Segal-Joseph Campbells Theory of Myth

Joseph Campbell's Theory of MythThe Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion by Joseph CampbellReview by: Robert A. SegalThe San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Autumn 1987), pp. 5-12Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of The C.G. Jung Institute of San FranciscoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jung.1.1987.7.4.5 .

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The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal Volume 7, Number 4 1987

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Joseph Campbell's Theory of Myth

Joseph Campbell. The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and asReligion. New York, Alfred van der Marck Editions, 1986.

Reviewed by Robert A. Segal

[This essay was, in an earlier draft, in the hands of the Editorof the Library Journa1 when Joseph Campbe11' s swi ft fi na 1 ill nessbecame known. I have decided to let it be published now after hisdeath even though it is often critical because I think Campbell'swork deserves an honest response. I would not have given it so muchstudy if I did not think Campbell's work important and itslimitations instructive.]

No one in thi s generati on has done more than Joseph Campbe11 to revi veinterest in myth. Numerous others have devoted themselves to analyzing myths,but Campbell devoted himself to resurrecting them, to inspiring persons to"1 i ve by" them. Because 1i vi ng by myths nevertheless requi res understandi ngthem, Campbell not only collected myths but also worked out a theory of theirorigin, function, and above all meaning. That theory is closer to Jung's thanto anyone else's, but it is really Campbell's own.

It is in Campbell's theory of myth that I am interested. As a student ofreligious studies, I am especially interested ;n his view of the relationshipbetween myth and religion. Because Campbell's most recently published book,The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, is more a restatement than either a revisionor an expans i on of his 1i fe long approach to myth, I wi 11 use it both toreconstruct and to assess his theory. I have discussed Campbe11's approach at1ength ; n my new book on h; m (Joseph Campbell: An Introduct ion. New York,Garland Publishing, 1987). Here I will focus on the basic issues.

As in his other writings, so in Inner Reaches: Campbell's viewfluctuates. At times he argues that the meaning of myth is universal ratherthan local. Lambasting ancient Israelites and others for failing to recognizethe uni versa1 meani ng of thei r myths (see pp. 32-34, 43-44), he contrastsparochial Biblical prophets to the American Indian Black Elk, whom he calls Itatrue prophet, who knew the difference between his ethnic [i.e., local] ideasand the elementary [i.e., universal] ideas that they enclose, between ametaphor and its connotation, between a tribal myth and its metaphysicalimport. 1I (p. 34) In his dismissal of the local meaning Campbell is likethose quasi-Jungians who stop at amplification--for instance, contributors tothe magazine Parabola. But he is unlike Jung himself, who merely begins withamplification and with it seeks the specific meaning of a myth for theindividual or culture whose myth it is.

Other times, however, Campbell asserts that the meaning of myth is localas well as universal. (See pp. 11-13, 99-100):




In his attention to the local expression of the universal meaning of mythCampbell is like Jung.

When Campbell praises Black Elk for distinguishing "between a tribal mythand its metaphysical import" (p. 34), he is clearly deeming the referent ofmyth cosmic. But when he argues that outer space is only a projection of innerspace, the referent is entirely psychological. For example, of the ascents toheaven described in the Bible he says: "••• where those bodies went was notinto outer space, but into inner space." (p. 31) At still other times thereferent of myth for Campbe11 is both metaphys i ca 1 and psycho1ogi ca 1: ".the figurations of myth are metaphorical (as dreams normally are not) in twosenses simultaneously, as bearing (1) psychological, but at the same time 12)metaphysical, connotations." (p. 56)

To whatever degree the mean i ng of myth for Campbe11 is uni versa 1, themeaning is doubly universal: not only do symbols in myths always refer touniversal archetypes, but archetypes in turn always refer to either the cosmosas a who1e or the psyche in everyone-ei ther to "outer space" or to "i nner. "Here Campbell's view differs incontestably from Jung's. For Jung, archetypesdo not refer to someth i ng else but are the referent i tse1f • For Campbell,archetypes refer to something else, and it, not archetypes, gives myths theirmeaning. Indeed, the cosmic or psychological referent gives archetypes theirmeani ng--the reverse of Jung' s vi ew. In fact, by "archetypes" Campbe11, 1i keNorthrop Frye, often means similarities themselves rather than any entitiesaccounting for the similarities. The only difference between archetypes andsymbols would, then, be that the similarities called archetypes are broader andmore fundamental than the ones found in symbols.

