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In Quest of the Hero
In Quest of the Hero makes available for a new generation of readers two key works on hero myths: Otto Rank's Myth of the Birth of the Hero and the central section of Lord Raglan's The Hero. Amplifying these is Alan Dundes's fascinating contemporary inquiry, "The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus." Examined here are the patterns found in the lore surrounding historical or legendary figures like Gilgamesh, Moses, David, Oedipus, Odysseus, Perseus, Heracles, Aeneas, Romulus, Siegfried, Lohengrin, Arthur, and Buddha.Rank's monograph remains the classic application of Freudian theory to hero myths. In The Hero the noted English ethnologist Raglan singles out the myth- ritualist pattern in James Frazer's many-sided Golden Bough and applies that pattern to hero myths. Dundes, the eminent folklorist at the University of California at Berkeley, applies the theories of Rank, Raglan, and others to the case of Jesus. In his introduction to this selection from Rank, Raglan, and Dundes, Robert Segal, author of the major study of Joseph Campbell, charts the history of theorizing about hero myths and compares the approaches of Rank, Raglan, Dundes, and Campbell.
272 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1990
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About the author
Otto Rank
126 books223 followersBorn in Vienna as Otto Rosenfeld, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, an editor of the two most important analytic journals, managing director of Freud's publishing house and a creative theorist and therapist. In 1926, Otto Rank left Vienna for Paris. For the remaining 14 years of his life, Rank had a successful career as a lecturer, writer and therapist in France and the U.S..
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 11, 2025
Part III should be called "Queering the Bible"
September 20, 2021
The inclusion of Raglan's thesis dragged it down but the damage was mitigated by the refutation contained within Dundes' brilliant modern classic on the very under-researched area of the life of Jesus.
May 10, 2024
It is must be understood that this is not a case supporting perennialism, which is an absurd idea that the object of worship is the same at a transcendental level, but with no reason offered for it to be different at physical level. This is an appeal for the mythological motifs readily ubiquitous and uniformly found throughout all societies and its role in diagnosis and management of psychiatric disorders.
Introduction
Mythotype or its parallel, monomyth, is a set of idea that focuses on the similarity of ideas found in the mythology, saga and folklore across cultures. Its progenitor classically would be attributed to Adolf Bastian, who mentioned about elementargedanke or “elemental ideas” after observing recurring patterns in mythologies. A simple example would be the myth of the baby cast into a water body and then subsequently reared by helpers, readily found in the story of Moses, Cyrus, Perseus, Theseus and the Bamboo Girl in Japanese folklore. Otto Rank, Lord Raglan and Joseph Campbell independently expanded the body of knowledge regarding mythotype with a special emphasis on the Hero’s Journey, a specific type of recurring patterns that exhibits the ordeal of the Hero achieving his destiny.
Yet they differed in their understanding on how such commonality applies to the study of the psyche. Otto Rank, a staunch Freudian in his seminal work in mythotype “The Birth of the Hero” (1909), immediately lapsed into the “family romance” by declaring the common theme of heroic venture symbolizes the repressed aggressional wish of the child towards the father to displace him and obtain the mother, which understandably unpalatable. On the other hand, Campbell who is a Jungian in all but in name, believed that the heroic venture is a macrocosmic replication of Man’s destiny to went through the ordeal of adolescence and early adulthood and to return back with the Divine Boon and enlightened the community. Rank derived his observation from the classical example of Oedipus, who was brought up by strangers and destined to finally killed his father the King and unknowingly and tragically married his mother, Jocasta. Campbell, meanwhile, did not stop at the tragic ending of the Greek heroes, keenly observed that while Odysseus was trapped in despair, potentially forever with the she-witch/mother Calypso, he strived through his ordeal and finally returned back to Ithaca, liberated it from the rabid suitors and united with his dear wife Penelope. Other example includes Dante in his Divine Comedy, does not remain in the belly of the Purgatory, symbolizing the chthonic representation of the Mother Devourer-Kali, but transcended to the Godhead by the guidance of his lost sweetheart, Beatrice. Campbell and Jung completes the whole circle by understanding that a Man’s destiny is not mere aesthetic accomplishment like what the Freudians would like to believe, but spiritual gnosis, the conquering of one own’s predicament and in the renewal of the order of the World.
