Heroes and Jungians

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The hero has played a seminal role in the history of Jungian psychology, as elsewhere in Western culture. In this paper I will explore the importance of the hero in both of these contexts, paying particular attention to his relationship to masculinity and death. Taking as my starting point the importance of the attempt to overcome death in hero myths, I will argue that this has led, in European cultures, to heroics constituting a one-sided initiation into manhood, when they are not balanced by the experience of symbolic death; that Jungians have sometimes perpetuated and sometimes subverted this pattern of masculinity characteristic of the West; and that current attempts by feminists and men’s movement writers to “kill off” the hero as an aggressive, immature and anachronistic figure are misguided (and unlikely to succeed) unless they deal with the importance of symbolic death in the making of men. At this point an explanation is called for. Why talk only about the hero in relation to men? Surely, if the hero has archetypal resonances, “he” will be of relevance to women as well. And what about female heroes in myth and history (Semele, Boedicea, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale), and the heroic struggles of feminists to right the wrongs of a patriarchal culture that has drawn mythological strength from tales of derring-do and brute force by generations of male heroes, from Hercules to Rambo? Certainly, this is all true, and a number of women writers, Jungians among them, have taken it upon themselves both to reinterpret myth and history to focus more on female figures they consider to be heroes,