Counselor Development as The Hero’s Journey: Reflections from a Counselor Educator

Abstract

The use of the monomyth to shape the narratives of fiction with deep meanings, while feeling both new and recognizable, is consistently experienced across all cultures throughout time. As past publications have utilized this approach to subconscious symbolism to explain many experiences, it has not yet been utilized to explain the process of counselor development. The structures utilized in this exploration of the Hero’s Journey concept include the seminal work Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (1949) being applied to the structure of counseling development as reviewed by Rønnestad and Skovholt (2003). Each stage of the journey will be translated into an understanding of how students grow from before their master’s program through their senior years as experts in the counseling field. The following article will engage this metaphor to explore the narrative of a counseling student on their quest to become a counseling professional through use of the stages from the monomyth as used to describe the Hero’s Journey.

Full text

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COUNSELOR DEVELOPMENT AS THE
HERO’S JOURNEY: REFLECTIONS FROM
A COUNSELOR EDUCATOR
Daniel A. Kaufmann, Grand Canyon University
INTRODUCTION
Counseling students are exposed to countless
opportunities to wrestle with their own journey of
personal growth (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003),
start ing with the moment they begin their counseling
program and continuing through their decision
to walk away from their active role as a senior
professional in the mental health eld. Counselor
development in relation to academic achievement
expands far beyond the concept of merely passing
classes and acquiring knowledge. Although
writing papers and passing exams are traditional
elements of the graduate school challenge, these
are secondary in counseling programs next to the
importance of acquiring other abilities and traits
(McBride Steinberg, 2014). Such transformations
affect the person’s moral and ethical qualities,
their understanding of microskills, their ability to
apply the concepts of theory and intervention to
situations involving real people, and the awareness
they use to keenly develop social connection with
clients who are receiving clinical services. As this
journey requires a greater component of struggle
than the simple academic task of achieving grades,
it is possible to analyze the necessity of this
growth through the lens of the Hero’s Journey, as
established in the works of Joseph Campbell.
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell
(1949) explores the archetypal themes of hero
stories across centuries of storytelling to identify
our connection with the meaning we nd in our
world. From an historical context, psychoanalysis
and other early works of psychology have been
used as the core to this approach by analyzing
the deeper meaning of subconscious imagery.
Campbell utilized insight from the works of Carl
Jung and Sigmund Freud to take advantage of the
fascination people maintained during that time
period to achieve greater understanding of the
human mind (Byrne, 2000). In Campbell’s own
ABSTRACT
The use of the monomyth to shape the narratives of ction with deep meanings, while feeling both new
and recognizable, is consistently experienced across all cultures throughout time. As past publications
have utilized this approach to subconscious symbolism to explain many experiences, it has not yet been
utilized to explain the process of counselor development. The structures utilized in this exploration of
the Hero’s Journey concept include the seminal work Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
(1949) being applied to the structure of counseling development as reviewed by Rønnestad and Skovholt
(2003). Each stage of the journey will be translated into an understanding of how students grow from
before their master’s program through their senior years as experts in the counseling eld. The following
article will engage this metaphor to explore the narrative of a counseling student on their quest to
become a counseling professional through use of the stages from the monomyth as used to describe the
Hero’s Journey.
Keywords: monomyth, hero’s journey, archetypes, counselor development

Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | 2019 18
words, “Mythology … is psychology misread
as biography, history, and cosmology” (1949, p.
256). The hero of the monomyth comes from
nothing and is tasked with embarking on a quest
to overcome insurmountable challenges. With
guidance, luck, and favor granted by the prevailing
forces within the universe, the hero is able to
traverse these difculties to fulll their destiny and
master the world of the adventure. In doing so, the
hero becomes a symbol of triumphant hope that is
capable of harnessing the power of the World Navel
((the mythological source of being for the universe)
to save the people of the ordinary world from
certain oblivion. The decision of whether to start
the journey can even be said to mimic the decision
faced by a future graduate student when reecting
on the turmoil of the world and deciding whether
they have the potential as a counselor to help the
residents of their community overcome it. If they
select this task for themselves, they can assist with
restoring hope through becoming a trained helper
to the counseling services in the community.
For the hero, there are many dened stages that
go beyond the “crossing of the threshold” or the
“refusal of the call,” with our literature ultimately
resolving the story through the triumph of the hero
returning with the boon but being forever changed
by the journey (Campbell, 1949; Jones, 2014). So
too does the counseling student complete their
program, become licensed, cultivate their clinical
skills, and acquire the gift of hope to lend to others,
but also they possess a new awareness of how the
pain in the world truly seems to exist in perpetuity.