Theoretical Consideration
According to the theory of relationality, the Infant progressed from a triad of monistic Self, ethical-dualistic Self and to the spiritual Self. What this means is that upon birth, the Infant has only singular purpose; for its continuity of sustenance. And he would immediately got it through the Mother which it considered as a mere extension of itself. This complete absence of relating to the immediate world and its recalcitrance for perpetual sustenance results to the Infant into living a life when it is thought to be the only substance in its immediate world; thus labelled as monistic. In the same line of reasoning, Melanie Klein labelled the infant as occupying a schizoid-paranoid position, due to its extreme introspection and hunger for sustenance. Yet due to the introduction of the Father as the “nous” or “pneuma” i.e. the spirit and breath; a dynamic principle is introduced in the monistic world of the Infant. The Father induced “micro-cuts” to the Infant due to him separating the Infant from the Mother, and from his rough-housing, which the Infant subsequently realized of a second entity necessarily different and other from Itself due to it actively going against the perpetual continuity of sustenance with the Mother.
The World as an Object, thus, was born through the Father who introduced the possibility of a second object aside from the Infant. Now the Infant realized of the possibility of non-perpetuity of sustenance grieved for the loss of the Eternal Mother, and this realistic grief position is what Klein termed as the depressive position, which guilt and remorse are introduced to the Infant, gradually developed into the sense of internalized values, commonly known as the super-ego. This rigid dualistic relation between the Subject and Object translates to the second stage of relationality we termed as the ethical-dualistic, of which the Infant experienced the World as a totally different entity than itself, more than often, a precarious and hostile entity. The predominance of the super-ego at this stage taught the Infant regarding values and ethics, which if done well, allows the integration of the Self through the process of internalization, in which the Infant relinquished its claim for omnipotence towards the external object which It readily believes to be within its own domain in its prior monistic stage.
Yet, even in the continuance of the rigid ethical-dualistic relation, it possessed its own pathology, as shown by the splitting of Self between the finite World and the infinite Self. This dialectical relationship is elaborated under my previous post on Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death. Man’s destiny surely must not be in the mere cognition of what is right and what is wrong, which Kierkegaard rightly termed as the “either/or”. Kantian puritanical ethics produces a good citizen, but not necessarily a flourishing Man. The relation between Man and World must not be necessarily that of I and You, but it can also be of I and Thou, or even Thou Art That. Of which the multiplicity of the external World are now cognized as mere facets of the same unitary Reality. The Mother remains as a kind of transcended relation with the child even though the Child departed its nest; a Mother will still sacrifice herself for her adult children the same as when they were still juvenile. The Self progressed from defining the boundaries of the Self so it can comfortably transcend above it without any contradiction and dialectic.
Now how this long detour relates to the topic of our discussion? The mechanism of how the Infant relates to the World is through thoughts and action. Yet in its monistic stage, thought and action are united in terms that the Infant’s thoughts are immediately fulfilled by it crying. On top of thought being relational towards the World necessarily, it is also intentional in nature. Thoughts are intended towards something, and yearned for its fulfillment. Even when it grieves for the loss of its omnipotent control, thought remains an intensional movement and yearns for fulfillment. But the well-adjusted Self would understand the limited power of the thought and the need for action of fulfillment, but the neurotic remains in the schizoid-paranoid position, perceiving the World as a dangerous entity due to its apparent withholding from fulfillment of its wants and desire.
But thought is intensional towards what? Does thought propagates towards an external object, or a symbol of it? If the former is the case, then how can we explain the concept of imprinting, of which the newly-hatched chicks attached to anything that it first encounters, not necessarily even the same species? If thought are directed towards an intended external object, then the chicks would not attach at all for its future slaughterer in the coop. It is our belief that thought propagates towards a symbol it intended and seek for its fulfillment. It is not that the chicks look for a mother-hen, but they look for the fulfillment of the symbol of the Mother for nourishment. Only through understanding this we can understand how a human infant specifically behaves like a human child without any need of verbal understanding. The infant utilizes a priori symbols readily available in its understanding and it being fulfilled by the correct external representation of it mentally.
The Infant in its depressive position, found that the symbol is not readily being fulfilled and yet still earns for it. The micro-cuts introduced by the Father smoothen the transition by suggesting to the child that it is a separate entity from the Mother and its fulfillment are neither perpetual nor necessary, but depending on the situation as the Mother is an independent entity by herself. A well-adjusted Infant would properly grieve for the loss of the Eternal Mother yet cognized the differentiation between itself and the Mother. Guilt, remorse and subsequently conscience propelled the Infant for action for its own fulfillment, rather than wallowing in its neurotic thoughts of fulfillment.