Whether myth refers to the cosmos or the psyche, its meani ng and, more,message are for Campbell uniformly mystical: myth not only assumes butoutright preaches the oneness of all things. (See pp. 110-114.) Metaphysically, not.on ly is there an unknown part of the cosmos--the part eventua11ydiscovered by Campbell's hero--but it and the known part prove to be identical.(A discovery of this k-ind occurs at the end of Return of the Jedi, a filminspired by Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces; New York, Pantheon, 1949.)Psychologically, not only is there an unknown part of the psyche, but it andthe known part turn out to be one. Indeed, the cosmos and the psychethemselves turn out to be one. Outer space is now identical with inner spacerather than the project i on of it: ". • •outer and inner space are the same."(p. 28) The unity of all things is temporal as well as ontological: allthings not only are essentially one but also inevitably return to theirprimordial, undifferentiated state. (See pp. 34-39.) This mystical unity of

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Such a recognition of two aspects, a universal and a local, in theconstitution of religions everywhere clarifies at one stroke thosecontroversies touching eternal and temporal values, truth andfalsehood, which forever engage theologians ••• The first task ofany systematic comparison of the myths and religions of mankindshould therefore be (it seemed to me) to identify these universals •• • and as far as possible to interpret them; and the second taskthen shou1d be to recogni ze and interpret the vari ous 1oca 11 y andhistorically conditioned transformations of the metaphorical imagesthrough which these universals have been rendered. (pp. 11, 99)

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The di fference here between Campbell and Jung cou 1d not be more stark.

If the demise of Biblical mythology began in the twelfth century, sciencecannot be the cause. If science is nevertheless the cause, Campbell is sayingthat prior to science the Bible worked mythologically even though it was takenliterally. Campbell certainly assumes that the stories that came to form theBible worked literally for both ancient Israelites and early Christians.Conversely, Campbell especially in Hero says that "ancients" generally, incontrast to obtuse moderns, recognized the symbolic meaning of their myths.

Campbell's relentless animus toward institutionalized religion distortshis view of it. "Organized" Christianity and Judaism have traditionallyinterpreted the Bible sYmbolically as well as literally, and some of thestaunchest antinomians have interpreted the Bible literally. Campbell'sequation of institutionalization with corruption and ignorance and ofindividualism with purity and truth is hopelessly romantic. As Max Weber andothers have shown, the institutionalization of a religion or any othercharismatic movement is not only inevitable but also necessary: thealternative is extinction.

Throughout his writings Campbell contends that traditional Westernmythology is dead, or "dysfunctional," exactly because it is conventionallytaken literally. By Western mythology he means that of the Bible rather thanof Greece and Rome. In the volume of Masks on Creative Mythology (New York,Viking, 1968) Campbell argues that Biblical mythology has been dead since thetwelfth century and has been succeeded by the "creative" mythology of artists.But in Inner Reaches, as elsewhere, he argues that Biblical mythology is deadbecause, taken literally, it clashes with science, which for him emergesconsiderably after the twelfth century. Taken symbolically, the Bible refersto either metaphysical or psychological reality and therefore runs askew toscience, which deals with physical reality. Taken literally, the Bible coversthe same domain as science and therefore competes with it.

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all things differs sharply from the mere harmony of distinct psychologicalparts sought by Jung.

Campbell may well differ with Jung over the origin as well as the finalstate of archetypes. Again, his view shifts. He alternatively attributesarchetypes to independent invention and to diffusion. (See pp. 13-15, 80-92.)Perhaps he is attributing to independent invention archetypal similarities andto diffusion some of the symbolic ones. In that case he would be akin to Jung.But he just is not clear. Since for Campbell the similarities in myths arewhat need explaining, and since for him archetypes either cause or constitutethose similarities, the ambiguity in his account of the origin of archetypesmakes his account of the origin of myth itself ambiguous as well.

Campbell's account of the function of archetypes is unambiguous. Campbellargues, as he first argued in The Masks of God (4 vols. New York, Viking,1959-1968), that any living mythology fulfills four functions: instilling andmaintaining a sense of awe and mystery before the world, providing an image forexplaining the world, upholding the social order, and guiding the individualthrough the stages of 1ife. (See pp. 18, 20.) Why these four functions ofmyth are the central ones Campbell never says. Why, as he stresses, myth canfulfill them only when it is taken symbolically he never says either.