Incoming counseling students often cite the
desire to help others through their lifelong struggles
as a primary motivation for pursuing the role of the
professional counselor (Rønnestad & Skovholt,
2003). For them, this is the initial quest they must
decide either to accept or reject. The acceptance of
this challenge can, in itself, be viewed as a form
of heroism (Lawson, 2005), and this decision is
often propelled by a desire to help others in the
new counseling student. This drive could be to
assist specic populations or problem areas the
students have identied as being specically of
concern as they collected their observations of
the ordinary world. Crossing this threshold will
lead to many experiences they have yet to face,
from learning from their mentors (instructors,
supervisors, and experienced representatives of
the eld), to struggling with their shadow self
(ethics and moral development) (Ladkin, Spitler,
& Craze, 2018; Stein, 1998) and becoming their
own self, free of the mentor’s guidance in a eld
larger than they had realized (state licensure),
and then moving toward the later stages of their
professional development while armed with all the
abilities of this acquired experience.
To this point, published works exploring the
Hero’s Journey as a counseling concept have
focused on application as a clinical intervention
with clients (Pieracci, 1990), research and inquiry
for students (Holmes, 2007), or uses related to
service delivery for other healthcare professions
(Dybicz, 2012; Fortune et al., 2016). The following
discussion will connect the phases of experience
the hero encounters within the monomyth directly
to the identied stages and themes of counselor
development. This perspective is drawn from the
rsthand observations of a counselor educator
reecting on their lived experience from the
master’s and doctoral journey and synthesizing
these memories with relevant experiences from
delivering counseling principles to students in
traditional and online classrooms.
DEPARTURE: STARTING THE JOURNEY OF COUNSELOR
DEVELOPMENT
The Call to Adventure for the Beginning Student
Prior to enrolling in a graduate-level counseling
program, incoming students are often already
interested in helping others in a way that leads
to a feeling of personal satisfaction or necessity
(Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003). As a lay helper,
the personal drive of the individual to identify
problems and guide those affected by the situation
towards solutions is often well-intentioned. This
often leads to conict over time, as the person
realizes they cannot be the helper they strive to be
while being limited to helping only those within
their social reach and they lack the credibility of
a trained helper of others. As the person looks
out from this circle, the ordinary world can feel
overwhelming as it reminds the well-intentioned
prospective student that the problem, if not
insurmountable, is bigger than them. This ordinary
world is society as a whole. The question of what
to pursue is highlighted for the person through the
herald of change, which is the inciting event that

19
pushes the potential student to choose one way or
the other. This could be a family event, a personal
trauma, the supportive insight from friends and
family, or many other situations. The herald is
whatever happenings present the person with the
choice to embark on the journey or refuse and
continue enjoying the ordinary world. Through
this occurrence, the person is faced with the
decision of whether to apply to graduate programs
in counseling and embark on a three-year journey
of personal transformation as a graduate student
or continue to face the ordinary world knowing
they lack the power to guide the world they know
towards meaningful change.
Overcoming a Refusal of the Call
Should the potential student elect not to pursue
their role as a hero through counseling, this is
when the hero experiences the “refusal of the
call” (Campbell, 1949). Fictional tales often depict
the character who will become the hero being
presented with the problem unexpectedly and
initially choosing not to let this desperate prompt
become their problem. Bilbo informs Gandalf that
Baggins’s belong in the Shire (Tolkien, 1937),
while Luke Skywalker laments to Obi-wan Kenobi
that the planet Alderaan is “such a long way from
here” (Kurtz, 1977). To them, the ordinary world
already feels big enough to be the entire world,
and the universal threat to autonomy and wellness
still feels far enough away that the protagonist can
pass the worry back to the mentor who is seeking
their companionship.
For future or could-be counselors, the master’s
program would be too taxing for life at the present
time, indicated by them thinking “I can’t complete
that level of schooling.” The person doubts that
they would even be compatible with the counselor
role if it were a professional job, and so lay helping
is, in this moment, the ceiling for their potential.
Ironically, this is similar to a person needing the
help of counseling but deciding now is not the
time to further tax their busy life with this kind
of service (Lawson, 2005), and they continue on
without the help of their own counseling mentor. In
order to provide greater help to others, this decision
must be made in the afrmative, which allows the
journey to begin.
