Heroic hero

Heroic hero: scenario or stage - the story of one confusion.

The article was published in the journal “Jungian Analysis” No. 4 for 2011.

“As a rule, the life that most strongly influences a child is the life that his parents (and his parents’ ancestors) did not live… We are talking about a period of life that – let’s be clear – the parents shied away from and, if possible, used a kind of holy lie to do so.”
Carl Gustav Jung

First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues Evgeniya Zverinskaya and Olga Litvinenko for their assistance in writing this article.

You often hear the terms "heroic scenario" and "heroic ego" used interchangeably, or even interchangeably, but that's not quite true. More accurately, it's not true at all. I suggest we try to figure out which is which, connecting these thoughts to a clinical case. Our heroine will be a 12-year-old girl, and, to a certain extent, her mother.

Let's start with the "heroic scenario." Here's how this expression is understood in transactional analysis:

In transactional analysis, a script is a master plan for life, based on the basic life postulates, behavior patterns, values, etc., adopted with the help of parents. These are recurring patterns of behavior that confirm that life is just the way it is.

Scenario decisions are made based on the basic existential position (“I-You” communication) and the characteristics of parental programming.

Hero's Scenario . The existential position is "I'm good, you're bad." The second option is "I'm bad, you're good," but hidden behind a "mask of crisis." This is a covert suicide scenario, but with a strong, hidden command to "be useful," to "make others happy." For example, these are often rescuers, firefighters, and emergency room physicians—people who are "on fire" and risk their lives at work.

Parental instructions : "Be strong," "be first," "don't be a child, be an adult and responsible," "don't feel," "don't be yourself," "make others happy, not yourself," "be useful," "don't belong, don't get too close."

Driver that runs the script . “You must…”, “You should…”. ¹

From a clinical case report : “A mother and daughter came to the first appointment. They both sat on the edge of the sofa, as if they were made of stone. Their lack of facial expression was striking. Their hairstyles were also similar—both had short, neat, boyish haircuts. They were dressed very neatly, properly, and utterly boringly. “Not a single thing wrong.” The most common answer to questions was, “Everything is fine.” The mother is the older of two sisters; the daughter is also the older one, and she has a younger brother.

This is the first marriage for both of the girl's parents. They live with her mother's parents, who also own the apartment. The grandmother is a very domineering woman, and the client's mother is subordinate to her mother. The grandfather is busy with his own affairs, but if disturbed, he can be very harsh, punishing both children without discerning who is to blame. The grandmother demands unquestioning obedience. She is the Mistress. The client's father has very little family history—he works and is busy with his car. During one consultation, the mother began to cry a lot, recalling her grievances, and a lot of bitterness poured out. She said that her sister was braver and could stand up to her mother, but now lives separately. The bitter story of her first, failed love is still very much alive. The mother suffers from a lot of suppressed despair and a sense of hopelessness." ²

Notice how the psychologist presents the case: "A mother came to the first appointment with her daughter." You might think the mother would be in therapy, and in a sense, that's exactly what it would be. Moreover, in a sense, the mother came to the appointment with both her daughter and her mother. In other words, the psychologist's office is dominated by a "mother's world," in which the girl lives and from which she desperately needs to escape if she's to one day be able to live her own life. Imagine the enormity of this task! But if the girl doesn't escape, she, too, is doomed to live out the heroic scenario...

From Olga Litvinenko's working materials: "A female heroic scenario: 'The hunted housewife or a woman in the service of the family.'"

Motto : "The most important thing is to be needed and useful." "Put all your efforts into making sure everyone is happy."

Behavior . Homeliness, caring, fussiness, smoothing over rough edges, non-confrontational, unobtrusive, and if protest is allowed, it's passive-aggressive (crying alone, chronic illnesses, grumpy discontent, a passion for romantic TV series).

Parental commands : "Make others happy," "forget about yourself," "be content with little," "it's not you who's good, but your deeds."

Adaptation type : Dependent, obsessive.

The attitude of other family members . Condescending and indifferent, “they don’t give a damn.”