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Jung is wary of the psychological risks' of spontaneous religiosity, praisesquintessentially institutionalized Catholicism for its psychological efficacy,nearly equates mainstream Protestantism with modern atheism, neverthelessbemoans the decline of Christianity generally, and turns anxiously toanalytical psychology as a modern substitute. Far closer to Nietszche than toJung, Campbell, in polar contrast, castigates traditional Christianitygenerally ~ institutionalized and therefore psychologically impotent, damnshis childhood Catholicism above all, revels in the demise of Christianity as awhole, and sees no need for a substitute for at least organized religion. ForJung, psychology at once replaces religion and interprets its extant myths.For Campbell, psychology recaptures the interpretations of myths directlyimbibed by the earliest believers but haplessly missed ever since by their"churched" successors.

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Like Mircea Eliade, Campbell seemingly writes in the name of believers inmyth and religion themselves. Seemingly, he writes to present their collectiveview of myth. But like Eliade as well, he in fact scarcely confines himself totheir own view. In berating ancient Israelites and others for missing theuniversal meaning of myth, Campbell is conspicuously venturing beyond anymeaning that, according to him, they even unconsciously imagined. Campbellgoes so far as to distinguish the true meaning of myth from the intendedmeaning, which presumably includes unconscious intent: "Every myth, that is tosay, whether or not by intention, is psychologically symbolic. Its narrativesand ima~~es are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors." (p.55)

To claim to know how those who create or use myth themselves read it wouldbe heady enough. Not only anthropologists but also Jungian analysts usuallystop here. To claim to know how myth itself is to be read is far headier.Even literary critics and archetypal reductionists normally stop here. YetCampbell himself is likely going still further: he seemingly claims to knowthat myth, read correctly, is itself correct. He apparently claims to know notonly what the true meaning of myth is but also that that meaning is itselftrue. $i nce Campbe 11 says that myth preaches the oneness of all thi ngs, hewould be claiming to know that all things are in fact one.

Campbe11' s sheer enthus i asm for the myst i ca1 message of myth suggestsmightily that he is endorsing as well as explicating that message, as many ofhis followers have assumed .. In Inner Reaches he commits himself explicitly.Having asserted that "proper" art conveys the same message as myth (see chapter3), he describes the truth it conveys: "The way of art, when followed'properly' (in Joyce's sense), leads also to the mountaintop that iseverywhere, beyond opposites, of transcendental vision, where, as Blakediscovered and declared, the doors of perception are cleansed and everythingappears to man as it is, infinite." (p. 126) Campbell ;s saying that art,and therefore myth, are proper because they preach the ultimate oneness of allthings.

Campbell is doubtless a v1s1onary, writing less to prove than to spreadhis vision. Demanding of him proof may, then, be egregiously unfair.Certainly he makes none of the standard appeals to arguments, facts, orexperiences. He appeals to nothing outside myths themselves. Still, he doesappeal to the mystical meaning of myths and therefore is presuming to musterevidence for mysticism. It is not, then, unfair to evaluate that evidence.

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Put another way, Campbell effaces Jung's distinction between symbols andarchetypes. He dissolves symbols into archetypes. For instance, where Jungwou 1d say that a 1oca1 conception of god as rna 1e rather than fema 1e therebydiscloses only the male side of an androgynous god, Campbell says that the

For Campbell, the local meaning adds little to the universal one.Specific symbols are either only a colorful way of expressing archetypes or, atmost, a necessary means of conveying them. Even then, they are dispensableonce the archetypes get conveyed. For Jung, by contrast, sYmbols not only area permanently necessary means of conveying archetypes but also shape thearchetypes they convey.

Despite Campbell's undeniable assertion that the meaning of myth is localas well as universal, he remains at heart a universalist. Rather thanpreserving the balance that he says he seeks, he ultimately dismisses the localmeaning. For example, he says that tithe Biblical version of The Fall is but avariant of the universally known Separation of Heaven and Earth ••• 11 (p.61)

Even if all myths did declare reality one, why believe them? Campbellmust still justify his claim that myths are right. He can invoke intuition asthe source of his rendering of both myth and reality, but he cannot escape theneed to justify his rendering of either. Otherwise his interpretation, nomatter how inspiring, becomes dogmatic. The undeniable effect of hisinterpretation on his followers does not make his interpretation correct.

