The Hero
The one who goes into the dark and comes back.
The Hero: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The hero is the archetype of the ego’s struggle to win consciousness from the unconscious: the one who leaves home, faces the monster, is swallowed, and returns with something that renews the community. Jung’s Symbols of Transformation, the book over which he parted from Freud in 1912, is in large part a study of the hero and of what it called the battle for deliverance from the mother.
The miraculous birth, the threatened infancy, the fight with the dragon, and the hero’s sacrifice or death are among the motifs Jung traced across mythologies.
The Hero: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Gilgamesh, Heracles, Theseus, Perseus, Siegfried, Beowulf, Jonah, the knights of the Grail. Otto Rank’s The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1909) and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) traced the same pattern.
From the Sources
Jung writes that the myth of the hero is, as it appears to him, the myth of our own suffering unconscious, with its unquenchable longing for the deepest sources of our being.
“But the myth of the hero, however, is, as it appears to me, the myth of our own suffering unconscious, which has an unquenchable longing for all the deepest sources of our own being; for the body of the mother, and through it for communion with infinite life in the countless forms of existence.”
Dr. C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Part II, Chapter IV, 'The Unconscious Origin of the Hero'. Authorized translation, with introduction, by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916. The text, read in part
Jung writes that the hero is a hero because he sees in every difficulty of life a resistance to the forbidden treasure and fights it with a yearning that paralyses and kills the ordinary man.
“The hero is a hero because he sees in every difficulty of life resistance to the forbidden treasure, and fights that resistance with the complete yearning which strives towards the treasure, attainable with difficulty, or unattainable, the yearning which paralyzes and kills the ordinary man.”
Dr. C. G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido, Part II, Chapter VII, 'The Dual Mother Rôle' (on Hiawatha). Authorized translation, with introduction, by Beatrice M. Hinkle, M.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, “The Origin of the Hero” and “The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother”
- Joseph L. Henderson, “Ancient Myths and Modern Man,” in Man and His Symbols (1964)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Heroes and Tricksters
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Hero.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/hero.
Nearby in the alphabet: The Head: The seat of mind, and the oracle. The Heart: The seat of feeling, courage, and conscience. The Hexagram: Two triangles joined: fire and water in one. The Horse: Instinctive force, which carries.