and the self, so that a new wholeness may be constellated.150
This is the hero’s journey: leaving the familiar comfort of
childhood’s inner vision, venturing out into the world of
differentiation and mastery, and then the return to a new
expanded experience of the inner vistas.
Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is
suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, let it at least be a
fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life.
Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself and the chaotic life
of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too - as much
of it as we can stand … This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation
process. As the name shows it is a process or course of development arising
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out of the conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts … How the
harmonising of conscious and unconscious data is to be undertaken cannot be
indicated in the form of a recipe … Out of this union emerge new situations
and new conscious attitudes. I have therefore called the union of opposites
“the transcendent function”. This rounding out of the personality into a whole
may well be the goal of any psychotherapy that claims to be more than a mere
cure of symptoms.151
“Although our culture no longer provides rites of initiation,
there persists in all of us, regardless of gender, an archetypal
need to be initiated. We can deduce this from the dreams of
patients in analysis which become rich in initiatory symbolism at
critical periods of their lives — e.g. at puberty, betrothal,
marriage, childbirth, at divorce or separation, at the death of a
parent or spouse.”152 And that archetypal need to be initiated
helps to explain the ongoing fascination with myth.
In working with complexes, Jung wanted to find an
organized way of sorting out the empirical material that comes
up in an individual’s analytical work, and used the concepts
involved in “psychological type” to do so. Such use of type,
according to Jungian analyst John Beebe, enables one “to see
where a particular complex lives in the psyche.”153 So now we
briefly turn our attention to Jung’s psychology of type.
What Type of Hero Are You?
Jung laid out a theory of personality structure involving not
only the two attitudes of introversion and extraversion previously
introduced, but also four functions of the personality: sensing,
intuiting, thinking, and feeling. Once when asked for definitions
of these four functions of consciousness, Jung told an
interviewer:
there is quite a simple explanation of those terms, and it shows at the same
time how I arrived at such a typology. Sensation tells you that there is
something. Thinking, roughly speaking, tells you what it is. Feeling tells you
whether it is agreeable or not, to be accepted or rejected. And intuition . . . is a
perception via the unconscious.154
Jung recognized these four functions as two pairs of
opposites: sensation and intuition (perceiving), which he called
irrational; and thinking and feeling (judging or evaluating),
which he called rational.
People perceive their world and adapt to it differently. Some
(about 75%) prefer sensing their environment, taking in
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information through their five senses. Others (about 25%) prefer
to include multiple possibilities and meanings of that information
in their perception of their world: intuiting. Sensors are practical
and down to earth and tend to want details, while intuitors are
more abstract and prefer a vision of the “big picture.”
People make decisions differently, too. Some people (50%
of men and 25% of women) use the thinking function: they
analyze the available data, think carefully about consequences of
the decision, and want to know “why” about everything. Others
(50% of men and 75% of women) use the feeling function
predominantly: they use subjective data to make decisions, such
as personal preferences, values, memory associations and other
people’s opinions, and to them everything is personal.
People tend to live their outer life by either judging (with
either thinking or feeling being predominant) or perceiving (with
either sensing or intuiting predominant). Judgers tend to be
organized, orderly, and want to make decisions quickly.
Perceivers tend to be messy and tend toward “going with the
flow,” postponing making decisions.
Approximately 70% of the American population is sensing
and 30% intuitive. More men (as many as two-thirds) than
women prefer the thinking function and more women (as many
as two-thirds) than men prefer the feeling function. And
approximately 55 to 60 percent of the American population
prefers judgment, and 40 to 45 percent prefer perception.155
For each person one of these functions becomes dominant,
two become auxiliary, and the one opposite to the dominant one
becomes inferior. The dominant function is the most developed
and most familiar way of being. That function becomes for that
person strong and effective, and Jung labeled it dominant or
superior. Jung noticed that whichever of the four functions was
dominant for a given individual, he/ she would identify
themselves as that, and associate it as the archetype of the
hero.156 Thinkers might visualize the hero to be someone
objective and systematic in pursuing the journey, such as
Sherlock Holmes. Feelers might relate to the hero as someone
intensely personal and relationship-oriented on his journey, such
as Odysseus. Sensors may feel that the hero is observant, detailoriented, and practical on the journey, such as Psyche. And
intuitors might imagine that the hero in his journey relies on an
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inner guidance and is focused on a panoramic view of unlimited
possibilities, such as Mahatma Gandhi.