In order to return to the trajectory of the
counselor as a hero, the above examples must
experience a shift in desire, and the could-be
counselor, as an informal helper, begins to see
value in formally becoming a helper of others
(Egan, 2014). Rather than avoid the challenge, the
herald of change convinces the prospective student
to apply for counseling programs and nd the place
where they t into the daunting task of earning
their graduate degree as a counselor. Once the
ctional hero observes this compelling signal, they
feel assured that the comfort zone of the isolated/
ordinary world will not hold the corruption of the
World Navel back (i.e., depression, anxiety, trauma,
etc.), so the hero is forced to join the mentor-in-
need on a dangerous journey. At this stage, the
lay helper believes their potential to help others is
more important than the risks of being defeated
by their fear, meaning it is now the right time to
take the rst steps towards becoming a graduate
learner in counseling.
Crossing the First Threshold:
Facing the Curriculum
Upon acceptance into the counseling program,
the newly admitted student must experience a shift
in time management (Hurst, Cleveland-Innes,
Hawranik, & Gauvreau, 2013) to account for the
intense time commitment common to the tasks of
graduate school. Additionally, the students may
be tasked with enduring a workload of reading
and counseling activities that challenge the belief
system they subscribed to during the lay phases of
their previous life (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003).
Morality is now intertwined with ethics. Helping
guidance is now blended with counseling theory
and clinical skills. Problems and solutions are now
implications of psychopathology and diagnosis.
The ordinary world has been ed, and now the
hero (as a graduate student) will cross the threshold
to embark on a journey into a new world of the
supernatural (or psychological) (Byrne, 2000).
These forces are unfamiliar, yet they lend an air
of excitement by more convincingly explaining the
phenomena of life that the student-hero is excited
to personally master. This world will provide a test
unlike any other they have encountered, and yet
the student will move forward because their goal is
making a difference for the world they left behind
where help is simple enough to not need the title
of professional counselor. The world ahead is one
where this very role becomes a cornerstone of the

Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | 2019 20
student reborn, in possession of rened purpose,
and the “supernatural” aid of clinical skills passed
down to them by their instructors in the role of the
mentor. Crossing this threshold signals the initiation
of the journey (Jones, 2014) towards becoming a
professional counselor.
Reection: Meeting the Mentor
As a counselor educator, I have many goals
for students who experience either my traditional
classroom learning or my online learning. While
each pose unique obstacles and surprising
similarities, I always aim to be encouraged by the
desire to learn from students who stay engaged
and go the extra step to interact with me in a way
that mimics the early journey of our heroes from
ction. One key difference between learning to be
a counselor versus other professions is the internal
connection with living the principles being learned.
Counseling does not become merely something a
person does, but it actually becomes who a person
is. For this reason, I see myself as the mentor on
these journeys, the beacon for the supernatural
aid that Campbell mentions as an archetype
of empowerment to the hero early on in the
monomyth. While the talisman that represents this
aid is usually depicted as a magic wand (Rowling,
1997) or a ring of power (Tolkien, 1937), my aid lies
in the use of theories, scholarship, ethics, cultural
competence, and counseling skills. These are the
principles the counseling student will be relying
on throughout their professional development to
challenge the afictions of depression, anxiety,
trauma, psychosis, and the like in the endless
quest our eld faces to improve the quality of
life for those seeking counseling services. While
these concepts may not be as visually inspiring
as a lightsaber ashing across the screen, in my
mind the successful use of these skills as personal
qualities will serve my students well in their quest
towards being an exceptional helper of people with
all forms of psychological struggle.
Before the lay helper even makes it into a
classroom, they must complete their rst challenge
on the academic road of trials: the application
process. While each academic institution may
approach this differently, I have observed that
some students are supremely prepared for the task,
having spent an excess of time and focus thinking
through the tangible qualities of how a student
would want to engage this challenge. Others,
however, may not fully understand the enormity of
the commitment to the graduate student lifestyle
(Hurst et al., 2013) or the degree of devotion to the
basic dispositions expected of a student pursuing
counseling (Redekop & Wlazelek, 2012). In many
ways, the challenge at these early stages is deciding
who is ready to embark on the journey and likely
to adhere to the values of the eld while fullling
the requirements of the university. This calls many
images to me from across stories of myth and
literature, from the sorting hat or receipt of a letter
from the owls in Harry Potter (Rowling, 1997) to
the selection of who can be trained as a Jedi in the
prequel entries of Star Wars (McCollum, 1999).
Upon acceptance, the initiation of coursework can
be seen in our counseling monomyth as the next
test, which corelates strongly with what is referred
to in the telling of Jonah in the Old Testament as,
quite literally, the “belly of the whale.”
