What we seek in visible human form is not man, but the superman, the hero or god, that

quasi-human being who symbolizes the ideas, forms, and forces which grip and mould the
soul. --Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, para. 259
The hero symbolizes the ideas, forms, forces of the soul, expressing the trials and tribulations of the
soul, as encountered upon the path to Self-realization. While we often think of the hero in terms of
idealized images of triumph and transcendence, getting at the soul of the hero takes a more subtle
analysis.
At the time that Jung wrote Symbols of Transformation, Freud and Jung were engaged in a stormy
debate regarding the nature of psychic life, each seeing the psyche from a different perspective. Their
two perspectives later formed two basic viewpoints on psychic life: the egoic and the transpersonal.
Freuds understanding was focused on the development of the ego, reflecting ego and its 'object
cathexis'. Jungs psychology was focused on archetypal elements, reflecting the shift from the external
world of objects to an internal world of object representations.
For Freud, the notion of object cathexis described the investment of psychic energy in an 'object'.
Calling something an 'object' was a means of describing someone or something to which libido was
directed. For Freud, libido was primarily sexual and the object was a sexual object.
With this perspective in mind, a close disciple of Freud wrote an analysis on the Hero. The disciple was
Otto Rank and the book was titled, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero.
Rank was one of the first analysts to note that the hero myth reflects a uniform disposition of the
human mind and the manner of its manifestation. His analysis found that some time between two and
three thousand years ago, the prominent civilized nations (Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Hindus,
Persians, Greeks, Romans) began to glorify their national heroes.
Rank's understanding of the hero myth emphasizes an unlikely hero who defeats a powerful oppressor.
As a Freudian, Rank believed that the hero's defeat of the oppressor expressed the child's desire
to defeat an overpowering parent, at least in fantasy. Here, the hero is an ego image, which expresses
the ego in relation to its objects (the parents).
Rank's work offered an important understanding of the hero. Taking into account Rank's perspective on
the hero allows us to gain a broader perspective on Jung's free associations as offered in Symbols of
Transformation. We might say that there are two basic perspectives of consciousness, leading to
divergent analyses on the nature of heroic consciousness.
The first perspective of consciousness is transcendence, from transcendere, 'to go beyond.' In analytic
terms, transcendence represents the ego in relation to the object world. The ego transcends, or goes
beyond its 'self' (as the subjective moment), making contact with the world of 'objects'. Rank's analysis
of the hero, speaks to the transcendent aims of psychic life. First, in terms of the developing ego and its
relation to the object world. Second, in terms of the ego's desire to rival and defeat the oppressor,
representing the ego's fantasy that it might transcend the oppressive object. Third, in terms of the ability
of the ego to adapt to reality.
The other perspective of consciousness is immanence, from Latin immanere 'to dwell in, remain in'. In
analytic terms, immanence represents a relation to the inner world, that which 'dwells within'. The ego
'dwells within' its 'self' making contact with both subjective experience and the transpersonal
representations that arise there in.
Of course, these two perspectives are not mutually contradictory, but form a primary dialectic of
consciousness. Carl Jung was one of the few Western theorists to thoughtfully navigate both the

transcendent and immanent dimensions of psychic life.

In Symbols of transformation, Carl Jung makes the shift from outer object cathexis to an inner
subjective experience. This is a significant stage in the process of Self-realization. Jung's inner
subjective experience takes the form of active imagination, giving rise to an explosion of ideas. Jung
himself commented on the powerful transformation that was taking place as he wrote the book, when
he later said:
"it was the explosion of all those psychic contents which could find no room, no breathing
space, in the constricting atmosphere of Freudian psychology. It was an attempt, only
partially successful, to create a wider setting for medical psychology and to bring the whole
of the psychic phenomena within its purview."
Jung was offering a view outside the predominant one set forth in Freud's medical psychology. Jung
was seeking 'the whole of the psychic phenomena'. Jung's free-form seeking was displayed uncensored
in Symbols of Transformation, offering insights that were significant and lasting. Jung says that these
early insights,
"laid down a programme to be followed for the next few decades of my life."
In his chapter titled, Origins of the Hero, Jung begins his inquiry in a dialectical manner, presenting the
typical uncertainties regarding the inner world: Does contact with the inner world lead to neurosis? Is
the inner world related to schizophrenia? Are inner objects only for those who lack the love and
cathexis for outer objects? Should we designate such realms to the mad, and to the mediums and
psychics?
With these questions, a clear hypothesis begins to form: If we remove the cathexis from external
objects, libido will begin to flow back toward the source.
Jung provide a few hints at the emerging idea:
Just as the libido may be compared to a steady stream pouring its waters into the world of
reality, so a resistance, dynamically considered, resembles, not a rock that juts up from the
river-bed and causes the stream to flow round it, but a flowing back towards the source.
(para. 253)
or put another way:
the lack of external objects... forces the individual to seek substitute in his own psyche.
(para 253)
Jung then offers another hypothesis: introversion leads to visionary experience. He says:
The visionary phenomena produced by the first stage of introversion can be classed among
the well-known symptoms of hypnagogic vision. They provide the basis for the actual
visions or "self-perceptions" of the libido in the form of symbol. (para 256
This is significant for our understanding of both the hero myth and the path toward Self-realization.
Please allow me to diverge for a moment from our main path, so as to elucidate the nature of these
"self-perceptions".
In Western culture, the dominant mode of consciousness is cathexis to the outer world of objects. In
Eastern religion, the cathexis is toward the inner world, to such an extent that the outer world is
perceived as Samsra ("a wandering through"). Engaging in eastern meditation by its very nature shifts