People also have a second-most developed function, the one
from the other pair of functions that works the best for them. If
their dominant function is judging (thinking or feeling), then
their auxiliary function will be perceiving (either sensing or
intuiting), and vice versa. The biggest challenge for most people
is the function that lies opposite the dominant one, so that for
thinkers the inferior function is feeling; for feelers, it is thinking;
for sensors, it is intuiting; and for intuitors, it is sensing. That
inferior function is repressed and is experienced as “other” (and
is therefore usually projected onto others as despised). Further, if
the dominant function is expressed as extraverted, the inferior
function will be introverted, and vice versa.
The complex representing the inferior function is
undeveloped and remains entangled in the collective. That part
of oneself is trapped in arrested development, and its
relationships reflect archetypes rather than individuals. It then
attempts to compensate through either projecting the deficiency
onto others and blaming, judging or controlling them, or turning
that same blame, judgment or control onto oneself and splitting
that part off from the remaining ego personality. In either case,
the inferior function is “eruptive in character, so that normally it
is not in the picture at all, and then all of a sudden it quite
possesses him”,157 much as what Jung calls an autonomous
complex. That choice is dictated largely by one’s attitude: the
extravert focusing on the other, the introvert focusing on himself.
dominant function
Auxiliary
(complementary)
function
Tertiary
(complementary)
function
Inferior (repressed) function
Figure 1. The Four Functions of the Personality
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67
The inferior function is the most autonomous: “outside the
control of the conscious mind”,158 and likely to appear suddenly
and unexpectedly, and to be most unwelcome. This complex is
inferior only in the sense that “something discordant,
unassimilated, and antagonistic exists, perhaps as an obstacle,
but also as an incentive to greater effort, and so, perhaps, to new
possibilities of achievement.”159 The inferior function serves as a
portal or entry into the unconscious because it is the product of
repression. And this is precisely the quality of the guardian at
each threshold on the hero’s journey. Look at the obstacles put in
the way of any hero’s progress on their journey, and see their
own inferior function at work.
The less heroic aspects of ourselves, the dragons and
saboteurs and guardians who live in the shadows, are associated
with the inferior function by the ego.
The inferior function is the door through which all the figures of the
unconscious come into consciousness. Our conscious realm is like a room
with four doors, and it is the fourth door by which the Shadow, the Animus or
the Anima, and the personification of the Self come in. . . . when one becomes
somewhat conscious of the shadow, the inferior function will give the animus
or the anima figure a special quality so that, if personified by a human being,
the anima or animus will very often appear as a person of the opposite
function.160
Jung saw individuation, the unfoldment of consciousness
and blossoming of the soul, to be intricately related to the
progressive emergence of the psychological types.161 Bringing
the repressed and unconscious inferior function into
consciousness brings healing and an expanded capacity for
development.
The Hero’s Journey as climbing the ladder of ego development
“Myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your
perfection, the fullness of your strength, and the bringing of solar
light into the world”162
There is an innate tendency for the human being to unfold
and develop his mental and spiritual potentials. “Long ago, Plato
spoke of Eros and Tibetan Buddhism of the self-liberating nature
of mind. More recent recognitions include neuroanatomist Kurt
Goldstein’s actualization, Karen Horney’s self-realization, Carl
Rogers’s formative tendency, Carl Jung’s individuation urge,
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Abraham Maslow’s self-actualization and self-transcendence,
Erik Erikson’s self-perfectibility, philosopher Ken Wilber’s eros,
and Aldous Huxley’s moksha drive.”163 The Hero’s Journey is a
recounting of the steps taken in that unfoldment, a map for those
who seek to develop to their full potential.
What do we know about the qualities of experiences that
lead to such development? Transition to a higher stage of
development occurs in response to life experiences that are
structurally disequilibrating, personally salient, emotionally
engaging, and interpersonal.164 To be growth producing,
experiences for the Hero along the journey must disturb the
status quo in relation to existing ego structures. Some heroes
begin their journey at a higher level of ego function than others;
the challenges to ego must be commensurate with their
beginning level. Of course, as we have seen, the hero is almost
always motivated to journey in the first place in order to achieve
a higher level of being.
Jane Loevinger165 noted that only when the environment fails
to conform to the person’s expectations is there potential for
growth. She referred to “pacers” as complex interpersonal
situations that might pull an individual to a higher level of ego
functioning. “When we are faced with difficult life
circumstances, we have the opportunity to develop the
complexity of our perspectives. . . . Difficult life circumstances
may be seen as opportunities to grow.”166 Loevinger postulated a
series of sequential stages of ego development (see Table 1), and
developed a reliable assessment instrument for measuring an
individual’s current predominant stage, what we might call their
center of gravity. Many people have about 25% of their scores at
the level below their center of gravity, reflecting areas they are
lagging behind in and consolidating into the center of gravity.