From my role as the mentor to master’s and
doctoral learners, this phase of the journey is the
segment of the struggle where I am granted the most
personal interaction in shaping the developmental
process of the counselor as my student. For many
credit hours of tasks, the student is free to see me
as the source of the challenge, their adversary, but
also their guide, mentor, advisor, and hopefully,
in the right moments, cheerleader and source of
professional support. I strive to pass the values of
theory, core professional philosophy, and clinical
skill, all of which hold a heritage in the eld, on to my
students so they too may use them with clients that
demand these actions from them. Unsurprisingly,
as I teach theories, I am automatically drawn to
discuss the Hero’s Journey as a metaphor for the
counseling philosophy of each approach, how client
change works, and also setting goals for certain
approaches. Any time the client is working towards
meaningfulness (existential), behavioral success,
congruence (person-centered), and any number of
other elements of the counseling process (Murdock,
2017), I cannot escape the connections between
what it takes to become truly this counselor and the
parallels between the path my students are taking
with me and later on the paths their clients will take
with them (Pieracci, 1990).
In approaching the content of my profession in
this way, I hope my students will perceive in me

21
a model for what they aim to be as a counseling
professional (Jena, 2015). This way, I can become
a launching point for learning concepts that the
student can then subjectively interpret as they begin
utilizing their own ideas from the research they
conduct to complete the assignments of my course.
The relationship we forge is a huge determinant of
which outcome the student will choose to adhere
(Trepal, Haberstroh, Duffey, & Evans, 2007).
For this reason, I look to be a model of the eld,
seeking the source of hope in the future of my craft
and offering to guide the new hero into the role at
the initiation of their own rebirth into this new role.
In the mentor role, I am symbolically matching the
archetypes of characters such as Morpheus in The
Matrix (Berman, 1999), Gandalf in The Lord of the
Rings (Tolkien, 1954), and Obi-wan Kenobi in the
original Star Wars trilogy (Kurtz, 1977).
Lessons from the Belly of the Whale
Throughout the duration of graduate course-
work, the student will be expected to meet the
requirements of a number of tasks (Rønnestad
& Skovholt, 2003), many of which will tax the
intellect and patience of the student. Research-
oriented writing, group presentations, and working
to effectively encapsulate abstract processes
likely to be encountered throughout counseling
work become the status-quo for the student in the
“belly” of the curriculum. Over time, the student
is expected to identify which theories they align
with, and as such, they will also have collected a
repertoire of counseling skills, theory-oriented
techniques or interventions, assessment strategies,
case conceptualizations for diagnosing client
problems, and many other knowledge-oriented
methods they will deliver in face-to-face scenarios
with real clients once learning shifts to application
(Hurst et al., 2013). Additionally, the student will
consistently receive feedback from those training
them in the educational tasks as they progress from
course to course. As the Hero of the monomyth is
entrenched in the belly of the whale, so also would
the student face many difculties in situations
where they are displaying problematic student
behaviors (Brown, 2013) or not perceiving their
progress in skills as a counselor to be satisfactory,
by either internal or external measures (Cicco,
2012). However, there is no turning back in most
cases of this kind, with the student being invested in
their program and the hero’s very livelihood resting
in the outcome of this very real threat illustrated
by the whale of the journey (Campbell, 1949). It
is good to develop resilience during this phase of
counselor development, as the pressures involved
in completing assignments, which feel absolute in
the moment, is only a glimpse of the pressures the
student will certainly face later in becoming a full
professional in the counseling eld (Rønnestad &
Skovholt, 2003).
Any internalized responses to both positive
and negative feedback from instructors and
supervisors can generate unanticipated anxiety
as the student adjusts to the unknown realities of
life as a counselor (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003).
These reactions are nearly impossible to simulate
in the classroom setting of the earlier stages of their
experience. During the classroom-bound years of
development, learning is driven by the counseling
model being displayed by the formative instructors
from the eld who shape the learner in their
development of counseling skills. This extends to
growth in other areas, including all knowledge and
insight gained by the student that will serve them
later in the applied segments of the developmental
process. It is then up to the student to remember
these lessons and use them at the moments when
they are put to the test in the eld, the earliest of
which could occur during practicum but even as far
in the process as the state internship occurring in
pursuit of licensure.