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Even finding similarities worldwide is insufficient. They must beimportant. The perennial debate in many fields between comparativists andparticularists is less over the existence of similarities than over thesignificance of them. A particularist like Clifford Geertz spurns as vague andbanal the similarities adduced by a universalist like Melford Spiro. Campbellcannot, then, merely cite even clearcut similarities. He must show theimportance of them.

As justification for his interpretation of myth, though not of reality,Campbell does perennially make one appeal: to the comparative method, which hegarnered less from anthropology than from 1iterature. From Hero on, Campbellfervently employs the method to reveal similarities ;n myths. But to seeksimilarities is not always to find them, and Campbell often strains to detectthem. For example, few Biblicists would support his claim that the seeminglylinear ~ime span in Biblical genealogies masks a cyclical alternative (see pp.35-37) and therefore evinces the cyclical outlook that he maintains isuni versa1.

Even Campbell would concede that not all myths transparently propagatemysticism. He himself often labors hard at extricating a mystical message fromWestern myths. How, then, does he justify his mystical reading of all myths?He can hardly appeal to the meaning believers themselves find in myth, for hesays that many Westerners are oblivious to the mystical as well as theuniversal meaning of their own myths. Nor can he appeal to the intelligibilityor coherence of his proposed mystical interpretations of myths. For eventhough he loves to tell myths, he actually interprets few whole myths. How heknows that the meaning of all myths is mystical is unclear.

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Lord's Prayer, though addressed to a rna 1e god, somehow manages to transcenditself and reveal an androgynous, if not impersonal, entity:

Campbell does give a pragmatic argument for a symbolic interpretation:that myth taken literally contradicts science and is therefore unacceptable tomoderns. Of the Biblical accounts of ascents to heaven Campbell says:

The transmission of the archetype is unaffected by the symbol tr~nsmitting it.Nor does the symbol transmitting the archetype affect the archetype itself, theway the symbols Christ and Satan nurture the god archetype in Jung's "Answer toJob."

But even in the face of science many "moderns" do read the Bibleliterally. Campbell's disdain does not explain their capacity to do so. Evenif no modern proved able to stomach the Bible literally, its true meaning wouldnot automatically be symbolic, especially when Campbell himself refuses todefer to believers for the true meaning of myth. The Bible may, alas, simplybe incompatible with science and thereby lost to moderns.

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• • • at the open; ng of the Lord's Prayer ("Our Father, who art inHeaven • • ."), the i nvocat ion, "Ou r Father," is metaphori ca1, sincethe des i gnated subject is not, in fact, a ma 1e parent, nor even ahuman being ••• An equivalent prayer could as well have beenaddressed to "Ou r Mother, who art wi th in or beneath the ea rth." Infact, there have been many religions, and there may yet be many more,for which the preferred "as if," or "make believe," is of the childto its mother ••• (p. 58)

It is believed that Jesus, having risen from the dead, ascendedphysically to heaven (Luke 24:51), to be followed shortly by hismother in her sleep (Early Christian belief, confirmed as RomanCatho1i c dogma on November 1, 1950). It is a1so wri tten that somenine centuries earlier, Elijah, riding a chariot of fire, had beencarried to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:11). Now, even ascendingat the speed of light, which for a physical body is impossible, thosethree .ce1est i a1 voyagers wou 1d not yet be out of the ga 1axy. (pp.30-31)

Even grant Campbell both the fact and the primacy of universals. He muststill prove their meaning symbolic. Campbell assumes that because thedifference among myths lies at the literal level, any universal meaning must besymbolic. But it need not be. Comparativists Vladimir Propp and Lord Raglanassert that all hero myths have a similar plot, but neither takes the meaningof that plot symbolically. To qualify as a hero, a figure in a story must, forboth theorists, undertake a prescribed set of actions, but neither proceeds tointerpret those actions or the hero himself other than literally. The factthat at the 1itera1 1evel hero myths di ffer in detai 1 does not mean that atthat same level they differ in outline as well. Surely the very categorizationof myths as heroic rests on literal, not symbolic, similarities. Symbolicsimilarities themselves are ones in outline, not in detail. Of course, onemight, like Jung himself, try to demonstrate that a symbolic interpretation isneeded, but its necessity must be demonstrated. Campbell simply assumes that asymbolic interpretation is the only possible universal one.