Additionally, they generally have about 25% of their answers at
the level above their center of gravity, reflecting their growing
edge.167
Table 1 on the following page summarizes Loevinger’s
sequential stages of ego development.
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
69
Presocial and Symbiotic (E1) Exclusive focus on gratification of immediate needs;
strong attachment to mother, and differentiating her from the rest of the environment, but
not her/himself from mother; preverbal, hence inaccessible to assessment via the sentence
completion method.
Impulsive (E2) Demanding; impulsive; conceptually confused; concerned with bodily
feelings, especially sexual and aggressive; no sense of psychological causation;
dependent; good and bad seen in terms of how it affects the self; dichotomous good/bad,
nice/mean.
Self-Protective (E3) Wary; complaining; exploitive; hedonistic; preoccupied with staying
out of trouble, not getting caught; learning about rules and self control; externalizing
blame.
Conformist (E4) Conventional; moralistic; sentimental; rule-bound; stereotyped; need
for belonging; superficial niceness; behavior of self and others seen in terms of externals;
feelings only understood at banal level; conceptually simple, “black and white” thinking.
Self-Aware (E5) Increased, although still limited, self-awareness and appreciation of
multiple possibilities in situations; self-critical; emerging rudimentary awareness of inner
feelings of self and others; banal level reflections on life issues: God, death, relationships,
health.
Conscientious (E6) Self evaluated standards; reflective; responsible; empathic; long term
goals and ideals; true conceptual complexity displayed and perceived; can see the broader
perspective and can discern patterns; principled morality; rich and differentiated inner
life; mutuality in relationships; self critical; values achievement.
Individualistic (E7) Heightened sense of individuality; concern about emotional
dependence; tolerant of self and others; incipient awareness of inner conflicts and
personal paradoxes, without a sense of resolution or integration; values relationships over
achievement; vivid and unique way of expressing self.
Autonomous (E8) Capacity to face and cope with inner conflicts; high tolerance for
ambiguity and can see conflict as an expression of the multifaceted nature of people and
life in general; respectful of the autonomy of the self and others; relationships seen as
interdependent rather than dependent/ independent; concerned with self-actualization;
recognizes the systemic nature of relationships; cherishes individuality and uniqueness;
vivid expression of feelings.
Integrated (E9) Wise; broadly empathic; full sense of identity; able to reconcile inner
conflicts, and integrate paradoxes. Similar to Maslow’s description of the “selfactualized” person, who is growth motivated, seeking to actualize potential capacities, to
understand her/his intrinsic nature, and to achieve integration and synergy within the self
(Maslow, 1962).
From Manners, J., & Durkin, K. (2001). A critical review of the validity of ego
development theory and its measurement. Journal of Personality Assessment, 77(3), 541567, page 544.
Note (Manners & Durkin). Adapted from Hy and Loevinger, 1996; Loevinger, 1976;
Loevinger and Wessler, 1970; Loevinger, Wessler, and Redmore, 1970.
Table 1 - Loevinger’s Stages of Ego Development
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Recent research has begun to address the question of
whether it is possible to nurture ego development, and if so how?
One of the leading researchers in the field, William R. Torbert,
discusses his point of view168:
Do people who are Achievers, for example, become Individualists? Do
Individualists become Strategists, and so forth? . . . In the general populations
that we’ve measured the modal stage is the Expert stage. This implies that for
most people most development stops after high school. Most people never do
make another developmental transformation. . . . I do think it is tremendously
helpful to become familiar with this theory, because it does lay out some of
the markings of a path that seems to be consistent across religious traditions
and so forth. There is a path and knowing a little bit about it helps. But then,
you know you can’t just read books and you can’t just go to groups and talk
about it. You have to engage in first person and second person research. You
have to get engaged in some kind of personal discipline: meditative, martial
arts. You have to get engaged in some kind of second person discipline where
it really counts -- some kind of dialogue or team that’s really trying to do
something, where there are real problems and you have to try to bring your
first person research, your meditation or martial art, to the second person
setting. You have to be trying to do the three types of research, first, second
and third person, subjective, intersubjective, and objective research. You have
to be trying to do them. Not everybody does it by being a social scientist
obviously. Some people do them through the crafts and the arts, dancing and
theater.