The internalization the student learner has
brought with them into the program can just as
easily be an asset or an additional adversary as
well. The complexity of counselor education comes
again from the nature of what is being learned. In
prior phases of life, the person as a student may
have learned that schooling is only useful in life in
relation to the outcome, i.e., grades, and this shapes
the view of the self (Bianchi & Lancianese, 2005). In
this ideology, people receiving good grades are good
students and, hence, good people. By contrast, low
grades resign the person to accepting they may be a
“below standard” person. This simplistic approach
to learning is decidedly unhelpful in a counseling
program, as the knowledge is more directly related
to being capable of internally experiencing the role
of counselor and presenting the external stimuli
of being the counselor to another human being

Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | 2019 22
dependent on receiving professional assistance.
Pieracci (1990) explored the concept of the
Hero’s Journey in connection with the client
experiencing the hero role. In this discussion, the
client would have to wrestle with the importance
of their own achievement versus the relationship
being forged in therapy. The parallel to this
discussion is the counselor too would need to
prove capable of achieving grades that result in
becoming the counseling graduate, but the student
must also forge a relationship with the material
that allows for professional development towards
becoming the counselor. In this application of
the internalized world of the student, they must
renounce the “outcome-only” message of the
ordinary world, which would push them to seek
grades only for purposes of earning a degree.
Instead, they must aspire for something much
higher: the counselor identity.
Throughout ctional uses of the mentor, the
hero is safe from harm while traveling in the
company of the guardian-mentor. While in the
course-based phase of learning, the aspiring
counselor as a student is shielded from many
possible mistakes that would prove deleterious
if made in the eld with live clients. Ethics and
multiculturalism, or other counseling courses that
offer the average student topics to explore their
ability to sidestep controversy, are key examples
of challenges where the student must model the
virtues of a mature counseling disposition (Brown,
2013). These courses are also great examples
of the student being allowed to experience the
internal challenge in a safe environment and fully
benetting from the opportunity to gure out what
this new role really will mean in practice beyond
concept. Eventually, the mentor is removed from
the scenario, leaving only the student as the hero
to realize it is their own choice to represent the
hope they are seeking to bring to their world. The
moral quality of these choices can no longer be
curtailed by follow-up questions from faculty or
the hypothetical nature of classroom learning. The
student is now a representative of what a counselor-
in-training as the hero archetype will represent as
they prepare for the road of trials into practicum.
INITIATION OF THE COUNSELING ROLE
Practicum as the Road of Trials
The transition from beginning to advanced
student represents many changes for the new
graduate student on the internal and external levels.
It is expected that there would be initial excitement.
However, the learning is difculty, and the personal
nature of becoming the counselor professional can
often prove to be a complicated transition. This can
depend on the openness of the learner and their
exibility to receive in an amicable fashion some of
the more challenging concepts of the eld related to
value objectivity (Bugental & Sapienza, 1992) and
then be capable of forming successful relationships
with clients who generate a sense of incongruence
in the student-counselor (Lambert & Barley, 2001;
Leach, 2005). As this shift is experienced for much
of the classroom learning of the graduate school
experience, exposure to the new clinically-based
situations can increase the intensity and desperation
in the student due to a prolonged vulnerability
not found in previous phases of the journey. The
practicum experience is designed to translate
theoretical knowledge into practice (Kurtyilmaz,
2015), and it grants the student the opportunity to
experience the next phases of the journey.
To accomplish this, the advanced student
applies their theoretical skills as a clinician to
work face-to-face with live clients (Rønnestad
& Skovholt, 2003). Occurring at least two years
after their initial decision to become more than
an informal helper of others, the student will face
challenges that are new to this stage of their growth.
Paperwork as a clinician is often one of the most
jarring transitions, as the goal of writing up to this
point has been to support ideas with research using
APA style. Now, the writing is related to effectively
updating and contributing to the health records
of clients (Piazza & Baruth, 1990). Additional
pressure could be felt if the student is completing
their practicum requirements at a site where they
operate as a part of a multidisciplinary team, as
now other team members are relying on the quality
of the practicum students notes, and they may not
naturally be accustomed to creatively writing in
this style.
The parallel in the monomyth to the trials of the
practicum occur when the hero enters the inmost
cave, which is described by Campbell (1949) as a
place where the trials will target their insecurities
on an emotional or psychological level. This can
occur in many ways. The student is now spending

23
full days in the active role of a counselor, which
is a shift away from their role as a student. This
role of a counselor encompasses large periods of
time where they are performing the task, and it
can feel like a daunting challenge if they are not
receiving feedback that serves to maintain their
energy towards the experience. The student may
also receive a client from a group with which they
are not comfortable but be unable to refer them. If
the student is not prepared for such a circumstance,
this can be trying and even result in an unfortunate
professional circumstance for them, the client,
and the agency tasked with training the student. If
this occurs, the student could have some internal
struggles to overcome, similar to the hero being
exposed to the lures of their shadow self (Jones,
2014). If the student fails to overcome this trial,
they could face a prolonged period of time where
they resent entire types of clients and operate in
secret to stay under the radar of the supervisors in
charge of gatekeeping, thus preventing them the
opportunity to address these interpersonal blinds
spots and affecting their professional development.