the cathexis from outer to inner. This in turn may bring forth "self-perceptions". In spiritual
communities, there is some debate as to whether these "self-perceptions" are good or bad, helpful or a
hindrance. Jung provides an insight: these inner experiences mark a shift in consciousness from outer
to inner cathexis.
It is quite fitting that Carl Jung associates a shift to the inner world with the image of the Hero. This is
certainly not the hero that we commonly think of in Western society. A much more common
interpretation of the hero myth is a standard path of mythological adventure: separation--initiation-return.
In Campbell's telling, "the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow
boons on his fellow man" (1949, emphasis added). This is a more transcendent interpretation. Jung's
interpretation appears as an inner and subtle mirror to this outer interpretation. We have separation-initiation--return; yet, the return is not to our fellow man, but to our Self. Here we have a more
immanent interpretation. Of course, these two paths and two interpretations are not mutually exclusive,
but form a dialectic of the Self.
Let us read a few passages from Jung's Origins of the Hero (a chapter in Symbols of
Transformation). Jung opens his discussion on the hero with an analogy. Jung says:
The finest of all symbols of the libido is the human figure, conceived as a demon or hero.
Here the symbolism leaves the objective, material realm of astral and meteorological
images and takes on human form, changing into a figure who passes from joy to sorrow,
from sorrow to joy, and, like the sun, now stands high at the zenith and now is plunged into
darkest night, only to rise again in new splendor as the sun, by its own motion and in
accordance with its own inner law, climbs from morn till noon, crosses the meridian and
goes its downward way towards evening, leaving its radiance behind it, and finally plunges
into all-enveloping night, so man sets his course by immutable laws and, his journey over,
sinks into darkness, to rise again in his children and begin the cycle anew. The symbolic
transition from sun to man is easily made... (CW 5, para 251)
In the solar myth, the hero is likened to the Sun: the sun aims toward the zenith, reaches its astral aim,
and then plunges into the depths of the night sea, only to rise again. Jung adds:
The sun comparison can easily be taken in this sense: the heroes are like the wandering sun
from which it is concluded that the myth of the hero is a solar myth. It seems to us, rather,
that he is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of its
unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness.
The sun here is a "self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of its unquenched and
unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness."
Jung says : "heroes are like the wandering suns". From the perspective of Self-realization, we are like
little suns, wandering-- seeking to quench our desire for the supreme Sun, as the 'light of
consciousness'.
And how might such a desire be quenched? A little further on, Jung provides an answer:
"it is the longing to attain rebirth through a return to the womb, and to become immortal
like the sun."
Jung goes on to provide some more archetypal images of libido; we see images of the fire and phallus.
In animal terms: the lion, the eagle and the ram. In human terms: Phanes the first-born in Greek