There is a path, or rather many paths, and they seem to be
very consistently prescribed by wisdom traditions across cultures
and history. The three basic elements needed for
transformational work are summarized by Sanchez and Vieira169
• presence (awareness, mindfulness)
• the practice of self-observation, gained from selfknowledge
• understanding what one’s experiences mean (an accurate
interpretation provided by a larger context such as a
community, a teacher, or a spiritual system).
Distilled from wisdom traditions across cultures and history,
these elements are operationalized as engagement in some kind
of personal awareness discipline, and a mutually committed
engagement with a like-minded group dedicated to a challenging
task.170 Challenge, or disequilibrium, is necessary for most
people to leave the familiarity of the known to adventure into the
realm of new possibilities. “Without an adversary we are
nothing.”171 And without an adversary, the Hero cannot be called
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
71
to her highest level of advancement. That adversary may take the
form of dragons or trolls, jealous sisters or the Terrible Mother,
impossible tasks or the specter of death itself. In any case, the
Hero knows somewhere deep down inside that the challenges
presented are necessary to growth, and that leaving the ordinary
world behind is necessary to discover these existential
challenges.
In the ordinary world, our daily routine conscious world, our
earthly personal existence, “the self is asleep and the ego is
awake.”172 We are entangled in the roots of our personal lives, of
the ever-demanding ego identities. “As long as the ego is
identified with consciousness, it is caught up in this world . . .
Only when we have become acquainted with the wide extent of
the psyche, and no longer remain inside the confines of the
conscious alone, can we know that our consciousness is
entangled.”173 It is almost the case that you can’t get there from
here: one must escape the confinement of limited thinking in
order to realize how limiting it has been. Challenge or
disequilibrium provides the nudge, and guides of some kind
provide the larger context.
In Susanne Cook-Greuter’s174 perspective, people reach the
conventional ‘‘adult’’ worldview by growing through the
preconventional and conventional stages, up to the Conscientious
stage, which is the highest of the conventional stages in ego
development theory. Because it represents the culturally welleducated norm, it acts as a kind of ceiling barrier. Moving
beyond it is difficult because it represents the frame of mind that
is most attached to rationality and ordinary reality and most
defended against the nonrational. The major limitation of the
conventional mind set is its acceptance of appearance as fact and
the external world as real, and its blindness to the arbitrary
nature of beliefs, especially the grand myth of conventional
science as infallible. Cook-Greuter’s work documents that at
least 80% of our culture’s population does not, in fact, move
beyond the conventional tier of development.
Advancement to levels of development beyond the
conventional involves results in these observable structural
changes: greater abstraction of thought, greater inclusiveness and
greater self-awareness; integration and incorporation of
predecessor levels of development; and broader equilibrium and
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greater wisdom, i.e., integrating affect with cognition, internal
self processes, and self with environment; an ego that interprets
the self in more interdependent, long-term, abstract, and internal
terms175; emotional expressions that are guided more by an
internal gyroscope than by fleeting circumstances, a more
positive view of self and humanity, better able to integrate
dichotomies, awareness more stabilized in the here and now, and
more adaptive response to both internal and external
challenges.176
David Orme-Johnson177 summarizes:
experiences of higher stages of consciousness are empirically associated with
a wide range of changes indicative of greater personal fulfillment and
increased adaptability and efficiency in thought and behavior (Alexander et
al., 1987a, 1990, 1994a; Dillbeck & Alexander, 1989). For example, . . .
experiences of higher states are positively correlated with increased cognitive,
perceptual, and motor skills, capacity for absorption and episodes of total
attention, creativity (flexibility, fluency and originality), self-concept (selfactualization, internal locus of control), neurological efficiency (as indicated
by faster spinal neuron recovery rates—H-reflex recovery), long range spatial
ordering of the cerebral cortex (increased alpha and theta EEG coherence),
and decreased symptoms of stress (lower anxiety, aggression, depression,
introversion, and neuroticism) (Alexander et al., 1989a, 1987a).
Little did the Hero know that all this laid in store by
accepting the call and persisting on the journey. Another way of
assessing the changes produced through the Hero’s Journey is to
interpret the psychological development chronicled above as
individuation into terms of consciousness development. That is,
a central key to achieving the state represented by returning from
the journey with the treasure seems to be transcendence of ego
boundaries, an expansion of one’s sense of self that is at the
same time not self-conscious. It is a merging of the I and the Me,
it is both transcendent (incorporating the masculine stretch for
the upper realm) and immanent (incorporated into the manifest
feminine lower realm). The hero becomes more self-reflective
with each new advancement, i.e., the subject of one level
becomes the object of the next. In healthy development, the I of
one stage becomes the me or mine of the next stage, to be
observed and reflected on by the newly expanded I. By contrast,
in unhealthy development, I is converted not to “me,” but rather
to “it;” in other words, I becomes the shadow. When the ego (I)
expands in an unhealthy way, it is what Jung called inflation
(grandiosity). When the hero believes himself to be
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
73
unconquerable, immortal, then he is about to suffer an immense
setback. Remember the occasions of Odysseus’ grandiosity, and
the long delays they created in his eventual return home.