The differentiation of the Infant which eventually leads to the Self-perception of itself necessarily requires a mirror for it to reflect upon itself. And while the Mirror is necessary for the conjuring of the Image, yet it is not a part of it, just as the substance of the Image is not the same with the Mirror. And the Mirror from which the Self is unfolded is the World, the intensional property of the thought necessarily leads to Self-reflection simultaneously leads to the birth of the World as the stage the Self manifested. This ontological unfolding of the Self into the World does not mean that the Self is the manifestation of the Divine, as our previous post would elucidate on it. It is yet another stage of ontological descent from the archetypal Self to the World. And the Mirror must possessed intrinsic properties that allows the conjuring of the Self, and this includes the symbols which the Image readily carries on, and this is the symbols readily present in the psyche.
As the Mother is the symbol for sustenance, and the Father is the symbol of dynamism and differentiation, the psyche possessed infinite symbols which functions as the regulative principle of Reality. The World unfolds itself through fulfillment of symbols the thought directs its intention. But when the neurotic self through its mechanism of extreme introspection refused to direct itself towards the symbols and defiantly remains in its recalcitrance, the symbols remains unfulfilled yet loomed in the darkness. Just as the Unknown becomes more mysterious and terrible the more we turned our back against it, so does the symbols lurked in the consciousness as Shadows. This tension of unfulfillment results into the autonomous overcompensation of the symbols and causing spillover into the plains of consciousness. It is a sign of psychical tension, like the pus demands to be lanced.
In a normal person, the images of representation of the external World are clearly demarcated from the images of the unconsciousness. But it is our belief that both in neurosis and psychosis, in virtue of an ontological twilight event, possessed an altered sense of Reality which is the most intense in frank psychosis and the least in cases of neuroses and lucid psychosis. And perhaps this lies the relevance of antipsychotics as an adjunct for complicated case of neurosis, as no complex case of neurosis are without even a minimal altered sense of Reality. Both in cases of neurosis and psychosis the demarcation between external and internal images are blurred and the unconscious images are free to spillover to the former, forming an altered view of Reality. We must thus, not taken lightly the words of our patients that their life is a waking nightmare. It is Reality for them, a Reality in which ghouls, dragons and ogres lived side by side with their normal occurrences.
Mythotypology in Clinical Practice
The role of mythotypology in clinical practice stood as a specific strategy in psychodynamic psychotherapy. After such laborious discussion, we must now compelled not to take the gesticulation of a psychotic patient lightly; in some cases only these outlandish symbolism stood as the gateway towards catharsis.
Mythotypology as a Diagnostic Tool
Below case study is completely rearranged in a way it does not reflect at all with the real patient, except in principle.
Mr A is a 35 years old schizophrenic with multiple admissions to the ward due to relapse episodes secondary to non-compliance to medications. Upon interview, it is noted that the patient has strong resistance against the idea of him having schizophrenia, followed by bouts of irritability and selective mutism. The clues he only offered in between his mutism and inappropriate affect are his delusion of being possessed by two mythological entities, Odysseus and Agamemnon. She wished to not elaborate more on her delusion.
A lay physician would excuse his delusional content as the chattering of a psychotic. But are they? Mental health patients remains one of the most stigmatized, underprivileged part of the population. Especially in Asian countries, which understanding and support for the condition remains in an underdeveloped level. The psychiatric trainee who has an understanding on the role of mythological symbols made a connection of the possibility of an underlying factor that contributed for her frequent non-compliance.
It is not a difficult task to investigate the background of the two Grecian heroes the patients mentioned. Both are mythological heroes condemned of being led astray after their pillaging of Troy. Both are afflicted by their own all-too-human deficiencies such as pride and wrath and were tested by many tribulations. But the eventual fate of Agamemnon differs from Odysseus, in which the former returned to his kingdom only to found his wife engaged in an affair publicly and was then murdered by his wife’s suitor. Odysseus, on the other hand, braved through his tribulation and returned home to his faithful wife, Penelope.
The psychiatric trainee then returned to the patient the next day and engaged in psychodynamic tactics of clarification, confrontation and interpretation. He asked between these two possessing entities, which one did he identified with. The patient answered, Agamemnon. And the trainee proceeded to clarify what does the patient think about Agamemnon, and the patient answered that the Hero is a sick, gluttonous person who lost everything at the end. And then the trainee proceeds to softly confronts the patient by asking, how does this set of qualities relate to him.
