Send us Fan Mail Several influences seemed to coalesce to lead us to creating this episode on the Hero’s Journey. There was the release of The Odyssey, which has grossed $1.4 billion worldwide, arguing there’s something in our collective psyche still drawing us to this original blueprint for the Epic. It also seemed like a natural follow-on from our last episode on Aggression, where we recognized the importance of Heroes who can help channel natural aggressive impulses toward prosocial acts. And then there was the happy circumstance that one of our beloved co-residents, Dr. Matthew Richter, was stopping in for a visit. Matt, who is also a millennial psychiatrist, military veteran, and friend, is a bit of an expert in this field. Be forewarned--with a fourth host, we digress and wander a lot in this episode--maybe fitting as we journey through the subject matter. And, like the best stories, we don’t always start at the beginning. In this one, we drop right in the thick of it. Deeper Learning Points: The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell: “In this study of the myth of the archetypal hero, Campbell posits the existence of a “monomyth” (a word he borrows from James Joyce), a universal pattern that is the essence of, and common to, heroic tales in every culture.”The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker: “ ‘The denial of death’ is a phrase from Ernest Becker, and the title of his most famous book, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Becker’s book focuses on how we human beings develop strategies to fend off awareness of our mortality and vulnerability and to escape into the feeling that we’re immortal.”Nietzsche and the Nihilistic Crisis🧰 Narrative Therapy🧰 Logotherapy and Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl: “Dr. Frankl explains the experience which led to his discovery of logotherapy. As a longtime prisoner in bestial concentration camps he found himself stripped to naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that, excepting for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he—every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination—how could he find life worth preserving? Answers About Maps: 1:25,000 shows a smaller area in more detailIndividualistic vs Collectivistic Cultures: “In individualistic societies, wiping away negative feelings is the gold standard of care; in collectivistic frameworks, unpleasant emotions are preserved as vital instruments for self-improvement, relationship building, and existential meaning.”Strong Ground, Brene Brown: “You have to learn to steer into the slide, because there is no ‘if this, then that’ equation that works out at this stage in human history. There too many variables that you’re never going to have control over.”Harry Potter: “It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated…”Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert: “In the end, I’ve come to believe in something I call the ‘physics of the quest’, a force in nature governed by the laws of gravity. The rules of quest physics goes something like this: If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting and set out on a truth seeking journey either internally or externally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared most of all to face and forgive some of the most difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be witheld from you”🧰 Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow: “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”…join us in Episode 8 to learn more about the Shadow!