Characters in myths, like elements in our dreams, are a
collaboration of the subject and object, the I and me, the
observer and the observed. “The secret of dreams is that subject
and object are the same.”178 In your dreams, those “myths of the
individual,” the I of the dreamer observes the me of the dreamer,
and yet the I of the dreamer is now a policeman and now a thief,
now a man and now a woman. This perspective is both an
expansion and a dissolving of ego boundaries, and represents the
cultivation of a “Transpersonal Witness.”
It is extremely useful to acknowledge that the ego actually
makes many Me’s179 contained within the “ego realm” or what
Jung called the “ego complex.” Each Me may fall within the
general category of the ego’s personas and shadows. James
Hillman180 describes the process as building the me’s out of
accumulated spare parts from here and there, with the ‘I’
determining whether to reject a given constructed me or not just
as the body’s immune system decides whether to reject an organ
transplant or a skin graft. The ‘me’ is built out of parts from here
and there; e.g., introjects from parents or early authorities, social
and cultural norms. The ‘I’ is an enduring presence with “subject
permanence”181 that ultimately accepts or rejects the imported
parts. The ‘I’ is equivalent to the body’s immune system when
presented with an organ transplant or a skin graft, it has the
capacity to discern what is native essence and what is foreign, to
claim the former and to reject the latter. As ego development
progresses, defining the object me becomes less important and
transcending the object me (immersion in the subject I) becomes
the focus. Recall Abraham Maslow’s182 reference to what he
called self-forgetfulness in moments of peak experience, i.e.,
becoming less dissociated than usual into a self-observing ego
and an experiencing ego.
Higher stages of ego development bring a predictable change
in the relationship between the subject and object and how their
developmental trajectories interrelate. The higher stages bring
what Loevinger183 calls “the consolidation of identity”; as the
ego moves away from traits and personal goals and individual
accomplishments, it moves in the direction of identity.
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Consolidation of identity is a unifying of the I-perspective and
the Me-conceptions; storytelling and living the story are
collapsed into one smooth operation. Bringing the I and Me
together is to construct one’s life and to live it seamlessly,
providing life with unity and purpose amid ambiguity and
conflict.
To trace the development of this perspective through the
Hero’s Journey, we refer to Cook-Greuter’s184 languaging for the
progression, from 1st person perspective to 5th or higher person
perspective. At the lowest levels of development, the ego
perspective is limited to that of the first person. There is no
recognition of the existence of any other point of view than what
I experience in this moment. At the Self-protective and
Conformist stages, an awareness grows of the second person
perspective, i.e., that you may experience and interpret
differently than I do. While this perspective helps to control the
impulsiveness and narcissism of the previous stage, it is usually
exhibited as motivation to “fit in” and is exemplified by grade
school and high school children, and by the hero who is just
beginning her journey.
At the Self-conscious and Conscientious stages, and
consolidated at the Achiever stage, one is able to take a third
person perspective, watching oneself interact with the world.
This worldview serves as the basis for respect and tolerance for
people of other faiths, cultures, and walks of life, and often
begins to emerge in late high school, college, or early adulthood,
and for the hero as she journeys deeper into the land of the
unknown and encounters a wider variety of experiences.
Signifying postconventional development, beginning with a
pluralistic appreciation that there are multiple ways of seeing
reality, the Individualist begins to take a 4th person perspective,
one in which he can actually observe himself observing himself
interacting with the world in the past and present and even in the
future with his possible selves. This is a demonstrable step
toward the Witness state of consciousness. Here one is a
participating observer, and one’s inner process becomes more
interesting and important than the behavioral outcome. Where
the Achiever was focused on causality (by looking into the past)
and goals (by looking into the future), the Individualist is more
fascinated with now, the present. This stage of development is
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
75
represented by the hero who has survived many dangers and
challenges and is now beginning to understand the deeper
psychical implications of the journey itself.
