Be a Research Hero: Find Articles

Joseph Campbell’s proposal that the lives of human beings might be seen as variations on a single unifying grand narrative, provides the energy for this article. From a therapeutic perspective, Campbell’s monomythic metaphor of the hero-journey suggests that individuals may choose how they respond to challenging life events, and his pantheon intersects with humanistic principles of self-actualization and traditional concepts of psychospiritual transformation and growth. Thus, the painful passage through trauma may lead to greater awareness of the self and enhanced psychological functioning. In this work, the plotline of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and its protagonist, arguably the most traumatized hero in literature, are presented alongside a bare and heavily edited text of Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces to provide one simple case reading. In addition, models incorporating S. Grof and C. Grof’s paradigm of psychospiritual transformation and Tedeschi and Calhoun’s posttraumatic growth are used to establish a link to current therapeutic practice that test the utility of Campbell’s metaphor in this context. It is hoped that the simultaneous weaving of Campbell’s and Shakespeare’s work with humanistic psychology’s core principles will shed further light on the experiences of individuals affected by trauma and their opportunities to become heroines and heroes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making connections between Joseph Campbell's hero's journey and our common prenatal experience, this article leads us through the process of coming into this world. The author then traces his own journey to discovering prenatal and perinatal psychology and the development of his own approach to this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Derived from mythology around the world and over the ages, Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” provides a conceptual roadmap for confronting life’s challenges. The way in which clients navigate these challenges may also have a profound effect on their relational development. This article examines The Hero’s Journey through the lens of relational-cultural theory and illustrates ways in which counselors can aid clients in making sense of the struggles they face on their own personal journeys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the hero's journey--and heroic behaviour as understood in its emerging contemporary conceptualisations--as a seat of intelligence across the biological, psychological, social, cultural, historical, phenomenological, and existential domains. In so doing, we acknowledge Joseph Campbell's assertions about several changes that occur in heroes, one being differences or amplifications in certain types of cognitive activity. First, the hero's journey is examined as a deeply ingrained event in our evolution, providing a foundation for the interconnection between heroism, intelligence, and the transformative process. We also examine the possibility that heroism can have biological implications, perhaps extending to epigenetic expression. Next, heroic behaviour is considered as intelligent behaviour that is embodied and embedded in our evolution and the everyday. The concept of the heroic as a discrete form of physical intelligence is examined through a phenomenological and existential lens; this supports a reading of human organisms as 'hero organisms', capable of heightened cognitive, physical, and transcendent action. The article concludes with a discussion on a physically grounded heroic intelligence as fundamentally a question of consciousness that is intimately bound to existential pursuits, and the legacy of Joseph Campbell's work potentially re-defining the concept of evolutionary design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monster is an amorphous and ambiguous manifestation of social values, representing fear and revulsion of a cultural Other while engendering escapist power fantasies. The monster era of Marvel Comics from the late 1950s to the early 1960s created a new mediation of the monster based heavily on the comic book industry's desire for a model of mass producible creative content. Graphic narrative's hybridization of verbal and visual rhetoric captures the cultural fluidity of the monster by using multimedia signifiers of ambiguity and reiterating popular visual archetypes. However, Marvel monster categories are as much a result of economic and visual limitations of the comic book medium. Marvel monster rhetoric, in turn, transformed the dichotomy of fear and desire at the heart of the monster into a new superheroic archetype. This article explores the verbal and visual rhetoric of the monster era and what rhetorics transferred to Marvel's silver age superheroes of the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the responses of nearly 1200 children and young people in Wales who were asked to identify which three famous people they most admired and which three they most disliked. Analysis of these young people's responses reveals a number of sociological and educational issues. Their selections confirm other research which has highlighted the importance of celebrities in the lives of young people. Their ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ are drawn mostly from the worlds of popular music and sport. Their choices are also highly gendered and ‘raced’. Of particular interest is the finding that someone's ‘villain’ is more than likely to be someone else's ‘hero’. Our young people's selection of heroes and villains reflects the broader landscape of celebrity culture, where female fame is as much about appearance as talent and Black and minority ethnic celebrities are to be found largely in the fields of sport or popular music. The paper concludes by discussing the chasm between our young people's ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ and those which are ‘officially sanctioned’ within the school curriculum and considers what schools and teachers might do about it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract:
The politics of memory plays an important role in the ways certain figures are evaluated and remembered, as they can be rehabilitated or vilified, or both, as these processes are contested. We explore these issues using a transition society, Georgia, as a case study. Who are the heroes and villains in Georgian collective memory? What factors influence who is seen as a hero or a villain and why? How do these selections correlate with Georgian national identity? We attempt to answer these research questions using a newly generated data set of contemporary Georgian perspectives on recent history. Our survey results show that according to a representative sample of the Georgian population, the main heroes from the beginning of the twentieth century include Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Ilia Chavchavadze, and Patriarch Ilia II. Eduard Shevardnadze, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, and Vladimir Putin represent the main villains, and those that appear on both lists are Mikheil Saakashvili and Joseph Stalin. We highlight two clusters of attitudes that are indicative of how people think about Georgian national identity, mirroring civic and ethnic conceptions of nationalism. How Georgians understand national identity impacts not only who they choose as heroes or villains, but also whether they provide an answer at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lady Macbeth, the legendary creation of William Shakespeare and Medusa, the mortal gorgon from Greek mythology- both contradict the weak and submissive roles that most female characters seem to be placed in archetypal presentation. Their characters in general, their manipulating power and their overall existence emerged to be a threat to the egotism of the patriarchal tyranny. Considerably this is the reason of Lady Macbeth's turning into the fourth witch and Medusa's beheading only glorified the heroism of her assassin, Perseus. Few critics have already explored the opposite side of Lady Macbeth rather than the incarnation of evil itself On the other hand, Helene Cixous in 'The Laugh of Medusa' has depicted Medusa with a beautiful smiling face rather than a moral and physical monster. This paper will attempt to reveal the procedure of these two characters turning into evil by the discourses of the patriarchal domination from the ancient era to the age of Shakespeare and the continuation of this typical presentation of the females by others till present. It will attempt a critical analysis of such representation and the suggested way of restoration by Cixous through the females' writing by themselves and recreating reality through the access in language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]