Thus, it turns out that our heroine’s mother is a person living a heroic scenario.

How is the symbol of the hero understood in analytical psychology? E. Samuels writes that "since ancient times, the symbol of ego-consciousness with which man most easily identified has been the hero... The hero's journey, described in myths and legends, 'signifies the renewal of light and, consequently, the rebirth of consciousness from darkness' (Jung)" (Samuels 1997). The Hero is an archetypal image of consciousness emerging from the depths of the unconscious. He is the one who fights and ultimately defeats the Dragon—first the maternal part, then the paternal part. John Beebe, following Jung, understands the Hero as a figure symbolizing the leading function of the ego (Bebe 2004). Erich Neumann speaks of the Hero stage as an archetypal stage of ego development (Neumann 1998).

From a clinical case report. The reason for consulting a psychologist was a persistent fever of 37°C (98.6°F), sometimes 37.3°C (99.8°F), following a cold a year earlier. The parents performed a full medical examination, but no pathology or inflammation was found.

According to her mother, our Heroine was always the perfect child: "We never argue," "there were never any visible signs of jealousy toward the youngest," though she never played with other children either. However, around age three, she would sometimes cause loud, scandalous scenes and even poop in her pants. Her mother, who had already returned to work by then, didn't pay much attention to these unpleasant behaviors. Her grandmother (her mother's mother) spent most of her time with the girl; her mother came home late, and on weekends, there were always a lot of chores. Her grandmother constantly kept the house tidy, loved it when her granddaughter obeyed, and hated it when she disobeyed and did things her own way. "Eat! Put it on!" – as if, if you don't tell a child what to do, they'll just take advantage of you. Of course, having grown up on commands, after age three, the girl became "a wonderful, obedient child." She never asked for anything, but she was afraid of any scary pictures, especially a drawing on the fence on the way to the park, which depicted a scary face. To stop the child from crying, she had to take a different route.

The first drawings in therapy were completely frozen: princesses, palaces, no movement, no dynamism. In the first drawing, the princess had a large hat on her head, covering her eyes and ears. She drew only with a pencil, without coloring. She used light pressure, and erased and redid a lot. She was always dissatisfied with her work, although she was a very good drawer. Among the most vivid drawings was an illustration for a fictitious story about a scary, evil, hungry young man. The most vivid and beautiful drawing was of a "reptile," a completely vile, incomprehensible creature. The girl herself was very pleased, and they discussed this reptile a lot.

In his work "Prisoner, Treasure, Hero, and the 'Anal' Stage of Development," Redfern considers the hero image as a compensation for feelings of normal dependence. The heroic state and style of ego consciousness are part of the process of growing up, and Redfern links the hero image with the child's active role in feeding and in making demands in general. "If we consider what the 'treasures' of the unconscious are, we see that they are the 'treasures' of incest, the 'treasures' of sadism and other negative pregenital impulses, the 'treasures' of all parts of the personality rejected and despised (as opposed to valued) by consciousness... Of course, these treasures must be transformed into acceptable forms, and this is usually the work performed by the hero" (quoted in Samuels 1997).

The age of "around three years" marks the peak of the anal stage of psychosexual development. The ego makes its first heroic attempts at independence. Our Heroine, too, "sometimes created loud, scandalous scenes, could poop in her pants," her "untimely defecation, combined with a refusal to perform it at a time or under circumstances desired by others, takes on the character of aggressive opposition" (J. Bergeret 2001), but this "aggressive opposition" is suppressed by her grandmother no less aggressively, and the girl becomes an obedient, docile child. Rebellion is suppressed, the heroic part of the ego is repressed into the unconscious. The "ugly face" is a distant memory; there are no attempts to engage with it—to ridicule, spit, throw a snowball—in short, to engage in a struggle and win. Everything is frozen, there is no movement. But our Heroine is 12 years old – a time of “prepuberty,” “during which all existing drives are equally loaded” (J. Bergeret 2001). The primary psychological task that develops within the personality is adaptation to the new conditions caused by physical transformation. And then the temperature bursts to the surface of the body, slightly higher than normal, slightly hotter, like droplets of lava from a volcano about to awaken. Evidence of turbulent repressed processes – “… the child becomes a battlefield of overwhelming feelings of anger, disappointment, and isolation, until it reaches a state of ‘splitness.’ He will grow up with what is called a weak ego, being incapable of reflection… the individual must build artificial defenses against real feelings” (Lambert 2004) – the princess hat covers the eyes and ears. Later in therapy, when the girl begins to trust her psychologist a little, this layer will rise, and the drawings will show the “reptile” and the “scary, angry, hungry young man.”

