Virginia Press Journal 1 - 1/20/2026 - On Campbell and Freudian Concepts of Gender

     As I forced my way through Campbell's heavy chunk of text, characteristics of gender essentialism seemed to escape from between the lines like fleas at every opportunity. Universal concepts such as birth and death obviously must contain some mention these biological realities, but gratingly Campbell seems to fixate endlessly on his own cultural conceptions of male and female. Multiple others also expressed this frustration when brought up in discussion, and some even reported it made them unable to finish the assigned reading. Did anyone else struggle so thoroughly with this man? 

     These understandings, including the repeated references to Freud's musings on psychosexual frustration, oftentimes make the reading absolutely agonizing. I don't blame them! In the section on Woman as the Temptress, to make his point about how Heroes must gather control on the simultaneously beautiful and ugly of the world, Campbell literally describes how woman is to be life giving and man is to be her master. Jesus!!! Abstract concepts of feminine and masculine simply are not concrete or universal. Every culture has their own symbols and attached meanings in regards to gender and despite his global scope of mythology, his utilization of these stories tends to be in service of his own ethnocentric view. 

     This is not to say that Campbell fails to adequately describe the content and his philosophical musings, but he does fail to address his cultural preconceptions in order to be even slightly sensitive. Maybe in some ways this can be attributed to the time period, as the scientific fact of the day simply was this sexist, but when deeply interpreting the experiences of humanity it is absurd to discount fifty-percent of all human lives lived! This is an interesting snapshot into the way our cultural interpretation of symbols can change so drastically in seventy-five years; what once may have been a perfectly acceptable or even respectful literary device is basically Draconian now. While the archetypal depths Campbell addresses are universal, the symbols he uses to explain them are not, thus the imprecision of storytelling and vicarious experiences. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kip Redick Example of a blog post 1

  I just had a few thoughts on what "wilderness of the soul" meant. In class we discussed that it meant uncharted territory within yourself and I thought of Freud's Iceberg analogy where most of the hidden unconscious is the part of the iceberg that remains underwater. There had always been a debate between psychology and religion in regards to what exactly a soul is. Some would say that the soul is the consciousness of the human brain, while others argue it is something spiritual linking us to God. But in response to the wilderness aspect, I do wonder how much of ourselves do we not actually know? I have always thought of myself as someone who knows exactly who I am, but since this class discussion I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong- I am not upset about this, but I am certainly more curious. It's almost exciting to think about what else I could learn about myself, but also slightly nerve-wracking. What if I learn something new that I don't ...
Read more

Kip Redick Introduction

 Welcome to the Heroes and Mystics blog for 2026. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). . Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The studen...
Read more

Kip Redick Example of a blog post 2

  Page 4 Michael Taussig would suggest Juan's understanding of the meaning of a place emerges out of the process of an imitation of all the “differences” that we discern there. We mimic (in language and action) the full range of sounds, movements, and other sensory perceptions that come to us from the more than human world.” It’s hard to put a place that strikes us as sublime into mere words; we can try to describe it as a feeling and try to put language to that feeling, but sometimes the feeling of the beauty of nature or the power of a sacred space is too big to try to translate or make sense of. Would every place and experience be subjective, and would the discourse be the same? Would the mountain top make me feel the same as another? Or does my personal experience with the natural world and divine keep it intimate/ unique, or would my experience be relatable enough? The author uses the messiness, ambiguity, and mystery of people's deeply personal experience o...
Read more