The Archetypal Hero's Journey in Teaching and Learning

Educator and therapist Clifford Mayes offers an original and powerful vision of teaching and learning as a heroic journey, central to the growth of the student as an integrated being. This journey is filled with such universal human archetypes as the Wise Elder, the Trickster, the Great Mother, and the Great Father. Informed by the psychoanalytical studies of Freud, Jung, and neo-Freudian theorists, Mayes emphasizes the need for a healthy balance in the classroom between the technical and the poetical, the analytical and the intuitive. Teaching and learning are part of the great journey of individuation, and every student must be given the chance to heed the call and fulfill the archetypal role of the Hero in the true adventure of transformative education.