The Strategist, or Autonomous/Integrated stage, takes this
perspective even further, to a 5th person perspective, that of the
developmental process. Here one acknowledges that each of the
previous stages reveals an important truth and has an important
role to play in the human experience. Not only does the hero at
this stage see his own past, present, and future, he adds an
awareness of his own lifespan, the lifetimes of previous and
future generations, and fitting this perspective into the context of
society, other cultures, and historical civilizations. The hero at
the Autonomous stage is now capable of rediscovering and
owning parts of the self which have previously been disowned.
The shadow side of the self can be acknowledged to a greater
degree and therefore a new integration and wholeness is
possible. This acceptance was the catalyst for Psyche’s
triumphant reunion with Eros, and for Odysseus’ long-delayed
return home.
Individuals at the Magician, or Construct-aware stage,
consciously experience the ego’s clever manipulations to
preserve its self-appointed status. It is the first time in
development that the ego has become transparent to itself,
assisting the movement closer to the Ego-transcendent stage. The
regular practice of turning inward and observing one’s own
mental processes can also lead to experiencing the knower and
known momentarily merge, and the personal self-sense
disappear. The hero, having claimed the treasure, is now
homeward bound, humbled, insightful, and wise.
This progression corresponds to the traditional Sufi teaching
of the Three Journeys. In this teaching, the first journey is the
Journey to Presence. The seeker is trying to remember the
Beloved amidst the incessant tidal waves of ego activity and
mental chatter. He is struggling to remember that he can be
present and awake to the mystery that surrounds him. He sees
that his ego seems to forever have other plans and devalues
taking even a moment to find out what is actually the truth
occurring in and within him.
The second journey is the Journey with Presence. At this
stage, Presence is more stabilized as part of the seeker’s ongoing
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sense of herself and of reality. The seeker experiences a
relationship with Presence, much like the relationship with a
lover. Sometimes the relationship is intimate and deeply
satisfying. At other times, the seeker feels more distant or
possibly even frustrated, but still the seeker remains aware that
the Beloved is always near.
The third Journey is the Journey as Presence. At this stage,
the seeker arrives at a true realization of the non-dual nature of
reality and knows that what he is as his deepest identity is the
Presence itself. He understands in a clarity beyond words that he
and the Beloved are one, and always have been. This is the
condition of union mystics speak of and that is possible for
anyone who is willing to undertake the journey into the depths of
one’s own soul. When we do so, we directly experience the
Oneness of Being, the “Transpersonal Witness,” not merely as a
philosophical or spiritual idea, but as a lived reality.185
Ultimately, the hero enters onto journey after journey, and
each new calling offers opportunities to explore higher realms
and develop an expanded self.
The Hero’s Journey as the journey inward for spiritual growth
“The gods . . . are not ends in themselves. Their entertaining
myths transport the mind and spirit, not up to, but past them, into
the yonder void.”186
Myths provide a myriad of models for how to advance
spiritually, individually as well as within the context of a group
or community. One element incorporated into these models is
horizontal affiliation, that is working together with others who
have similar aspirations. Another element is vertical association
in which the hero must seek, find, and follow a guide or teacher,
someone or something at a higher hierarchical level of
development, in order to advance. Both of these factors are
presented in most myths.
Current research has identified several commonalities among
individuals who have experienced spiritual transformations,
including release from chronic negative affect, a change in
priorities and values, an increased capacity and desire for
intimate relationships, and experiences of interconnection.187
Cassandra Vieten and her co-authors identify predictors,
mediators, outcomes, and developmental milestones that appear
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
77
to be common to the process of spiritual transformation. They
define transformation as a “profound shift in our human
experience of consciousness that results in long-lasting shifts in
worldview or ways of being and changes in the general pattern
of the way one experiences and relates to oneself, others, and the
world. Spiritual transformation is transformation that occurs
through spiritual experience or practice.”188 Spiritual
transformation has also been defined as a “radical reorganization
of one’s identity, meaning, and purpose in life.”189
Vieten speaks of transformation as a turning of attention and
a redirecting of intention that shifts the entire landscape and
one’s trajectory through it. Common words used by research
subjects to describe this shift in perspective are “opening,” “a
larger, wider, more inclusive and expanded depth perception,” “a
shift in worldview, assumptions, values, and beliefs,” “a
perception of vastness and being in touch with a larger
consciousness,” and “an expanded awareness.”
Vieten’s respondents reported an expanded worldview and
an alteration of one’s sense of self, often described as radical
widening and deepening of one’s personal identity. Many
respondents described spiritual experiences of awakening to a
witnessing self fundamentally distinct from particular thoughts,
impulses, feelings, or sensations, accompanied by a feeling of
being more real, more genuine, more authentically themselves. A
part of many spiritual experiences involved less sense of a
personal identity and a greater sense of connection to others,
leading to less reactivity and judgmentalness, and a greater sense
of compassion for one’s own and others’ failings.
