Therapy for Failed Heroes

And Other Pathologies

Photo by Graphic Node on Unsplash

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 a problem (eg, violence, abuse, etc.), or that there aren’t presenting issues that can be individually localized (eg, ADHD, OCD, etc.). Rather, it’s to say that one of the consequences of thinking only in terms of the Hero’s Journey is to see others as only either at fault for or uninvolved in the IP’s presenting issue.

In some therapeutic approaches, the world and people outside the IP, if acknowledged at all, are only drawn upon to contextualize the IP’s failed hero myth. Their external world is either just idiosyncrasy or the tyrannical force that robbed them of their hero myth. Exploring their external world is just so we can speak more precisely about either what’s wrong with the IP or what’s wrong with their external world—about who’s at fault for this person’s failed hero myth. To make matters weirder, this isn’t a veiled jab at any particular therapeutic subfield (and Lord knows there are plenty of MFTs who describe our field as “outgrowing” or even…