Immediately, the labile affect changed into a depressed affect and the patient broke down, narrating (albeit in a third-person way) of how a person wished to be useful, to be contributing but only to lose everything at the end. The patient also provided a Freudian slip by saying he himself wants to be independent and useful too.
The trainee now clinched the direction on how the therapy should go once the antipsychotics is optimized. The patient’s continuous non-compliance are due to his shame of being a defective and a defeated person like Agamemnon. The presence of two entities with different profiles classically fits the splitting of the psychotic self. The delusion of possession is an amplified statement of the splitting, of his conflict between really believing himself to be defeated like Agamemnon ended up with, or with a shot for redemption as Odysseus’ successfully obtained.
A basic understanding on how mythotypology relates to clinical practice can also be expanded to dream analysis, which mythological symbolism readily ubiquitous. A correct interpretation of dream can induce such drastic catharsis to the neurotic through mechanism which would be elaborated below. I myself employed the method as suggested in the book “Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth” by the Jungian Robert A. Johnson, and managed to provide rapid catharsis in selected cases.
An advanced application of mythotypology includes the mapping of the theme behind the mythological symbolisms with schemas and eventually allows a kind of closure with the past trauma through experiential intervention (or Active Imagination as the Jungian would puts it) as suggested by schema-focused therapy. The official primer for schema-focused therapy would be the “Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide” by Jefferey A. Young.
Mythotypology as a Therapeutic Tool
The aim behind every psychotherapeutic model that integrates psychodynamic factors would be the conceptualization of the “actors” of conflicting factors, the mentalization of such problems and the subsequent integration/internalization of the Self.
Mythotypology through identification and interpretation of the mythological symbolism directly contributes to the naming of the “actors” or conceptualization. Conceptualization plays a role in a way that it shakes the idea of pervasiveness of the problem. If a thing can be named, then it already possessed a conceptual limit. This would aid in the cognitive part of the therapy.
With an active understanding of mythotypology, the therapist can employ the usual course of psychodynamic therapy of clarification, confrontation and interpretation. It promotes self-reflection by the patient regarding the current issue, thus the issue now not only possessed conceptual limit, it also now slowly acquiring an actualizing limit. Patients slowly are more cognizant of the mental nature of their maladaptive relation towards the punishing object. If a thing possessed mental existence instead of the external, the patient need not to act on it as necessarily as prior when diffusion of issue due to the blurring between mental-external states.
Integration of the Self includes the affirmation on the role of thought-fulfillment of such symbols, affirmation on the primordial and regulative function of such symbols and reinforcement on the concept of mentalization. The Self does not exists in monochrome, but in the multiple coloring of vicissitudes, but the neurotic persists in its cognitive distortions of all-or-none thinking.
This brief sketch of mythotypology as a therapeutic tool certainly does not do justice for the potential of mythotypology as an adjunct to psychodynamic psychotherapy. But, from my personal observation, more and more neurotics are presenting with florid symptoms of dissociation or lucid psychoses with profuse mythological symbols. Perhaps it is a sign of our times on the failure of the Self to be more differentiated out from its primitive stage, where the person in his own Reality lives along side with the Dragons, Ogres and Demons.
Future Application
The Aarne-Thompson index is one of the most comprehensive omnibus on folklore as the Bulfinch’s Mythology in mythology. It is possible for equipping the Index with psychoanalytic interpretations for the reference of future mythoanalysts.
Introduction
Mythotype or its parallel, monomyth, is a set of idea that focuses on the similarity of ideas found in the mythology, saga and folklore across cultures. Its progenitor classically would be attributed to Adolf Bastian, who mentioned about elementargedanke or “elemental ideas” after observing recurring patterns in mythologies. A simple example would be the myth of the baby cast into a water body and then subsequently reared by helpers, readily found in the story of Moses, Cyrus, Perseus, Theseus and the Bamboo Girl in Japanese folklore. Otto Rank, Lord Raglan and Joseph Campbell independently expanded the body of knowledge regarding mythotype with a special emphasis on the Hero’s Journey, a specific type of recurring patterns that exhibits the ordeal of the Hero achieving his destiny.