Other words used to describe this shift in sense of self from a
self-centered perspective to a more communal sense of self: “a
deep connection with all of life,” “feeling aligned with a greater
force,” “a deepening into the self,” “less feeling of fragmentation
and isolation,” “a feeling of not being separate, of being
interconnected,” “a realization that ‘I am part of a consciousness
that is so much bigger’.”
The most common indicator across traditions of a
“transformed” person was a consistent sense of presence, an
authenticity, and a lightness or ease of being, across situations.
Other words used commonly to describe a transformed person
were: childlike, simple, transparent, loving, wise, compassionate,
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patient, tolerant, forgiving, collaborative, mindful, solid, real,
whole and possessing the qualities of equanimity, integrity,
peace of mind, generosity and a deep acceptance of self and
others as they are. Others characterized this state of being by
what was not present – not ego-driven, ostentatious,
achievement-oriented, narcissistic, not hiding anything, and not
necessarily perfect or having everything worked out, but bearing
difficulties and failings with grace and humor.
One enduring outcome commonly reported was the presence
of an observing or witnessing self, described as a heightened
awareness, detachment, or mindfulness, of one’s experience,
regardless of the content. Another commonly reported outcome
that remained present in times of difficulty was an increased
ability to stay open, to allow, to not attempt to avoid, contract,
resist or harden in response to painful experience. An increased
capacity for acceptance and compassion toward self and others
in times of conflict was also a theme. An overarching theme was
less reactivity to painful experience and a greater self-efficacy
for coping.
Direct subjective experience is an essential element of
spiritual transformation. Such noetic understanding often
stimulates a shifted worldview, without need for objective
confirmation. This certainty without need for confirmation is
differentiated from dogmatism or fundamentalism by an
accompanying sense of inclusiveness and tolerance for other
worldviews – an increased capacity to hold complexities.
One essential milestone commonly described in the
transformative process was the movement from “I to We.” This
was described as a sort of spiritual watershed, prior to which one
can remain stuck in what has been termed “pseudoenlightenment,” where spiritual experience and practice is gained
in service to one’s narcissistic needs.
Peak experiences such as moments of insight or epiphany are
often followed by plateaus. Such insights can fade quickly
without the presence of a “scaffolding” for the learning process
to assist with making meaning of the unfamiliar experience, such
as: (1) having a language and cultural context for the experience,
bringing it from unconsciousness to conscious awareness; (2)
having supportive like-minded community, including contact
with more experienced practitioners (also necessary for ego
Hartman & Zimberoff: The Hero’s Journey of Self-transformation
79
development); (3) encountering or intentionally placing daily
reminders of the experience in one’s environment, which in NLP
terms are called anchors; (4) continuing to access similar
teachings; or (5) expressing the insight through art, writing or
other action (using the sensual alpha brain wave state as a bridge
from deep subliminal theta experience to everyday mind beta
experience). The process was inhibited by lack of quiet solitude,
not enough time in nature, staying too busy, and too quickly
returning to contexts apathetic or inimical to transformation.
We see a pattern in which qualities associated with spiritual
transformation are very similar to those associated with higher
stages of ego development, and activities which contribute to
developing and maintaining spiritual transformation are very
similar to those for higher stages of ego development. And in
both cases, they are the basis for the hero’s journey in most of
the enduring myths of humankind.
We have embraced some of the oldest stories known to
humankind, hopefully in a respectful way, as poetic metaphors
presenting roadmaps for how we can best live our lives today.
We end this article by reminding ourselves that it is not
necessarily incompatible to also recognize literal reality in the
contents of these stories. Describing the work of analysis, Carl
Jung wrote: “Together the patient and I address ourselves to the
two million-year-old man that is in all of us. In the last analysis,
most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our
instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us.
And where do we make contact with this old man in us? In our
dreams.”190 Paula Gunn Allen writes of the “living reality of the
Medicine world” and says that stories “connect us to the universe
of medicine . . . the universe that medicine people inhabit. Many
of the stories contained in the oral tradition concern that
universe, detailing its features: its terrain, the physical and
psychical laws by which it operates, the orders and kinds of
beings who dwell there, their ethos, ethics, and politics.”191 She
directly challenges the usual and traditional psychological
interpretations of mythological symbols. She states that myths
are “factual accounts” that “connect with deep levels of being,
not because the figures they tell about are . . . denizens of . . . the
unconscious but because the supernaturals live within the same
environs that humans occupy.”192
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Endnotes
1
Jean Houston in Association for Humanistic Psychology Perspective, 1982.
