This last weekend saw me attend the second module of my NLP Practitioner course. This module was lead by Peter Freeth (Excellerate) and we mainly covered anchoring and the monomyth. I’ll cover anchoring another time, right now I’m interested in yorping about the monomyth.
The term monomyth was coined by Joseph Campbell in his book Hero with a thousand faces. A tough book to read, Campbell’s point is that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years, all share a fundamental structure. Whether native indian, greek, roman, christian, far eastern, aboriginal or maori, the stories passed through thousands of generations all follow the same structure, adhering to the structure of the monomyth; a structure that seems to resonate with the human psyche.
In the monomyth, the hero starts in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unusual world of strange powers and events. If the hero accepts the call to enter this strange world, the hero must face tasks and trials, and may have to face these trials alone, or may have assistance. At its most intense, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help earned along the journey. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift or “boon.” The hero must then decide whether to return to the ordinary world with this boon. If the hero does decide to return, the hero often faces challenges on the return journey. If the hero is successful in returning, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world. The stories of Osiris, Moses, Buddha, and Christ, for example, follow this structure very closely.
The monomyth includes a number of stages, such as:
- AÂ call to adventure, which the hero has to accept or decline,
- AÂ road of trials, regarding which the hero succeeds or fails
- Achieving the goal or “boon,” which often results in important self-knowledge
- AÂ return to the ordinary world, again as to which the hero can succeed or fail, and finally
- Application of the boon in which what the hero has gained can be used to improve the world.
Campbell also suggests that the monomyth is supported by (effectively) Jungian archetypes; the wizard, the princess, character types that cross genre.
Many classic movies follow the monomyth structure. Most famous is Star Wars, but also consider The Matrix, Gladiator, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Harry Potter and many of the characters in Lord of the Rings.
The point of covering this on the course is the suggestion that we all receive the call to adventure, perhaps daily, and using the monomyth as a framework for people’s own personal journey can help to understand their behaviour, views of the world and where they are in their own story, if you like. An interesting idea I think.
January 6th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
[...] This was recommended to me by many people, so I picked it up on amazon. A fairly light read, concentrating mainly on plot and leaving description of people and places to the reader’s imagination. Essentially the story follows the monomyth structure, as an everyman gets his opportunity to follow his dream and become aware of the omens pointing him in the direction of that which he desires most - treasure buried near the great Pyramids in Egypt. [...]