Yet they differed in their understanding on how such commonality applies to the study of the psyche. Otto Rank, a staunch Freudian in his seminal work in mythotype “The Birth of the Hero” (1909), immediately lapsed into the “family romance” by declaring the common theme of heroic venture symbolizes the repressed aggressional wish of the child towards the father to displace him and obtain the mother, which understandably unpalatable. On the other hand, Campbell who is a Jungian in all but in name, believed that the heroic venture is a macrocosmic replication of Man’s destiny to went through the ordeal of adolescence and early adulthood and to return back with the Divine Boon and enlightened the community. Rank derived his observation from the classical example of Oedipus, who was brought up by strangers and destined to finally killed his father the King and unknowingly and tragically married his mother, Jocasta. Campbell, meanwhile, did not stop at the tragic ending of the Greek heroes, keenly observed that while Odysseus was trapped in despair, potentially forever with the she-witch/mother Calypso, he strived through his ordeal and finally returned back to Ithaca, liberated it from the rabid suitors and united with his dear wife Penelope. Other example includes Dante in his Divine Comedy, does not remain in the belly of the Purgatory, symbolizing the chthonic representation of the Mother Devourer-Kali, but transcended to the Godhead by the guidance of his lost sweetheart, Beatrice. Campbell and Jung completes the whole circle by understanding that a Man’s destiny is not mere aesthetic accomplishment like what the Freudians would like to believe, but spiritual gnosis, the conquering of one own’s predicament and in the renewal of the order of the World.
Theoretical Consideration
According to the theory of relationality, the Infant progressed from a triad of monistic Self, ethical-dualistic Self and to the spiritual Self. What this means is that upon birth, the Infant has only singular purpose; for its continuity of sustenance. And he would immediately got it through the Mother which it considered as a mere extension of itself. This complete absence of relating to the immediate world and its recalcitrance for perpetual sustenance results to the Infant into living a life when it is thought to be the only substance in its immediate world; thus labelled as monistic. In the same line of reasoning, Melanie Klein labelled the infant as occupying a schizoid-paranoid position, due to its extreme introspection and hunger for sustenance. Yet due to the introduction of the Father as the “nous” or “pneuma” i.e. the spirit and breath; a dynamic principle is introduced in the monistic world of the Infant. The Father induced “micro-cuts” to the Infant due to him separating the Infant from the Mother, and from his rough-housing, which the Infant subsequently realized of a second entity necessarily different and other from Itself due to it actively going against the perpetual continuity of sustenance with the Mother.
The World as an Object, thus, was born through the Father who introduced the possibility of a second object aside from the Infant. Now the Infant realized of the possibility of non-perpetuity of sustenance grieved for the loss of the Eternal Mother, and this realistic grief position is what Klein termed as the depressive position, which guilt and remorse are introduced to the Infant, gradually developed into the sense of internalized values, commonly known as the super-ego. This rigid dualistic relation between the Subject and Object translates to the second stage of relationality we termed as the ethical-dualistic, of which the Infant experienced the World as a totally different entity than itself, more than often, a precarious and hostile entity. The predominance of the super-ego at this stage taught the Infant regarding values and ethics, which if done well, allows the integration of the Self through the process of internalization, in which the Infant relinquished its claim for omnipotence towards the external object which It readily believes to be within its own domain in its prior monistic stage.
Yet, even in the continuance of the rigid ethical-dualistic relation, it possessed its own pathology, as shown by the splitting of Self between the finite World and the infinite Self. This dialectical relationship is elaborated under my previous post on Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death. Man’s destiny surely must not be in the mere cognition of what is right and what is wrong, which Kierkegaard rightly termed as the “either/or”. Kantian puritanical ethics produces a good citizen, but not necessarily a flourishing Man. The relation between Man and World must not be necessarily that of I and You, but it can also be of I and Thou, or even Thou Art That. Of which the multiplicity of the external World are now cognized as mere facets of the same unitary Reality. The Mother remains as a kind of transcended relation with the child even though the Child departed its nest; a Mother will still sacrifice herself for her adult children the same as when they were still juvenile. The Self progressed from defining the boundaries of the Self so it can comfortably transcend above it without any contradiction and dialectic.
