Yearly Archives: 2012

Joseph Campbell: The Man Who Wrote The Book on Heroes

June 13, 2012Science HeroesScott Allison

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

Ironically, the first published psychological analysis of heroism wasn’t completed by a psychologist. In 1949, Joseph Campbell, a comparative mythologist who studied medieval literature and world religions, wrote a remarkable book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The volume became one of the most widely read and influential books of the 20^th century.

While studying hero myths from around the world, Campbell noticed a distinct pattern. It didn’t matter where or when a particular myth was created; the world’s hero stories were all strikingly similar to one another. According to Campbell, in these stories “a hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” Campbell proposed that this prototypical heroic journey, which he called the hero monomyth, consists of three parts: departure, initiation, and return.

The departure phase involves the forces that set the hero’s journey in motion. The hero is thrown from the safety and comfort of the familiar world into a dark, dangerous place. Often a guide or a sidekick offers assistance. The initiation stage features a series of tests or challenges that the hero must overcome. Temptations of the flesh, or a battle with a father figure who must be vanquished, are quite common. Upon returning, the hero brings a great boon, or benefit, to the world. Not only is the returned hero forever transformed, so is the society that receives the boon.

In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell discusses the psychological importance of the hero’s path. He argues that the hero’s journey is a metaphor for the human experience. All people undergo painful struggles and must muster the strength and cleverness to overcome adversaries and difficult circumstances. The struggle defines us because it allows us to realize our full potential via triumphant redemption. “The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive,” noted Campbell. “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”

Campbell suggests that we identify strongly with the hero story because it taps into an important part of our collective unconscious. First described by psychoanalyst Carl Jung in 1916, the collective unconscious is a storehouse of latent images that have developed through human evolution. Jung called these latent images archetypes, which can be activated, or made conscious, when something in an individual’s experience resembles the image. Archetypes are based on our collective experience over the course of evolution, rather than individual experience. Jung wrote, “There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution.”

The hero archetype, then, can explain the pervasiveness of the hero monomyth found in human societies across time and geography. Human beings, in effect, may have a biological readiness to encounter heroes and to resonate to hero stories that fit the Campbellian monomythic structure. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, admits that he based the characters and plot of Star Wars on the hero monomythic structure he encountered in The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Disney movies such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King are said to have been influenced by Campbell. Musical artists such as Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead have all produced work based on Campbell’s hero monomyth.

For his enduring impact on the way we think about human experience and the hero’s journey, Joseph Campbell is one of our intellectual heroes.

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Do you have a hero that you would like us to profile? Please send your suggestions to Scott T. Allison (sallison@richmond.edu) or to George R. Goethals (ggoethal@richmond.edu).

Why Our Mothers are Our Heroes

May 12, 2012Unsung Heroesmothers heroesScott Allison

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

Each year we celebrate Mother’s Day, and this reminds us of the results of a study we conducted recently that underscored the importance of family members as heroes. In the study, people of all ages and from all walks of life were asked to list their heroes. We were surprised, yet pleased, to see that family members were listed about a third of the time. Most importantly, one fourth of all people listed their mothers as their hero. Mothers were mentioned more than any other person, including fathers.

Mother’s Day became a nationally recognized holiday in 1914 because of the efforts of Anna Jarvis, a West Virginian who campaigned to honor mothers after her own beloved mother passed away in 1905. Ironically, by the 1920s Jarvis became disenchanted with the commercialization of Mother’s Day and began campaigning against the holiday. Still, we believe her initial sentiment was on target and we applaud the opportunity to recognize the heroic qualities of mothers everywhere.

Many highly accomplished individuals are quick to attribute their success to their mothers. American presidents are especially likely to do so. Abraham Lincoln once noted that “all that I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.” George Washington also observed that “all I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.” Andrew Jackson claimed that “there never was a woman like my mother. She was as gentle as a dove and as brave as a lioness.”

Other celebrities also express their indebtedness to their mothers. Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong once said, “My mother gave me more than any teacher or father figure ever had.” With these words, Armstrong identified the precise reason why so many of us view our mothers as heroes. It’s all about the loving generosity of mothers. When the participants in our study were asked why their mothers were heroic, they generated three main reasons: generosity with time, money, and love.

There are many ways that mothers gave their time to us. According to survey respondents, mothers tended to us when we were sick, accompanied us to school and soccer practice, made us dinner, and read stories to us. Our mothers made financial sacrifices, too. They wore old clothes so that we could wear new clothes; they took on part-time jobs to buy us gifts; they saved money for us to attend college; they gave us our weekly allowance; and they made sure we had food on the table.

But the most important quality that distinguishes mothers from other heroes, including fathers, is the free offering of love that mothers give us. Mothers were there for us when we needed emotional support. Mothers hugged us. They comforted us and let us sit on their laps. They kissed us on our cheeks before school and at bedtime at night.

Why are mothers viewed as so heroically loving? There are at least two reasons. First, research has shown that women tend to be more likely than men to possess communal traits such as lovingness, affection, warmth, and nurturance. These communal traits are highly valued in the context of raising children and are associated with morality and goodness. Second, it is well known that during childhood, mothers are our primary attachment figures. They are more likely than fathers to interact with, and bond with, infants. Our society is no doubt evolving toward fathers having more communal traits and showing more attachment behaviors, but mothers still hold the edge.

And so on this Mother’s Day, we’d like to acknowledge and thank Anna Jarvis and all the women who have given so much to us all. We wish everyone the happiest of Mother’s Days!

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Do you have a hero that you would like us to profile? Please send your suggestions to Scott T. Allison (sallison@richmond.edu) or to George R. Goethals (ggoethal@richmond.edu).

Oprah Winfrey: The Hero with Talent, Resilience, and Charisma

May 4, 2012Celebrity HeroesScott Allison

Oops! We had to remove the hero profile you’re looking for because it will soon appear in our new book Heroic Leadership: An Influence Taxonomy of 100 Exceptional Individuals, to be published by Routledge in 2013.

Our contract at Routledge required us to remove many of our profiles on our blog at this time. But we do have other hero profiles and information about heroes on the menu bar located on the right side of this page. Check it out!

In the mean time, please accept our apologies. Here is more information about our new book.

You can click here to return to our HERO home page. And thanks for visiting!

— Scott Allison and George Goethals