The Hero with a Thousand Faces | Themes

The Hero with a Thousand Faces Themes

Universality of Archetypal Experience

This is one of Campbell's core themes, the contention that all humanity is linked by certain universalities - birth, maturing, experience of a mother or father figure, experience of sexuality, experience of aging and death. He first explores this theme by linking mythic stories and the various aspects thereof with psychological analysis. At several points throughout the book, for example, he uses dream imagery taken from actual case studies of individuals undergoing dream analysis as examples of how dream imagery (i.e., a manifestation of an individual's psychological/spiritual state) is similar, in both manifestation and meaning, to that of mythology.

Campbell further contends that this universal connection between individual members of the human race is also made manifest in the similarities of all the stories of all the cultures of all the world (fairy tales, myths, dreams, fictional narrative, etc.) that explore these universalities. He supports this contention by drawing parallels...
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