Herbert Silberer. “Phantasie und Mythos,” in Bernd Nitzschke, ed., Ausgewählte
Schriften Herbert Silberers: Miszellen zu seinem Leben und Werk (Tübingen,
Edition Diskord), 1910, 95–176, p. 118.
3
Mircea Eliade. Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. 1963. New York: Harper &
Row.
4
David Hartman and Diane Zimberoff. Higher Stages of Human Development.
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2008, 11(2), 3-95.
5
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen Series,
Pantheon Books.
6
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Number 1, “The Frog King.”
7
Paul Rebillot. The Call to Adventure: Bringing the Hero’s Journey to Daily Life. 1993.
New York: HarperCollins, p. 15.
8
John L. Giannini. Compass of the Soul: Archetypal Guides to a Fuller Life. 2004.
Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, p. 5.
9
Ann Shearer. On the Making of Myths: Mythology in Training. Journal of Jungian
Theory and Practice, 2004, 6(2), 1-14.
10
Kirk J. Schneider & Rollo M ay. The Psychology of Existence: An Integrative, Clinical
Perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995. Referenced in Daniel B. Pitchford.
The Existentialism of Rollo May: An Influence on Trauma Treatment. Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, 49(4), October 2009, 441-461.
11
Christopher Booker. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: Continuum
International, 2006, p. 227.
12
Stephen Levine. Turning toward the Mystery: A Seeker’s Journey. 2002. New York:
HarperCollins, pp.10-11.
13
Carl Jung. Quoted by Donald M. Mihaloew in “The Ego and the Eternal: Ruminations
on Cosmic Cooperation.” Association for Humanistic Psychology Perspective,
Dec/Jan 2009, p. 14.
14
Donald M. Mihaloew. “The Ego and the Eternal: Ruminations on Cosmic
Cooperation.” Association for Humanistic Psychology Perspective, Dec/Jan 2009,
p. 12.
2
486
15
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Stephen Levine. Turning toward the Mystery: A Seeker’s Journey. 2002. New York:
HarperCollins, p. 22.
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 51.
17
C. A. Meier. Ancient incubation and modern psychotherapy. Analytic Psychology Club
of New York, 1954, 59-74, pp. 70-71.
18
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 59.
19
Ovid. Metamorphoses, I, 504-553 (translated by Frank Justus Miller, the Loeb
Classical Library).
20
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 58.
21
Jane Loevinger. Ego Development. 1976. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
22
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 73.
23
Stephen Levine. Turning toward the Mystery: A Seeker’s Journey. 2002. New York:
HarperCollins, p. 31.
24
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 121.
25
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 84.
26
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 90.
27
Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth, 1988. New York: Doubleday,
p. 146.
28
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 101.
29
Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth, 1988. New York: Doubleday,
p. 51.
30
Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth, 1988. New York: Doubleday,
p. 37.
31
William Harryman. Listening to Raven: The Shadow’s Role as Guide, 2003. Available
online at
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=252&I
temid=40.
32
William Harryman. Listening to Raven: The Shadow’s Role as Guide, 2003. Available
online at
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=252&I
temid=40.
33
William Harryman. Listening to Raven: The Shadow’s Role as Guide, 2003. Available
online at
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=252&I
temid=40.
34
Douglass Price-Williams. Life Dreams: Field Notes on Psi, Synchronicity, and
Shamanism. 2008. Pioneer Imprints, p. 330.
35
Carl Jung. The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious. Part Two, Chapter IV
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36
Carl Jung. Symbols of Transformation. Vol. 5 of Collected Works. 1970. Princeton
University Press.
37
Stephen Levine. Turning toward the Mystery: A Seeker’s Journey. 2002. New York:
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38
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16
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42
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43
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
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44
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
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45
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
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47
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49
Marion Woodman & Elinor Dickson. Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the
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50
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51
James Gollnick. Love and the Soul: Psychological Interpretations of the Eros &
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Otto Rank. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth.
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55
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56
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57
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
Series, Pantheon Books, p. 193.
58
Donald Sandner. Navajo Symbols of Healing. 1979. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovitch.
59
K. Spencer. Mythology and Values: An Analysis of Navajo Chantway Myths. 1957.
Philadelphia : American Folklore Society.
60
Martin D. Topper & G. Mark Schoepfle. Becoming a Medicine Man: A Means to
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61
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
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62
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949. New York: Bollingen
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