The Hero's Journey through a Complete Psychoanalysis

Obama as Jedi KnightThe more I delve into Joseph Campbell's outline of the Hero's Journey, the more amazed I am at how psychoanalysis is more a story about a journey than anything to do with a medical procedure. We can take a blood sample and determine all types of things at a medical level. But we can't determine self-esteem, connectedness, or emotional freedom in this way. It always comes back to a narrative, a story about oneself. At a conference I attended recently, "Focus on Emotion," it was reported that one of the best determinants of good parenting was the mother's ability to tell a coherent story about herself. I think that's a wonderful definition of our project in therapy — to develop a coherent story about oneself. So I am planning here to investigate what a complete psychotherapy / psychoanalysis might look like from the perspective of the Hero's Journey. Here's the outline, per Campbell:

Departure and Separation

• World of the Common Day
• The Call to Adventure
• Refusal of the Call
• Supernatural Aid
• Crossing the First Threshold
• Belly of the Whale

Descent, Initiation, Penetration

• Road of Trials
• Meeting with the Goddess
• Woman as Temptress
• Atonement with the Father
• Apotheosis
• The Ultimate Boon

Return

• Refusal of the Return
• The Magic Flight
• Rescue from Within
• Crossing the Threshold
• Return
• Master of the Two Worlds
• Freedom to Live

Would every treatment follow this course? I don't think that is the best way to look at this. I think the outline is more useful as a structure through which to view a life, with different parts of this journey being enacted between client and therapist. It would be too simple to say the client is the hero and the therapist is the Merlin character who pops up every time the hero gets in a jam. It is more likely that the hero will encounter both allies and demons in the person of the therapist, as well as in herself. At least, that would be the mark of a deeper, more psychodynamic or psychoanalytic therapy.

Consider the Call to Adventure. So much of the therapeutic struggle has to do with integrating the desire to stay the same with the desire to be somebody new.  So Luke Skywalker stays on the farm. He knows how to tend to the animals. We are all tending a miserable plot of land on a distant planet in some way. We all know what "good enough" looks like. And then we are constantly facing various calls to adventure. What would make us want to be a Jedi? It may be in the form of boredom, grand invitation, or sheer desperation but something moves us to enter a strange new world. Something makes us agree to become a Jedi knight. Even though we know we may be killed. Perhaps therapy is that strange new world. Or maybe it's grad school, or a committed relationship. Or surrender to something we at least consciously believe we hate. What the Hero's Journey offers us is reassurance that as a human being — a myth-making animal — our adventure will bring us into contact with new mentors, our worst fears, new levels of skill and consciousness, and an opportunity to bring home an elixir that may set people free. At least until the next adventure.

Comments

[hesbon]

Great adventure and nice expression. thanks a lot

[couples counseling]

Very well said. Life is a risk, it's either we go ahead and grab it or refuse and be dormant forever. Some circumstances may stop us from taking this big adventure, but if you want some changes, if you want something more out of life, you need to go out of your shell. Believe in yourself, even if others won't. :)