When I was invited by a faculty member at my Institute in California to volunteer to teach a correspondence course with inmates from a California state prison, I responded with a course on personal mythology using mythologist Joseph Campbell’s classic text, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. A notice to the inmates went out and five signed on. Now, 18 months later, I am grateful that I did not refuse her call.
In reading their essays, I discovered that one shared experience the inmates write about is that Campbell’s mythic narratives as well as his own reflections in Hero have given them a story in which to place their own woundedness within a larger frame. One student was attracted to Campbell before we began working together, through the Bill Moyers’ series, The Power of Myth. The course offering, he said, created an opportunity to explore Campbell further through guidance from the course’s structure and my writing meditations they responded to. But more importantly, many wrote that what they sought was a purpose in prison that the Hero as well as other courses encouraged and helped shape in them.
Resentment, hostility, a sustained anger and feeling out of control—all emotions that placed some of my students in prison initially--yielded to a search for meaning through rekindling a spiritual life they had left behind, or exploring the practice of Buddhism, or attending recovery programs on addiction. In their essays they expressed how Campbell’s stages in the hero’s journey illuminated their own histories wherein they either refused an earlier calling, or had listened to and assented to their revised calling within the confines of prison life. Readings in the Hero volume validated many of their choices.
One student in particular wrote of how his inability to forgive himself and others who misled him in life resulted in his imprisonment. He used the language of being turned into a monster through his unforgiving attitude. Reading Campbell, he saw with increased clarity his life path and realized that he could reauthor the plot of his story by using the stages of the hero’s journey: Departure, Initiation and Return. This template tempered his behavior and moderated his outbursts in prison.
Most dramatic, however, were those who admitted that Campbell’s authentic and compassionate prose softened them and taught them to write more deeply about their own self-annihilation and recovery. They also found meaningful parallels between the 12-step programs of recovery and Campbell’s stages of the hero’s journey. One student phrased it this way: “working with the 12-step program and Buddhist teachings, along with Campbell’s insights, helped me understand myself better and to live in a more peaceful, healthy direction.”
On one assignment I asked: “Where in your own life have you found yourself following the pattern Campbell lays out in “Departure, Initiation, Return?” Their profound, insightful and authentic responses to this mythical pattern opened each of them to their own personal myth. In a word that Campbell uses often in his writing, they discovered “correspondences” with their own story.
I in turn realized more fully how myths can be aspirational by offering students an ancient narrative that they grasped as universal but lived out with great personal particularity. Some mentioned that they were learning to write with more clarity as a result of studying Campbell’s own style of expression, especially his humanity and ability to connect to them.
Writing on the hero archetype consistently affirmed their change in life direction and reinforced their transformed life’s purpose. Two of them wrote that initially they reluctantly attended an AA meeting. Now they host them. One discovered that he had talents as an artist; he sent me one of his paintings to share this newly-found form of personal expression.
From this rich set of experiences, assisted directly by Campbell’s classic work, I became more aware of the power of myth to incite explorations into one’s own venture. I have also noticed that, yes, they are incarcerated-- some for life--but they are no longer imprisoned. By this I mean that imprisonment feeds the victim archetype, but within incarceration they located a level of freedom that sustains them. Incarceration is physical while imprisonment is psychological and mythic. Through reading and writing on sections of the Hero image, they envisioned their own narratives in a different, more complex light. Some remarked that in prison they found a level of freedom never experienced before, in part because they felt they had reclaimed parts of themselves heretofore buried.
While meditating on their personal myth, prompted by Campbell’s insights, they expressed how they discovered their basic goodness, that the mistakes they made, often accompanied by substance abuse, no longer defined them. They ceased totalizing their identity with their crime. Several admitted that assisting others in prison has gifted their lives with joy and a more generous direction. The Hero’s journey affirmed and further supported their own life’s direction, a greater self-awareness and the value of being in service to others.
Incarcerated, they nonetheless stepped out of their cocoon of self-imprisonment in anger and resentment. One student admitted that he began once more to love who he is and to connect with others in similar compassionate ways. This latter may be the most valuable consequence of their development and several faces of the hero played an instrumental role in achieving such self-acceptance.