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Joseph Campbell’s theory of the hero’s journey, based on shared images and archetypes in myths and religions, was influenced by Carl Jung’s work on the universal unconscious. Campbell’s interest in mythology began with Native American lore and continued throughout his career as a writer, educator, and lecturer. His best-known work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, was published in 1949. Campbell’s lectures and the PBS series The Power of Myth brought him national attention. However, his work has been criticized for its focus on male hero journeys and traditional gender roles. Despite this, Campbell’s scholarship aimed to promote unity among all people by highlighting similarities in belief systems and religious structures.
Joseph Campbell, writer, educator, lecturer, teacher and by some considered almost shamanic, only became known to the popular world after his death in 1987. In 1988, PBS aired a 6-hour conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, which discussed at length Campbell’s theory that most myths, stories and religions share the same kinds of images and archetypes that represent the hero’s journey, which is man’s desire common to achieve individuation or integrity of the psyche.
This concept of images shared across very different cultures was Campbell’s distillation of Carl Jung’s work on the universal unconscious. For Jung, all people had, under a personal unconscious, a set of shared images that meant more or less the same thing. Myth, religion, folklore and fairy tales were artistic representations of the universal unconscious. Joseph Campbell called this underlying structure the monomyth.
For Joseph Campbell, this connection to a universal unconscious was deeply personal. As a boy, Campbell became deeply interested in the Native American tribes that once inhabited his home. Lui studied Native American lore closely and even developed his own tribe of him. Raised a conservative Roman Catholic, Campbell noted similarities between tribal tradition and Catholicism. These early studies would later inspire his interest in all mythology.
As an undergraduate, his interests were primarily in medieval studies. He received his Masters in Arthurian Studies and then went to Paris on a scholarship to continue his work. During his stay in Paris, he certainly studied not only literature, but also contemporary art, fascinated by the work of Bourdelle and Picasso. He also began to study the work of Carl Jung, which would prove pivotal in his later work and studies of him.
In the 1930s Joseph Campbell traveled to the United States, staying with John Steinbeck for nearly a year, before accepting a teaching position in 1934 at Sarah Lawrence College. He would remain a professor there for nearly 40 years. He also met and married his wife Jean Erdman, a dancer in Martha Graham’s modern dance company.
In the 1940s, Joseph Campbell was offered a position as one of the directors of the Bollingen Press. This company would later publish Campbell’s many works. His early work for Bollingen was collaborative and included editing and publishing texts written by Heinrich Zimmer, who died in 1943.
In 1949, Bollingen published Campbell’s first and best-known work on mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which expounded his theories on the similar qualities of all myths. Campbell would go on to publish over ten more works, as well as collaborate on dozens more. Yet the 1949 work is the major piece for which Joseph Campbell is recognized.
Joseph Campbell is more recognized as a great lecturer than as a writer. Most contemporary critics find his work difficult, with very poor indexing. He did not write the indexes for his books and they suffer because they are not easily accessible. However, scholars have lauded Joseph Campbell for his lectures, performed throughout the country. He later lectured regularly at the Esalen Institute.
The power of myth brought Joseph Campbell national attention. Campbell’s accessibility through the lessons is evident. He is particularly known for his ability to look at modern works, such as the Star Wars trilogy, and relate them to the exploration of the ancient mythology of the hero’s journey. The motto “follow your happiness” comes from this series of conversations.
Campbell’s work tends to favor male to female hero journeys. Some of her lyrics cast women in the very traditional roles of wives and mothers, rather than workers, and this quality tends to draw the ire of feminist critics. Interestingly, his wife continued to work as a dancer and the couple had no children. Maybe his comments about women are something of wish fulfillment. However, many feminists question the value of the hero’s journey developed by Joseph Campbell, due to an antiquated perception of women’s roles.
Putting these prejudices aside, Joseph Campbell’s work represents an important scholarship, aimed at achieving harmony in a world torn by so many differences. His examinations of myths suggest that even with great differences in cultures, there are often greater similarities in belief systems and religious structures, which, if understood, would create unity among all people.