From a clinical case report. Dream: “My mother and I arrived by train to a clearing in the forest, surrounded by forest on all sides. A dead-end railway siding. There was a carousel and a large table, as well as many one-year-old children trying to climb onto the table (without their parents). The clearing was surrounded by disgusting yellow mushrooms. My mother and I went into the forest, took two steps, and got lost. Mushrooms everywhere, rotten, with worms. Disgusting. We crawled a bit, got tired, and sat down on a snag. Darkness. Our eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and suddenly saw that we were in an old abandoned house. Those weren’t trees, but furniture. Nasty mushrooms were growing. I looked out the window and saw that the house was on top of a cliff, and the cliff was in the sea. “What should we do?” And then the alarm clock rang. Girl’s comment: “I really love mushrooms. I love going to the forest with my dad to pick mushrooms together. "And here, in the dream, they're vile and disgusting"... "An even more terrifying incident happened at the dacha, when my dad and I went into the forest to pick mushrooms and got lost. We went far away. I asked, 'Dad, how are we going to get out of here?' And my dad said, 'Don't be afraid.' And then there was the swamp, an unfamiliar place. I was scared, what if the wolves attack, or we drown in the swamp. But my dad led us out."

Marie-Louise von Franz wrote that the forest often acts as a symbol of the physical unconscious, just as a house does, while the sea and ocean symbolize the collective unconscious (M.-L. von Franz 2007). In this forest, in a clearing, there are many one-year-old children trying to climb onto a large table – why? To be eaten? Many children – many rotten yellow mushrooms…

From a clinical case report. The most stressful moment during the first and several subsequent meetings was caused by a painting of "fish" hanging in the psychologist's office. It depicts a pair of fish, each with large, sad eyes, as a snack, against a yellow background, with a mug of either water or beer behind it. The girl couldn't look at the painting.

Two children in a family - two fish on a yellow background.

Mother and daughter crawl through the darkness—completely absorbed by the unconscious, unable even to stand. But the eyes become accustomed to the darkness, learning to see in the dark—"...another part rises symbolically as... 'higher masculinity': the head, the symbol of consciousness, with the eye as its directing organ—and with this the ego now identifies itself" (Neumann 1998). It becomes possible to see "that we are in an old abandoned house. These are not trees, but furniture." Perhaps this old house is Rod's unconscious; the trees have been cut down and the furniture made from them. “I was alone in an unfamiliar two-story house. It was ‘my home.’ I found myself on the top floor, a sort of apartment with beautiful old rococo furniture… Descending the stairs, I found myself on the ground floor. Everything here was much older… I approached a heavy door and opened it. I discovered a stone staircase that led to the basement… I guessed that the walls had been built by the Romans… I examined the stone floor slabs: in one of them, I found a ring… I went down and found myself in a low cave…” (Jung 1998), thus Jung first encountered what he later called the “collective unconscious.”

She looked out the window and saw that the house was on top of a cliff, and the cliff itself was in the sea. From the window, from the clifftop, she saw our Heroine exploring the patriarchal space, the world of the Fathers. But the dream devalues ​​the masculine, so far it's only "The clearing is surrounded by vile yellow mushrooms... Mushrooms everywhere, rotten, worm-infested. Disgusting... Nasty mushrooms grow." Here it's appropriate to agree with Freud that "the mushroom is undoubtedly a symbol of the penis; there are mushrooms that, because of their undeniable resemblance to the male organ, have been classified as Phallus impudicas" (Z. Freud 1999). The girl's consciousness balances the picture, telling stories about trips to the forest with her father to pick mushrooms, about getting lost in the woods, "And Dad said, 'Don't be afraid.' And then there was the swamp, an unfamiliar place. She was scared, what if the wolves attack, or we drown in the swamp. But Dad led her out." The strengthening heroic part of the ego desperately needs paternal support.

