Carl Jung As An Archetypal Hero

The figure of the literary hero has been around from ancient Greece to modern worldwide literature. It first appeared in Greek myths and it was the figure that would stand between the laymen and the Gods. He would be the descendant of those gods and would encompass traits such as prestige and integrity. He was considered a special kind of man that could not be compared to the rest. Every individual has their own reading of what a hero entails but as a collective encounter the hero personifies the ideals and expectation of the community in which he is created. Heroes function as symbols of the values and ideal of a community. The fact that he is considered as part of a community makes the figure of the hero an archetype. The hero archetype

In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness, not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us."
Carl Jung developed a theory of archetypes to account for an explanation to the shared images that are recurrent in time and space across different cultures. The meaning of the word archetype in its original Greek form is “original pattern” from which other patterns evolve. In his theory Jung differentiated between two types of unconsciousness: a collective and a personal one. He believed that archetypes are contained in the collective unconscious, which he understands as a type of knowledge all the people from a given group are born with, they are intrinsic to them. Despite not being aware the collective unconscious it dictates how people act in certain situations, mainly those related to emotions. For Jung the personal unconscious stores what could be conscious at any moment but is

He analyses hero myth following Freud and the theories of the interpretation of dreams.
German therapist Otto Rank (1884 – 1939) was fascinated art, literature and myths. He was a student of psychoanalysis following Freud’s teachings. He was interested in the influence of family relations in a person’s development. Rank believed that the figure of the hero myth appeared as a result of the Oedipus complex that considers that a son is in love with his mother and would feel animosity towards his father as he would feel the father would come in between him and his mother’s affections. He also believed this was a trait exhibited by women, while Freud didn’t.

For Rank the figure of the hero is closely related to children, mainly boys. They internalize their position in the family hierarchy in opposition to their parents. The child first idolises his parents but he then feels disenchanted with them. At some later point, only to the father is resented as the kid would like to fill his position. Rank explains that the children fantasize about getting rid of their parent, but only in