Therapy for Failed Heroes
And Other Pathologies
If working with couples, families, and other relational constellations as a Marriage & Family Therapist in training has shown me anything, it’s that many of us can only think of ourselves and each other in terms of succeeding or failing at a Hero’s Journey.
That’s not to say the Hero’s Journey is inherently bad. To me, it’s the basis of a number of demonstrably successful models of therapy, and I find myself drawing on it professionally and personally quite a lot. But when it’s the only story we really know how to tell, naturally problems arise, not the least of which is that thinking only in terms of succeeding or failing to live out our own hero myth obscures the myriad ways in which we are always already and irredeemably entangled with the rest of the world — with everything that’s “not me” — including other people.
When discussing relational cases (eg, couples, families, etc.), MFTs sometimes talk about the identified patient (or IP), usually with a certain irony. The IP is the person the relational system pinpoints as the one in need of help — the one who’s failing at their hero myth. For families, the IP is often a “problem child”; for couples, sometimes it’s just a shared unconscious fear that one partner in particular is “the problem.” That’s not to say there aren’t situations where one person is clearly…