mythology; and Agni the first-born fire God in Hindu mythology. These symbols represent the creative
instinct of psychic life: heroic images of consciousness in libidinal form.
Jung is making some crucial steps in the journey to Self-realization. First, he is moving from the outer
literal world, with its 'object cathexis' to an inner world of symbols and imagination. Second, he is
beginning to symbolize the nature of consciousness: as light, sun, fire, lion, eagle, ram, phallus. Third,
he is addressing our desire (as little suns) for union with source (the supreme Sun, as light of
consciousness). And finally, he is showing us the path of accomplishment: rebirth through the womb.
But how shall we accomplish this sacred (and heroic) task of rebirth through the womb? Jung provides
no easy answer.
If we were to meet the wise man along the path, he might say something like this: "Is quite clear that
you can never obtain rebirth from a literal womb; so, seek rebirth from the symbolic womb."
At this juncture, we don't necessarily know too much of what we are truly seeking in this heroic
journey. What we do know is that we are seeking, and that we are instinctually drawn to seek, to always
seek. It was Jung's mentor, Sigmund Freud, who first postulated that libido always seeks an object.
Freud postulated that libido has four aspects: pressure, source, aim and an object (1905). In other
words, the subject instinctually seeks an object. This we know.
With this insight, the question of psychoanalysis then became: What is the object of libido? The aim of
the libido varies with different theories. For the Freudians, the object is always a pleasure fulfilling
object, an object in the real world. Most specifically: "the phallus seeks the womb".
In Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality (1924), Sandor Ferenczi puts forth the idea that men seek to regress
to the womb during the sex act. It is in the womb that men seek reunion and rebirth. Jung has also said
as much, in his commentary regarding the "Australian bushmen [performing] a sort of hieros gamos
with the earth" (para 215).
Jung saw that on a biological level libido seeks a physical object, while on a psychical level libido may
seek something beyond the world of physical objects-- a symbolic object.
This is a move from literal, physical seeking of the womb to a symbolic seeking of the womb; a move
from outer object cathexis to inner. An encounter with the inner womb is no small achievement on the
hero's journey... indeed, it is the true right of passage.
Playing with symbolic nature of psychic life, Jung offers his readers a cryptic inscription, as found on
an old Roman inscription:
sun = phallus, moon = vessel (womb)"
The symbolic womb is sublime. We might call it a cosmic womb. For its light is a cosmic light, likened
to the light of the moon. It can never be represented fully, and it is thus veiled in archetypal images and
symbols, known only through dreams and imagination. Kant's words on the sublime might be of aid in
this regard:
"The feeling of the sublime is, therefore, at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the
inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its
estimation by reason, and a simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from this very
judgement of the inadequacy of the greatest faculty of sense being in accord with ideas of
reason, so far as the effort to attain to these is for us a law" (1964).
The sublime brings forth at once a feeling of displeasure and of pleasure. Being beyond reason, relation
to the sublime is felt to be a breach in the laws of psychic life. Or, as Freud might say, there is a super

ego injunction against such things. But Jung, like any good hero, was destined to free himself of the
laws and mandate of the oppressor.
For the spiritual hero, the inner womb is the source of rebirth and rejuvenation. Never easy to find, the
inner womb is veiled in hieroglyphic symbols and forms: it is the very thing, das ding, which hides up
the cosmic mother's skirt.
Jung represented this inner womb in relation to Goethe's 'realm of the mothers.' In fact, Jung ends the
chapter on the hero with an extended quotation from Goethe's Faust, speaking of the realm of the
mothers:
Here, take this key.
..............
The key will smell the right place from all others:
Follow it down, it leads you to the Mothers.
Jung says that "heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge
which never finds its object of nostalgia for the lost mother" (para 299, emphasis added).
As Jung notes, Goethe understood the dynamic play between the hero and the realm of the mothers to
be the 'Eternal Mind's eternal recreation.' To this, Jung adds:
"The 'realm of the Mothers' has not a few connections with the womb (CW5, para 182)."
Later in Symbols of Transformation, Jung's interpretation of the inner womb becomes clear: the realm
of the mothers, the cosmic womb, is a symbol of the collective unconscious.
With this penetrating insight, analytical psychology is born-- and the goal of analysis emerges as rebirth
through contact with the unconscious dimensions of psychic life.
Or, said another way, Jung's heroic journey aims to bring the light of consciousness (i.e.the ego) into
fructifying marriage with the inner womb (i.e. the unconscious). The hero enacts a sort of cosmic
union, as hieros gamos, moving ever closer toward wholeness and integration.
We may also assume that such a hero has a few boons to bestow on his fellow man.
References:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Carl Jung, Cw 5, Symbols of Transformation (in US Pubic Domain, first published 1912)
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement (1790)
Otto Rank, Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1914)
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

Footnote:
1. Jung's work on Symbols of Transformation provides an extensive analysis of the fantasies of a
Miss Frank Miller. At the time of writing his book Jung thought that Miss Miller might be in the
"prodromal (initial) stages of schizophrenia," although this theory ended up being incorrect.
Jung later acknowledged that he was attempting to understand the nature of his own psyche.
Read more: from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_the_Unconscious
This post was updated from its original form on 11/12/ 2015. Please note that comments may or may
not reflect the new form.