In this dream there is a development in the movement from the “railway dead end” in the forest and the “nasty yellow mushrooms” to the top of the cliff and the ability to see, a movement from the “lower” chthonic masculinity of matriarchy to the “higher” masculinity of patriarchy.

From a clinical case report. Dream: “I was walking with a girl near the garages behind the house. It was dusk. Two men jumped out from behind the house—in half-masks, with guns, and scary faces. They started shooting. But I only got hit in the wrists and leg, right through. Terribly scared. A woman came out of the house, and they killed her, and some man, too. They started chasing after us, shooting, throwing Molotov cocktails. They almost caught up with us, but I woke up. I was terrified that they would kill me. I've never been so scared in my life.”

"...the male member is symbolically replaced... by those that have the capacity to penetrate and wound, i.e., by all kinds of sharp weapons, knives, daggers, spears, sabers, as well as firearms: rifles, pistols, and a revolver very similar in shape. In girls' nightmares, being pursued by a man with a knife or firearm plays a major role" (Freud 1999).

The dreamer's ego receives wounds to her hands and feet from the Terrible Man, who "functions not only as a principle that disintegrates consciousness, but even more so as a principle that fixes consciousness in the wrong direction. It is he who hinders the further development of the ego and maintains the old system of consciousness. He is the destructive instrument of matriarchy… and finally, he represents the power of patriarchy, as the Terrible Father" (Neumann 1998). The wounds to her hands are associated with the wounds received during the crucifixion, with the wounds of Jesus. Our heroine seems to pass from the World of Mothers to the World of Fathers, and at the same time, as if she does not pass. She is stuck between worlds.

Neumann identifies two types of stuckness—patriarchal castration—for the Hero during the transition from patriarchy to the next stage. These are enslavement and possession.

In the case of enslavement, the ego remains completely dependent on the father as the representative of collective norms. The "higher" spiritual part of the ego is lost. Respect for the old law stifles the inner voice, preventing access to the creative part and hearing the unconscious.

In possession, the earthly part of the ego is lost—"destruction through the spirit." The "eternal son," the "eternal revolutionary," identifies with the hero who slays the dragon, but fails to recognize his kinship with the divine father. He fears becoming a father and assuming power, because "taking power" means, in due course, passing it on to a future son and ruler. "...with age, the eternal revolutionary becomes neurotic, unprepared to behave as befits his age and unaccepting of his limitations" (Neumann 1998).

Isn't this story of enslavement and possession very similar to how the heroic scenario is understood in transactional analysis?

And then it turns out that the heroic part of the ego helps develop consciousness, strengthening it in the struggle with both the maternal and paternal parts of the dragon: “the encounter of the ego with transpersonal factors creates personality… For this, the hero serves as a model; his achievements, his sufferings illustrate what will later befall each individual” (Neumann 1998), while the heroic scenario is getting stuck in the paternal (cultural, social, etc.) side of this dragon. “…If a person allows his libido to become ‘fixated’ on his childhood environment and does not free it for higher purposes, he falls under the spell of an unconscious compulsion. Wherever he is, the unconscious will recreate the infantile environment, projecting its complexes, reproducing again and again – with complete disregard for his vital interests – the same dependence and lack of freedom that previously characterized his relationship with his parents. His future is no longer in his own hands… (Jung 2007).

From the clinical case report: She became more mature and self-confident. A few sessions before the end of therapy, the young Heroine began dressing more modernly, in a way she liked, and her mother supported her in this. Her clothes acquired a new "note," an attempt to create her own style. The girl began growing her hair out in a different style. The family situation remained unchanged, although her mother spoke frequently with her grandmother, who seemed to be putting less pressure on the girl. When the psychologist suggested therapy, the mother herself honestly admitted that she was afraid and not ready.

