Through the stories we tell—way, way back into ancient Gilgamesh legends and right on through to the newest exploits of Luke Skywalker—there flows a thread. It is so far back and so widespread that it's more accurate to say it as a memory than as a discovery, more accurate to say it as an atavistic memory rooted deep within the human heart. This is the Hero's Journey, and the psychology of Carl Jung can be used to explain why and how it's so effective by the postulation that somewhere in every one of our own minds, there is a collective unconscious filled with universal, primitive symbols called archetypes. The Hero's Journey is not actually a plot chart; it is a chart of the human psyche, a symbolic chart of the path of psychological development and awakening each of us must take in our own lives.
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote that he thought there was a collective unconscious, a psychic storehouse of inherited symbols and experience, common to all our species. These archetypes are the ancient building blocks of this collective unconscious. They are not inherited memory but an innate tendency to see and respond to the world in some universal fashion. Attempt to imagine them as psychic organs, as integral a part of the mind as the heart is of the body. Some of the larger archetypes include the Self (complete consciousness), the Shadow (unacceptable dark side of personality), the Anima/Animus (the masculine in the male and the feminine in the female), and, most clearly relevant to our tale, the Hero. The Hero is the ego process of becoming established, overcoming obstacles, and becoming complete. It is the part of us that craves adventure, fights fear, and reaches out for more, our whole being.
According to Jung's writings, mythologist Joseph Campbell referred to the universal pattern of this archetypal tale as the "monomyth" in his work The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He refers to it as one story retold and retold through all times and all cultures. The Hero's Journey is the method whereby the Hero archetype gets activated within a person, both mythically and in our own psychosocial existence. It is a cyclical process that both starts and ends within the Ordinary World but irreversibly changes the hero—and, incidentally, the observer. It starts in the Ordinary World, where the hero exists with a life that, in some manner, is incomplete or unrealised.
This is our own psychological immobility, that we don't know what is deeper in us. Then the Call to Adventure, something outside or an inner impulse, breaks up the status quo. It can be a message, a revelation, or a crisis. Psychologically, this is the unconscious first prod, an invitation to open. Usually, in most cases, this call is responded to by Refusal. The ego, complacent and afraid, resists the unknown. The hero, like us, is afraid of change, the risk and loss it brings. This refusal is a reflection of our own fear of facing our shadows or exiting our comfort zones. If the call is strong enough, the hero meets with a Mentor, a wise, archetypal figure like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Yoda, who teaches, guides, and gives a magical token.
The Mentor is the wise guiding force of the unconscious, the wisdom that we are able to access when we are willing to be instructed. Guided by this guidance, the hero crosses the Threshold and leaves behind the known world of the ordinary to enter into the "special world" of questing. It is the point of no return, the ego's investment in the process of transformation. It usually has to do with the encounter with a Threshold Guardian, someone or a challenge that puts to the test the hero's commitment, the last obstacles of fear and doubt. In the special world, the hero experiences a progression of Tests, Allies, and Enemies. It's learning the principles in the special world, gaining a personality (the allies), and fighting the rejected parts of self (the enemies and tests).
And naturally, the trip to the Innermost Cave, site of deepest peril and spot of mid-way suffering of the journey. Here is the descent into the unconscious, symbolic journey to hell or confrontation with the darkest depths of the mind. It is here that the hero will face the Ordeal, a death-and-rebirth test in which he faces his most fear-inspiring fear and appears to die. This "death" is most characteristically symbolic; it is the release from the ego's primitive, small-scale sense of self. Psychologically, this involves confronting the Shadow. The Shadow contains all that we disown in ourselves—our vulnerabilities, our fears, and our primitive drives. With the slaying of the villain or the dragon, the hero is incorporating his or her own Shadow, accepting and absorbing these shadow wishes to become an even more complete human being. The reward falls into the possession of the hero, conventionally the "elixir" or the "sword." The booty, the understanding, or the wisdom is acquired as a result of the ordeal. It is the fresh psychological courage or knowledge that has been gained by integrating the unconscious material they have lived. There is still more travelling to be accomplished.
The hero now must travel the Road Back, back into the ordinary world. This phase is normally a Rescue from Without, in that the hero, weary from the journey, must be rescued by his companions if he is to make it home. This involves returning to the state of conscious life after a profound psychological change can be hard and needs to be eased by a guiding hand. The last challenge is the Resurrection. As the hero returns to the world that is ordinary world, he or she undergoes a final cleansing test in which he or she uses the teachings of the other world. They are reborn, "born again" as a new, whole individual.
The final conflict erases the last trace of their old life. Lastly, the hero returns home with the Elixir, the ultimate fulfilment that revives the ordinary world. The elixir is the knowledge, freedom, or gift the hero gained for himself and the others. Psychologically, it is the individuation—discovery of self, where conscious and unconscious minds meet concordance. The hero is now integrated and complete, and they can return to society the knowledge they've gained. The strength of the Hero's Journey is that it's not about mythic heroes in other places. It's a projection of our own inner conflict. Whenever we're navigating some crisis in our life—a new career, a loss, a learning curve—we're on our own hero's journey.
We accept the call, we dip into our fears (our Shadow), we discover inner strength (the Mentor), and we get changed by doing it. The stories matter to us because they are externalised expressions of our own internal psychological conflicts. They are a guide for taking the hard but essential path to becoming an integrated, self-actualised self. The thousand faces hero is at last that one face of our own potential reflected at us across the eternities of myth.