Presentation of "The Hero's Journey as a metaphor for personal development"

1. HERO’S/ HEROINES JOURNEY
a Story of Personal Development
Melita Reiner, M.Sc., Clinical Psychologist, Psychotherapist,
Croatian-Austrian Training Center fo NLPt, Zagreb, Croatia

2. The Power of Narratives

3. Presuppositions

4. Joseph Campbell (March 26th 1904 – October 30th
1987), American mythologist, writer and lecturer
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of
track that has been there all the while, waiting for you,
and the life that you ought to be living is the one you
are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your
bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life
within you, all the time
FOLLOW YOUR BLISS!
(Going where your Body and Soul want to go…

6. Influences

7. HERO’S JOURNEY
CALL TO ADVENTURE
Ordinary World
Call to Adventure
Refusal of the Call
Meeting with the Mentor
Crossing the First Threshold
Belly of the Whale
INITIATION
The Road of Trials
Meeting with the Godess
Apotheosis and the Ultimate Boon
Reward: After surviving death, the hero earns his reward or accomplishes his goal.
RETURN
Refusal of the Return
Passing the Return Threshold
Return with Elixir & Master of Two Worlds

8. SEPARATION Ordinary World

9. SEPARATION Call to Adventure

10. Refusing the Call
The hero is faced with the
unknown. By contrast, home
represents safety and security, a
place the child is loathe to
leave.

11. SEPARATION Refusal of the Call

12. Threshold
The hero/ heroine must surrender his/her reliance on logic and
willingly enter the world of emotion and fantasy.

13. SEPARATION Meeting with the Mentor
Conscious or unconscious
Committment to Quest;
Benign, Positive Powers of
Guidance

14. SEPARATION Crossing the First Threshold

15. SEPARATION „Belly of the Whale”
Annihilation of Old Self; Re-Birth; Metamorphosis; Womb of the World

16. INITIATION The Road of Trials
Tests Ordeals Tasks

17. Archetypal Energies - Examples

18. INITIATION Meeting with the Goddess
 Mystical Marriage of the Triumphant Hero Soul with the Queen Goddess of the
Earth

19. INITIATION Apotheosis and the Ultimate Boon

21. RETURN
 Refusal of Return
 The Crossing of the Return Threshold

22. RETURN with Elixir –
Master of Two Worlds

23. Similar concepts
 Fairytales, Stories, Legends, Myths
 Dark Night of the Soul, St John of the Cross
 Eric Berne (Transactional Analysis) – Scripts
 Carl G. Jung – Individuation and Shadow Integration
 Abraham Maslow – Self-Actualization
 Post-traumatic Growth – PTSG
 Hero’s Journey in NLP: Robert Dilts and Stephen Gilligan
…..

24. Robert Dilts & Stephen Gilligan

25. Additional
 HERO’S JOURNEY – AN EXAMPLE IN NLP CONTEXT

26. An invisible presence.....
 There is an inner self that is trying to become conscious.
 There is another intelligence that lives within you (the unconscious, the
spirit, inner being...)
 This inner being is very intelligent.
 It is not „part of“ or the property of your conscious self, it is autonomous
and has its own consciousness

27. .....is trying to wake up...
- Each stage of awakening is initiated through „out of control“
disturbances, such as symptoms,crises, altered states, major life changes,
etc.
 - The problem is the solution/the attempted solution is the problem
 - When your „other than conscious“ self predominates,listen!

28. .... from dreamtime....
 Two types of dreamtime: the „field of infitite possibilities“ (the creative
void, the collective unconscious, the spirit world) and „neurosis“ (half-
baked experience, neglected selves, received by somatic self/rejected by
cognitive self...)

29. ....into human consciousness.
-Human consciousness is the „second coming“, the double-birthed relational
self that practices self-awareness, self acceptance, sponsorship of
life...
 For a problem to become a solution, proper conditions must be present.
 The principle of utilization/cooperation /sponsorship is a cornerstone
 A ritual space must be present (safety, experiental forma, blessings and
guidance, death and rebirth)

30. Self-Relations
 Gilligan defines 'symptoms' as an awakening of the soul
 the purpose of a symptom, such as depression, or panic, might be to call a
person to seriously reexamine their life, to begin a process of reanimating
their life with new found purpose and intensity.
 . The therapist's job is to be there as "sponsor," to touch with love
whatever a person brings.