Another difculty could be the student
struggling with restoring their own life balance
in the wake of a full day of clinically interacting
with the most devastating problems imaginable.
Counselors face the most devastating traumas the
human condition can offer, often without prior
warning. It is important that each member of
the eld develop effective strategies of self-care
(MacKay, 2017), unique to their own person, and
use them for processing these moments of pain in
an effort to release them from their own psyche.
Finally, the student could face a crisis of concept,
realizing the simple solutions they were prepared
to deliver mechanically for certain problems
do not work in the nuanced scenarios of helping
real people. Manuals are a great safety net for the
novice counselor (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003),
but many issues require the creative capacity to
tailor treatment interventions to the client in an
individualized fashion (Fuertes & Nutt Williams,
2017), which can feel risky to a new clinician who
may lack the condence to easily diverge from the
script of the established protocol.
It is common for the student-hero to feel
overwhelmed and even fail at some facets of the
trial (McBride Steinberg, 2014) as they scramble to
learn what is necessary to survive the seemingly
endless tests assailing them. As a counseling
student, they will continue to receive feedback
from faculty involved in oversight, as well as
from the supervisor of the practicum site, with
the intention of seeing the counselor rise to the
challenge and deliver effective help to the clients
they are assisting during this training exercise.
Through the brief moments of triumph, the student
will hopefully take notice of the promise they show
to one day reach the counselor ideal (Rønnestad
& Skovholt, 2003), even as the intensity of the
practicum experience ceases to let up going into the
nal contact hours needed to fulll the academic
requirements of the advanced student.
Meeting with the Goddess (Through Supervision)
Since the moment the practicum students
decided to apply and enroll in their rst counseling
courses, they have been aspiring to be a model of
hope and efciency for themselves and for future
clients. They perceived counseling as the tool to
overcome the unfortunate conditions conferred on
the ordinary world by the corruption within the
World Navel. The students saw themselves as a
form of this solution, assuming a time would come
when the skills are mastered. The goddess parallel
(Byrne, 2000) for counselor development comes
in the form of the practicum/internship/clinical
supervisor. This individual functions as a model
of exemplary practice in the profession (Gockel &
Burton, 2014; Rapp, Moody, & Stewart, 2018). They
possess the skills the student seeks. Even more so,
the supervisor, like the Goddess of myth, possesses
skills beyond the infantile understanding of the
counselor-hero. The counselor must complete good
work in order to have the privilege of collaborating
with the supervisor. The supervisor has among
their key roles that of the gatekeeper, meaning
that the right of the student to become a counselor
is not a foregone conclusion. The enjoyable life,
as perceived in the underdeveloped sight of the
counseling student, hangs in the balance based on
the ongoing transaction and favor earned during
the supervisory guidance.
From when the student applies and moves
into the late stages of practicum, the mentor and
supervisor have been completing their required
duties to the eld, even as they lend support to the
student counselor. Primary among these is the role

Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | 2019 24
of gatekeeper to the profession (Swank & Smith-
Adcock, 2014). Included in the counselor identity
are the mandatory directives to ensure professional
conduct is maintained that supports client autonomy,
nonmalecence, benecence of work, justice,
delity, and veracity towards others (American
Counseling Association, 2014). If a student shows
signs they cannot uphold these values, it is the
duty of the gatekeeper to provide an opportunity
for remediation (Rapp et al., 2018). If these efforts
prove unsuccessful, an unfortunate end to this
professional journey is a potential consequence. In
such a case, the hero has met the goddess before
they were capable, and the goddess has not granted
her favor. In stories of myth where this occurs, the
hero receives a curse, often leading to an ironic
death that connects symbolically with the rationale
for why the hero could not earn the favor of the
goddess (Campbell, 1949). For the purpose of this
stage in the counseling journey, the student could
not behave as if they were a counselor, so they do
not become a counselor. Gatekeeping functions in
the tales of myth similar to the eld of counseling.