Now how this long detour relates to the topic of our discussion? The mechanism of how the Infant relates to the World is through thoughts and action. Yet in its monistic stage, thought and action are united in terms that the Infant’s thoughts are immediately fulfilled by it crying. On top of thought being relational towards the World necessarily, it is also intentional in nature. Thoughts are intended towards something, and yearned for its fulfillment. Even when it grieves for the loss of its omnipotent control, thought remains an intensional movement and yearns for fulfillment. But the well-adjusted Self would understand the limited power of the thought and the need for action of fulfillment, but the neurotic remains in the schizoid-paranoid position, perceiving the World as a dangerous entity due to its apparent withholding from fulfillment of its wants and desire.
But thought is intensional towards what? Does thought propagates towards an external object, or a symbol of it? If the former is the case, then how can we explain the concept of imprinting, of which the newly-hatched chicks attached to anything that it first encounters, not necessarily even the same species? If thought are directed towards an intended external object, then the chicks would not attach at all for its future slaughterer in the coop. It is our belief that thought propagates towards a symbol it intended and seek for its fulfillment. It is not that the chicks look for a mother-hen, but they look for the fulfillment of the symbol of the Mother for nourishment. Only through understanding this we can understand how a human infant specifically behaves like a human child without any need of verbal understanding. The infant utilizes a priori symbols readily available in its understanding and it being fulfilled by the correct external representation of it mentally.
The Infant in its depressive position, found that the symbol is not readily being fulfilled and yet still earns for it. The micro-cuts introduced by the Father smoothen the transition by suggesting to the child that it is a separate entity from the Mother and its fulfillment are neither perpetual nor necessary, but depending on the situation as the Mother is an independent entity by herself. A well-adjusted Infant would properly grieve for the loss of the Eternal Mother yet cognized the differentiation between itself and the Mother. Guilt, remorse and subsequently conscience propelled the Infant for action for its own fulfillment, rather than wallowing in its neurotic thoughts of fulfillment.
The differentiation of the Infant which eventually leads to the Self-perception of itself necessarily requires a mirror for it to reflect upon itself. And while the Mirror is necessary for the conjuring of the Image, yet it is not a part of it, just as the substance of the Image is not the same with the Mirror. And the Mirror from which the Self is unfolded is the World, the intensional property of the thought necessarily leads to Self-reflection simultaneously leads to the birth of the World as the stage the Self manifested. This ontological unfolding of the Self into the World does not mean that the Self is the manifestation of the Divine, as our previous post would elucidate on it. It is yet another stage of ontological descent from the archetypal Self to the World. And the Mirror must possessed intrinsic properties that allows the conjuring of the Self, and this includes the symbols which the Image readily carries on, and this is the symbols readily present in the psyche.
As the Mother is the symbol for sustenance, and the Father is the symbol of dynamism and differentiation, the psyche possessed infinite symbols which functions as the regulative principle of Reality. The World unfolds itself through fulfillment of symbols the thought directs its intention. But when the neurotic self through its mechanism of extreme introspection refused to direct itself towards the symbols and defiantly remains in its recalcitrance, the symbols remains unfulfilled yet loomed in the darkness. Just as the Unknown becomes more mysterious and terrible the more we turned our back against it, so does the symbols lurked in the consciousness as Shadows. This tension of unfulfillment results into the autonomous overcompensation of the symbols and causing spillover into the plains of consciousness. It is a sign of psychical tension, like the pus demands to be lanced.
In a normal person, the images of representation of the external World are clearly demarcated from the images of the unconsciousness. But it is our belief that both in neurosis and psychosis, in virtue of an ontological twilight event, possessed an altered sense of Reality which is the most intense in frank psychosis and the least in cases of neuroses and lucid psychosis. And perhaps this lies the relevance of antipsychotics as an adjunct for complicated case of neurosis, as no complex case of neurosis are without even a minimal altered sense of Reality. Both in cases of neurosis and psychosis the demarcation between external and internal images are blurred and the unconscious images are free to spillover to the former, forming an altered view of Reality. We must thus, not taken lightly the words of our patients that their life is a waking nightmare. It is Reality for them, a Reality in which ghouls, dragons and ogres lived side by side with their normal occurrences.
Mythotypology in Clinical Practice
The role of mythotypology in clinical practice stood as a specific strategy in psychodynamic psychotherapy. After such laborious discussion, we must now compelled not to take the gesticulation of a psychotic patient lightly; in some cases only these outlandish symbolism stood as the gateway towards catharsis.
Mythotypology as a Diagnostic Tool
Below case study is completely rearranged in a way it does not reflect at all with the real patient, except in principle.