Our story begins with “Mom came to her first appointment,” and ends with “Mom, in response to the psychologist’s suggestion to go to therapy, honestly admitted that she was afraid and not ready,” and we can assume that a lot of work has been done in therapy if a woman whose development is stuck in the transition from the matriarchal stage of development to the patriarchal, living out a heroic scenario, admits that she can move forward, that everything depends only on her, but now she is “afraid and not ready.”

Some theoretical clarification . Erich Neumann understands the masculine and feminine principles as archetypes, not simply characteristics associated with gender. Femininity is associated with the unconscious, while masculinity provokes a struggle for the emergence of consciousness in both sexes. They precede the differentiation of the Father and Mother archetypes.

Matriarchy represents a psychic situation in which the unconscious and the feminine dominate, while the conscious and the masculine have not yet achieved sufficient independence, stability and self-confidence.

Patriarchy, in Neumann's concept, has nothing to do with the sociological law stemming from male supremacy. It denotes "the dominance of the archetypal masculine consciousness, separating the systems of consciousness and the unconscious, which is established relatively firmly in opposition to the unconscious and independently of it" (Neumann, cited in Liar). Western women are interested in this confrontation if they wish to become the creators of their own destiny. The goal of patriarchy is the advancement of the individual, the "liberation of the positive feminine element, separating it from the terrifying image of the Great Mother" (Neumann, cited in Liar), in both men and women. For women, this process culminates in the formation of the Self and the Shadow, while the male goal is the liberation of the Anima (D. Liar 2007).

Thus, coming to the end of this article, we can conclude:

• At the heroic stage , as a stage of ego development, firstly, through confrontations with both external and internal forces, a heroic part of the ego is formed, capable of defending the individual's values ​​and independence. This part will subsequently become active during times of crisis. Secondly, experiencing the heroic stage is an intense, complex process, filled with pain, fears, and depressive experiences, but it is always about development, about progress.
• The heroic scenario occurs when the ego is at the heroic stage of development, but, due to its unpreparedness (weakness, infantilism), it cannot withstand the stress of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy (in the sense of Neumann's theory) and becomes stuck in a constant struggle. If this struggle is rejected and unrecognized, it is patriarchal castration (enslavement). If the ego is "flooded" by the struggle and refuses to acknowledge everyday reality, it is "possession." In other words, the heroic scenario is a developmental arrest. Essentially, the "heroic scenario" is the Isaac complex, as understood by Erich Neumann (Neumann 1998).

Jung's epigraph states that children are strongly influenced by those parts of their parents' lives that they "shirked." This is true. But by experiencing these parts, by deciding on what their parents didn't, children often move their parents forward, and a powerful intra-family process begins. I think we can reflect on the Heroic Part of the Family here, but that's a topic for another article.

Literature

1. C.G. Jung, Conflicts of the Child's Soul, M, Canon, 2004
2. E. Samuels Jung and the Post-Jungians M, CheRo, 1997
3. D. Bibi Understanding consciousness through the theory of psychological types http://grap-kz.info/library/bibi_tipy.htm
4. E. Neumann, The Origin and Development of Consciousness. Moscow, Reflebook, Wackler, 1998
5. J. Bergeret, Psychoanalytic Pathopsychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 2001
6. K. Lambert Analysis, Recovery and Individuation Perm, Janus, 2004
7. M.L. Von Franz Cat "Class", M., 2007
8. C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Lvov, Initiative, 1998
9. Z. Freud, Introduction to Psychoanalysis. St. Petersburg, Aletheia, St. Petersburg, 1999
10. C.G. Jung Symbols of Transformation Moscow, AST Publishing House, 2007
11. D. Liar Child Jungian Analysis M., Cogito, 2008

Notes

¹ From personal correspondence with Olga Litvinenko, a psychologist practicing new solution therapy and transactional analysis.

² Clinical case provided by analytical psychologist Evgeniya Zverinskaya.