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Campbell's criticism of Judaism, which he groups with other overtlynonmystical religions, prompts the key question that can be asked of Campbell'slifelong efforts: why must all mythologies preach the same message? Maybemythologies simply differ. Maybe only some are mystical. Campbell

Just as Campbell assumes rather than proves that the symbolic meaning ofmyth is metaphysical or psychological, so he assumes rather than proves thatthe psychological meaning is archetypal rather than psychosexual, Jungianrather than Freudian. Although many Jungians have long turned to Campbell fortheoretical support precisely because he partly interprets myths archetypally,Campbell's assumption of a Jungian meaning undercuts his authority. He needsJungians to justify his interpretation as much as they need him to justifytheirs. Though Campbell remains much more his own man than a Jungian disciple,he presupposes rather than defends the viewpoint that many Jungians look to himto defend.

Campbell declares that myth, rightly understood, preaches acceptancerather than rejection of the everyday, physical world. Myth, he says, espousesa Jungi an-l ike ba 1ance between phys i ca1 rea1i ty and deeper, psycho1ogi ca1 ormetaphysical reality. Here Campbell offers considerable evidence: the returnof saviors like Buddha and Christ from the heretofore unknown reality to theeveryday one. (See pp. 69-73.) But Campbell adds that the savior, who isidentical with the hero, returns not only because he wants to reveal to othersthe existence of the unknown reality but also because he realizes that everydayreality harbors the deeper one: the two realities are actually one. IfCampbell is right about the hero's motive, there looms a danger--the danger forJung of inflation and even psychosis. To value everyday reality because in itlies a deeper reality is not only to collapse the distinction between the tworealities but invariably to devalue everyday reality itself. In endorsing themystical message that he finds in myth, Campbell seems committed to therejection of everyday reality rather than, as he assumes, to a balance betweenthe deeper reality and it. Campbell's criticism of Judaism for believing that"there is in nature itself no divinity" (p. 114) reveals his outlook.

In contrast to Campbe11, Jung does not base the true mean; ng of myth onsomething external to it like science. Doing so would rob myth of itsautonomy. But perhaps Campbell is really no different. Though he does not sayso, perhaps he, 1ike Jung and, even more, Rudo1f Bu 1tmann, is assumi ng thatscience provides the opportunity rather than the justification for recoveringthe true, symbolic meaning of myth. Like them, he would thereby be making aninterpretive virtue out of an interpretive necessity. But he would still haveto justify the symbol ic meaning of myth as the true one. He could no longerappeal to the rise of science ~ his justification.

Even grant that the universal meaning of myth is symbolic. Must thesymbolic meaning be either metaphysical or psychological? Without anyjustification Campbell limits the possible subject matter of myth to eitherultimate reality or the human mind. Perhaps Campbell is assuming that thesubject matter can be the physical world only when myth is taken literally..But for Max Muller, for example, the names and attributes of the gods explainedby myths were originally mere metaphors for the processes of nature--metaphorsthat were later wrongly taken literally. For Edward Tylor, the activities ofthe gods deta i 1ed in myths may be 1i tera1 exp1anat ions of the processes ofnature, but they are not literal descriptions of those processes ..

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conspicuously recognizes that at first glance Biblical myths are nonmystical.But just as the mystic in him insists that beneath the surface divisionsreality is one, so the comparativist in him insists that beneath the surfacedifferences mythology is one. To the uroboric state of undifferentiatedoneness all things for Campbell must return. True, Campbell devotes eachvolume of Masks, as he began to do in his Historical Atlas of World Mythology(vol. 1. San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1983), to the distinctive mythologiesof hunters, planters, Easterners, Westerners, and moderns. But all thosemythologies finally prove to be one, as Campbell first declared unabashedly inHero and as he reaffirms in his Mythic Image (Princeton, New Jersey, PrincetonUniversity Press, 1974).

Campbell the stalwart comparativist fails to see that no one "lives by"myth generically. Living by myth requires the particularism that Campbell' suniversalism scorns. Even if the meaning of myth is universal, no one can liveit out in the abstract. One needs a specific myth or, better, mythology in allits idiosyncratic particularities.

Campbell's indefatigable pursuit of a comparativist, symbolic, mystical,and psycho1ogi ca1 approach to myth di d much to 1i berate those hewn on aparticularistic, literalist, worldly, and historical approach to the Bibleabove all. Campbell's talent for taking familiar stories out of familiartrappings and transforming them into something far more grandiose has rightlydazzled and inspired many. My largely academic criticisms are meant not toreject his global vision but only to suggest how much more work is required tomake that vision stick.

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Segal-Joseph Campbells Theory of Myth