To me, new-agey stuff is very Jungian.
Noooo! Don’t tell me that. I love Joseph Campbell. I learned of him through the Bill Moyers interview, which I watch all upmteen hours of every time PBS plays it.
Hero with a Thousand faces is one of those books I slugged through, even though I knew it was going to go over my head. But I thought I had gleaned some understanding from it.
I honestly thought the man was an atheist (or pantheist, so to speak). I thought he attributed the ‘universal myth’ to man’s tendancy to create the *same kind of coping mechanisms *when faced with things we don’t understand and questions that we have no answers for. Please don’t tell me the man is new age. I am already roundly mocked by my husband as new agey for even daring to call myself a pantheist, and I have no more room for any more woo woo.
I have no idea about his religious beliefs. My beef with him is two fold:
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He takes an interesting question (why are so many stories similar?) and instead of looking at it and trying to see what that shows about the way humans think and interact, he reaches right past the psychology/sociology drawer and goes for a mystical explanation. The book wasted a good idea and, because it is so widely recognized and famous, will probably overshadow any serious work that could be done in this regard for years to come.
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He overreaches and sets up his theory as unfalsifiable. He insists not that there are certain forms and types of stories about similar heroes, but that there is only one story and one hero. To do this he selectively quotes from dozens of myths to show that they all conform to his theory, even when they clearly depart from his theory in other ways. The hero always has a wise, older adviser (except when he doesn’t) who appears to him in disguise (except when he doesn’t). He lists the aspects of each myth that can in any way match up to his frame work, while ignoring any parts that don’t. I honestly don’t remember any myth that he listed that followed all of his stages. The majority certainly didn’t. But that didn’t stop him from claiming them as evidence. Sorry I can’t quote any specifics, but it has been about seven years since I took the class that covered him. But I was very frustrated with his “This hero did A just as my theory predicts, and this hero does the opposite, just as my theory predicts, therefore, these two myths that tell completely different morals, have completely different plots, and end with completely opposite resolutions are exactly the same!” shtick.
ETA: On the Jungian/New Age thing: When Jung proposed his theory there was insufficient evidence to really say whether what he proposed was plausible. In 1949 (when Hero was published) that was less true, and it is certain even less true today.
I’ve been reading “Myths to Live By” and so far I am unimpressed. He uses the phrase “as any schoolboy knows”, makes assertions such as Greek architecture is more inspirational than Roman, and lumps India, China, Japan and the rest of Asia together as “oriental”. The part I did like was the ides that myth and ritual serve a purpose and that scientific knowledge won’t replace them with nothing and fill that need.