Having proper congruence between interper-
sonal traits and behaviors exhibited during
practicum can improve the facilitation of a
successful practicum process. Redekop and
Wlazelek (2012) identied key dispositions for
a counseling applicant to maintain that lead to
becoming an optimal match for education in the
eld of counseling: perception of self, perception
of others, perception of purpose, and frame of
reference. An engaged learner would be exible
and easily facilitate the counseling experiences
with others. They would contain naturally within
themselves the propensity to see the best in
others and perceive them as capable and worthy
of trust. They would have a strong starting point
or understanding of the purpose and role of the
counselor, and hence they would be compatible
with conversations requiring an open-mind to
accept client perceptions that differ from the
personal views they hold. Finally, such a person
would be interested in others, and as such they
would desire to help them express their thoughts
and feelings in pursuit of the counseling goal.
The meeting with the goddess provides the
opportunity to enhance each of these qualities,
all of which are expected to have been potentially
present since the initiation of training (Campbell,
1949). If the hero demonstrates the proper balance
of gentle awareness, humility, knowledge of the
work ahead, and understanding of the involved
struggle, they can receive the gifts needed to
continue on with the journey. The feedback and
trust experienced by the student should challenge
them to develop skills beyond where they were at
the beginning of the process. Assuming the student
has the self-efcacy to grow from this guidance
(Morrison & Lent, 2018), they will move forward
throughout practicum and intern training to further
extend their helping abilities to the benet of their
clients with newly formed knowledge and insight.
After receiving such gifts from the goddess, which
in counselor training is the guidance and added skill
gained through supervisory feedback, the student
would then be capable of moving forward towards
the nal evaluation, as illustrated by the atonement
of the father (Jones, 2014) as the evaluating agent of
the student’s counseling competence.
Reection: Facing the Temptress and
Ethical Integration
As a counselor educator, I have observed
among my students that a few transformations
that are expected over the course of being in a
counseling cohort may come easily for some but be
a complicated ordeal for others. These difculties
are critical to the spiritual journey of the student
in relation to this exposition on counseling
development as the Hero’s Journey, as they become
a complete parallel for facing the temptress and
overcoming the shadow self as a hero would on
their own epic quest. For the hero, the temptress
comes to them near the end of the journey, just
before the marrying the woman, and hence the
success of the quest and acquisition of mastery
over life (Campbell, 1949). This would represent a
full acceptance of the philosophy of our goddess,
which is the clinical supervisor. If this occurs,
the student subscribes to all ethical insights,
theoretical strategies, and shared techniques from
the supervision process, and then they only face the
acquisition of experience en route to the completion
of the program, internship, and then state licensure.
The temptress comes to remind the hero that the
barriers of such matrimony could restrict the
freedom of the hero, and she attempts to convince
the hero that there is a better path to achieving

25
the goal with less sacrice of personal autonomy.
In this scenario, the student may irt with the
notion that some ethical concepts are merely
recommended but not required, and that these
guidelines would actually hurt the development
of appropriate rapport with certain clients and
prevent the student from achieving their potential
in certain ways. As an educator, I of course know
this is a lie originating from our baser instincts, but
the student in those moments must do what they
know is right, or unfortunately they will engage in
behaviors unbetting the profession.
For this phase of the journey, the hero must
remind themselves to transcend the human instinct
to succumb to temptation, and then the true goal
will come back into focus. In terms of ethical
decision making, the student must develop good
clinical judgment while in training, but also benet
from rmly maintained common sense (Bleiberg &
Baron, 2004), a moral compass, and a philosophical
connection with the code of ethics in counseling
and knowing why these principles exist. As I just
identied, not all of these factors are inherent
qualities; some must be learned and others must be
decided upon by the student as they experience the
stages of their own counselor development.
As illustrated in the acculturation model of
ethical identity (Figure 1), students with a high
personal and professional ethical identication
will likely feel integrated into the ethical
thought processes we explore in our coursework
(Handelsman, Gottlieb, & Knapp, 2005). This is
the ideal and poses the least risk to decision making
when the student moves into their professional
life because the ethics exist in concert with the
counseling student as a person. For the student
with lower personal ethics, they can still feel that
their work life demands high ethical development,
and the term for this student is assimilation. This
student uses their professional life to build up their
predilection to engage in ethical thought outside of
work, and they can often avoid ethical missteps,
although they focus on preventing this concern
less than an integrated professional. Some people
have high ethical integration in their personal life
and do not focus as much on how this applies to
professional issues. These individuals experience
a separation and are at risk of unethical behavior
since they focus less on identifying the professional
necessities of this thought process. Finally, a
person who spends little time either personally
or professionally at understanding these concepts
is at the greatest risk of falling to the wiles of the
temptress. This person is identied as experiencing
an ethical marginalization, and the goal for this
person is to begin building the ethical decision-
making process into their professional life and
then hopefully into their personal life. Any gap in
ethical consideration makes the effort of adhering
to the professional ethics seem a taxation of energy
as opposed to being the necessary manner of
presenting ourselves to our clients as professionals
in the eld.
