The Hero's Journey as a Developmental Metaphor in Counseling

Abstract

It has been argued that the goal of counseling is development. Through the use of J. Campbell's (1949) treatment of the hero's journey as a conceptual metaphor, this article describes development as a journey and illustrates how the counselor's understanding of the journey can assist the client's development. ********** There is a common thread that runs through myth and legend, across cultures, and presents itself in stories told throughout the world. Campbell (1949) described this thread as the theme of the hero's journey in his work The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The themes described in Campbell's work have permeated American culture, appearing on stage, in movies, and in stories that have become part of everyday life. As such, these themes serve as a powerful metaphor for the human experience and can be easily adapted to the counseling process. Conceptual metaphors are tools that can be used to make abstract concepts more concrete by relating them to better known concepts. This process changes the focus of counseling, making the concepts less threatening, more personally meaningful, and by extension more accessible (Barker, 1996; Lyddon, Clay, & Sparks, 2001; Sharp, Smith, & Cole, 2002; Wickman, Daniels, White, & Fesmire, 1999). In this article, the hero's journey is described as a dynamic process that can serve as a conceptual metaphor for understanding and accessing individual development. This examination begins with an overview of the use of conceptual metaphors in counseling, followed by a description of the hero's journey and a discussion of how the concepts of the hero's journey have previously been applied in clinical work. Finally, I introduce a perspective on how the hero's journey metaphor can be applied within the developmental counseling and therapy (DCT; Ivey, 1991) approach and ultimately used to motivate clients and reframe the challenges they face. Conceptual metaphors are powerful tools with a great deal of potential for counseling applications (Barker, 1996; Lyddon et al., 2001; Sharp et al., 2002). Wickman et al. (1999) made the case that metaphors are not simply linguistic tools but rather important representations of how a person thinks and makes sense of the world. From this perspective, the use of metaphors can help the counselor connect to the client's world. When counselors are in tune with the metaphors that clients frequently use, their language may be more congruent with that of clients. Wickman et al. outlined three stages for the analysis of client metaphors, including mnemonic analysis, cross-domain mapping, and everyday language. The mnemonic analysis is essentially naming the themes, which are reflected in the client's metaphorical language. Cross-domain mapping helps the counselor connect the client's metaphor with the actual experience the client is describing as well as the key concepts that are reflected in the metaphor. Finally, being aware of how the client uses components of the metaphor in everyday conversational language can facilitate counselor insight into the client's experiences. The authors remind us that much of clients' self understanding is the product of the search for appropriate personal metaphors that give meaning to their lives (Wickman et al., 1999, p. 393). Although it is usually most advantageous to work with the metaphors that the client presents, there are opportunities for the counselor to present metaphors, which can be particularly useful to the client. One especially helpful metaphor in counseling is that of the hero's journey. Campbell (1949) offered the concept of the hero's journey as a template for understanding the similarities in stories told around the world. Stories that are similar across cultures are, according to Campbell, expressions of the conscious and unconscious struggles of man, which explains, at least in part, why these stories seem to resonate universally. Campbell suggested that the monomyth describes the stages of the heroic journey as natural, even universal, expressions of the personality archetypes described by Jung. …