Mr A is a 35 years old schizophrenic with multiple admissions to the ward due to relapse episodes secondary to non-compliance to medications. Upon interview, it is noted that the patient has strong resistance against the idea of him having schizophrenia, followed by bouts of irritability and selective mutism. The clues he only offered in between his mutism and inappropriate affect are his delusion of being possessed by two mythological entities, Odysseus and Agamemnon. She wished to not elaborate more on her delusion.
A lay physician would excuse his delusional content as the chattering of a psychotic. But are they? Mental health patients remains one of the most stigmatized, underprivileged part of the population. Especially in Asian countries, which understanding and support for the condition remains in an underdeveloped level. The psychiatric trainee who has an understanding on the role of mythological symbols made a connection of the possibility of an underlying factor that contributed for her frequent non-compliance.
It is not a difficult task to investigate the background of the two Grecian heroes the patients mentioned. Both are mythological heroes condemned of being led astray after their pillaging of Troy. Both are afflicted by their own all-too-human deficiencies such as pride and wrath and were tested by many tribulations. But the eventual fate of Agamemnon differs from Odysseus, in which the former returned to his kingdom only to found his wife engaged in an affair publicly and was then murdered by his wife’s suitor. Odysseus, on the other hand, braved through his tribulation and returned home to his faithful wife, Penelope.
The psychiatric trainee then returned to the patient the next day and engaged in psychodynamic tactics of clarification, confrontation and interpretation. He asked between these two possessing entities, which one did he identified with. The patient answered, Agamemnon. And the trainee proceeded to clarify what does the patient think about Agamemnon, and the patient answered that the Hero is a sick, gluttonous person who lost everything at the end. And then the trainee proceeds to softly confronts the patient by asking, how does this set of qualities relate to him.
Immediately, the labile affect changed into a depressed affect and the patient broke down, narrating (albeit in a third-person way) of how a person wished to be useful, to be contributing but only to lose everything at the end. The patient also provided a Freudian slip by saying he himself wants to be independent and useful too.
The trainee now clinched the direction on how the therapy should go once the antipsychotics is optimized. The patient’s continuous non-compliance are due to his shame of being a defective and a defeated person like Agamemnon. The presence of two entities with different profiles classically fits the splitting of the psychotic self. The delusion of possession is an amplified statement of the splitting, of his conflict between really believing himself to be defeated like Agamemnon ended up with, or with a shot for redemption as Odysseus’ successfully obtained.
A basic understanding on how mythotypology relates to clinical practice can also be expanded to dream analysis, which mythological symbolism readily ubiquitous. A correct interpretation of dream can induce such drastic catharsis to the neurotic through mechanism which would be elaborated below. I myself employed the method as suggested in the book “Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth” by the Jungian Robert A. Johnson, and managed to provide rapid catharsis in selected cases.
An advanced application of mythotypology includes the mapping of the theme behind the mythological symbolisms with schemas and eventually allows a kind of closure with the past trauma through experiential intervention (or Active Imagination as the Jungian would puts it) as suggested by schema-focused therapy. The official primer for schema-focused therapy would be the “Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide” by Jefferey A. Young.
Mythotypology as a Therapeutic Tool
The aim behind every psychotherapeutic model that integrates psychodynamic factors would be the conceptualization of the “actors” of conflicting factors, the mentalization of such problems and the subsequent integration/internalization of the Self.
Mythotypology through identification and interpretation of the mythological symbolism directly contributes to the naming of the “actors” or conceptualization. Conceptualization plays a role in a way that it shakes the idea of pervasiveness of the problem. If a thing can be named, then it already possessed a conceptual limit. This would aid in the cognitive part of the therapy.
With an active understanding of mythotypology, the therapist can employ the usual course of psychodynamic therapy of clarification, confrontation and interpretation. It promotes self-reflection by the patient regarding the current issue, thus the issue now not only possessed conceptual limit, it also now slowly acquiring an actualizing limit. Patients slowly are more cognizant of the mental nature of their maladaptive relation towards the punishing object. If a thing possessed mental existence instead of the external, the patient need not to act on it as necessarily as prior when diffusion of issue due to the blurring between mental-external states.
Integration of the Self includes the affirmation on the role of thought-fulfillment of such symbols, affirmation on the primordial and regulative function of such symbols and reinforcement on the concept of mentalization. The Self does not exists in monochrome, but in the multiple coloring of vicissitudes, but the neurotic persists in its cognitive distortions of all-or-none thinking.
