Evaluating Joseph Campbell's Underexplored Ideas In the Light of Modern Psychology

Abstract

Document Type Article Abstract Joseph Campbell was a scholar of mythology and comparative religion who attained great popularity by promoting the value of mythology in people's lives. Interestingly, he attained this status even though there was little scientific evidence for his ideas. In recent years, researchers have begun to evaluate Campbell's ideas in rigorous, empirical ways, with most of this research being focused on the implications of the hero's journey. There are still a number of Campbell's psychology-related ideas, however, that have not been evaluated scientifically. These are the ideas we evaluated in this paper. Because we focused on the underexplored ideas, we could find no research directly assessing them. So, we evaluated them indirectly, using research that seemed relevant but that was conducted for independent reasons. This evaluation led us to conclude that Campbell was right in many of his psychology-related ideas, and that researchers could benefit if they took these ideas seriously and incorporated them into their research and theorizing DOI 10.26736/hs.2019.01.01 Recommended Citation Martin, Leonard L.; Conners, James; and Newbold, Jacqueline A. (2019) "Evaluating Joseph Campbell's Underexplored Ideas In the Light of Modern Psychology," Heroism Science: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. DOI: 10.26736/hs.2019.01.01 Available at: https://scholarship.richmond.edu/heroism-science/vol4/iss1/1  Download