This brief sketch of mythotypology as a therapeutic tool certainly does not do justice for the potential of mythotypology as an adjunct to psychodynamic psychotherapy. But, from my personal observation, more and more neurotics are presenting with florid symptoms of dissociation or lucid psychoses with profuse mythological symbols. Perhaps it is a sign of our times on the failure of the Self to be more differentiated out from its primitive stage, where the person in his own Reality lives along side with the Dragons, Ogres and Demons.
Future Application
The Aarne-Thompson index is one of the most comprehensive omnibus on folklore as the Bulfinch’s Mythology in mythology. It is possible for equipping the Index with psychoanalytic interpretations for the reference of future mythoanalysts.
March 9, 2021
Perhaps sometimes we judge books not on their inherent merits, but on our expectations.
I have owned this book for well over a decade and perusing my shelves recently, thought it might help me as I edit my fantasy epic: giving me keys to the essence of the mythological hero. It did anything but.
To be sure, there was one essay in this collection, a piece by Lord Raglan which belongs in an Introduction to Mythology course. But alas, the writing of some of these scholars is dated and sometimes just bad.
There is too much attempt to systematize myth into a pattern rather than trying to understand the deeper meaning of these enduring stories. And in the final essay, Alan Dundes seemed more interested in the scholarship on the life of Jesus than in the actual life of Jesus. A little too much Freud and a lot too little storytelling.
Still each of the three scholars has some valuable insights. And perhaps some other scholar should work through this collection and find appropriate selections for a textbook on Mythology in general and the hero in particular.
I have owned this book for well over a decade and perusing my shelves recently, thought it might help me as I edit my fantasy epic: giving me keys to the essence of the mythological hero. It did anything but.
To be sure, there was one essay in this collection, a piece by Lord Raglan which belongs in an Introduction to Mythology course. But alas, the writing of some of these scholars is dated and sometimes just bad.
There is too much attempt to systematize myth into a pattern rather than trying to understand the deeper meaning of these enduring stories. And in the final essay, Alan Dundes seemed more interested in the scholarship on the life of Jesus than in the actual life of Jesus. A little too much Freud and a lot too little storytelling.
Still each of the three scholars has some valuable insights. And perhaps some other scholar should work through this collection and find appropriate selections for a textbook on Mythology in general and the hero in particular.
May 21, 2013
Very good book. I especially enjoyed Raglan's contribution. Some of the Freudian psychoanalysis can get very boring though. Thankfully those intermissions are very brief and mostly absent from the best portion of the book. That being the essays by Raglan. The bookends by Rank and Dundes are still very interesting despite their minor shortfalls. If they really are shortfall. It's just that when they talk about infantile motifs they can sound slightly silly, with their Freudian terminology and whatnot. I preferred Raglans bluntness even if he did blatantly skirt the analysis of the Jesus tale in his own analysis where it remains a giant hole within his essay. I had to go looking back wondering if I had missed mention of it. Dundes points this out and sites Raglan as having said that he wanted to avoid being attacked by avoiding touching on the Jesus issue entirely. Dundes' own attempt at this analysis is amiable, but distracted and I can't help but wish it had have been a part of the much harder hitting work of Raglan.
July 13, 2012
When I was a student at Cal (Go, Bears!) I was fortunate enough to have had lived at I-House for half of my undergrad. There I met a lot of interesting people and made some great friends, many of whom have gone on to do some pretty amazing things. Somewhere in that stay I met a grad student in Lit (and can't remember his name right now) who gave me this book. I was telling him I was working on some creative writing and started talking about Campbell. He ripped my face off, and then handed me this book. The monomyth, he said, (If I remember correctly) is an over reduction of the story. He then handed me another book, Morphology of the Folktale. Read this, he said, and when you're done, talk to me.
I got back to him.
He asked, And? You read them right?
Yes, I said...
Then there's nothing to talk about.
I got back to him.
He asked, And? You read them right?
Yes, I said...
Then there's nothing to talk about.
February 25, 2023
This book is important because of the 2 scholars it covers: Rank & Raglan. Both have detailed analysis to defend their definitions of hero and myth versus folktale. Both approaches are similar and when adding Vladimir Propp to the group we have 3 solid structuralist approaches to myth and folklore. The third inclusion the Hero Patter of the Life of Jesus is probably enough to drive any fundalmentalist in Kansas go ape shit.
October 17, 2009
This book sucked!!!
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