Figure 1. Ac culturation mo del applied to ethic al identity
Adapted from Handelsman, Golieb, and Knapp (2005)
Shadow
One of the key archetypal concepts from the
work of Carl Jung is that of the shadow (Murdock,
2017; Stein, 1998). If the student engages in dual
relationships or other ethical mistakes, they could
fall into a struggle with their shadow self in any
attempt to correct course and regain the path of the
ethical counseling professional (or student). The
shadow self is appealing because it represents the
desire for an easier path where the ideals of doing
good are less of a burden. It promises the same
reward with less obligation. It also takes advantage
of our fears that we aren’t good enough to excel
on our own merits. Its power comes from internal
tension, anxieties, and fear, and it uses these
negative emotions to prioritize personal needs over

Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | 2019 26
the rules of society (Varghese & Balasubramanian,
2017) and of the profession. The shadow can be
different from person to person, but it connects
naturally with our drive to achieve our desires. Our
humanity is sacriced if the shadow is given free
reign and corrupts the very identity we swore to
support in beginning the journey of the counselor.
It is quite difcult to confront a student with their
misdeeds, but it is necessary to do so or else the
program we build loses credibility and the student’s
unfortunate behavior becomes what those clients
believe counseling to be. The soul of our eld is at
stake with not only every decision we, who strive
to be integrated in our ethics in the role of the noble
hero, make, but also by the misguided students who
stumble into mistakes and keep going unaware of
how to correct course or accept remediation. We
all must face our shadow and choose to be the
counseling professional head on, or else we lie to
ourselves and risk losing the identity we worked so
hard to convince ourselves was a priority.
Atonement with the Father: Evaluation
of Progress
Upon experiencing the successful meeting
with the goddess, the hero of the monomyth moves
on to reconcile all issues with the father. In the
journey of the hero, the father is the omniscient
being, capable of any deed, who possesses
full knowledge of all the hero has experienced
(Campbell, 1949). A merciful father allows for
existence to occur, while a wrathful father could
just as easily end all of life in both the ordinary and
supernatural worlds. For the counseling metaphor
to t this phase of the journey, the university that
grants the master’s degree, and also the state that
issues licensure, can be conceptualized as the
father in the path of the developing counselor. By
extension, the mentor or faculty advisor to the
student, being in charge of ensuring the transcript
meets graduation requirements, can be included in
the concept of the father. Finally, the supervisor
for internship hours can also be considered for
this role. Any person in a position of verifying the
completion of the required tasks contributes to the
father of this symbolic journey.
This level of total evaluation is unique in the
journey of the master’s level counseling student, as
it really does occur twice: once for the academic
institution and then again for licensure. The father
of this scenario delivers a tentative ruling, allowing
the student to graduate and continue the journey to
later stages. The true ruling comes when completing
the licensure requirements, passing the nal trial
of examination, receiving the approval of the
supervisor as the goddess, and becoming capable
of heroic deeds/counseling without the supports of
the supernatural aids or advanced mentors. This
signals the beginning of the transition from novice
counselor to experienced counseling professional
(Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003).
Atonement with the father is the goal of these
ordeals. This means that the hero is in possession of
all virtues required for the larger task of acquiring
the ultimate gift and restoring it to prominence in
the ordinary world. This requires mastery of all
that has been encountered, but it also means that all
that has been experienced is now transformed into
new knowledge (Holmes, 2007). The counseling
student in this phase has the ability to use content
from any course to reach a suitable interaction with
the challenges of the counseling eld. They also
realize that this learning is a lifelong role and the
challenges are never-ending. This is the steepest
challenge our eld has to offer, and it comes from
humanism, in that we call it self-actualization. This
concept of fullling all potential is the tallest of
towers (Campbell, 1949), the Axis Mundi, which
no counselor can truly ascend but we all strive for
as we aim for exceptional distinction as helpers
in our eld. A counselor in tune with the eld has
achieved balance in their approach and mastery of
their knowledge, and they align with the approach
of good in their ethics and moral decision making.
They have achieved all it takes to be effective
helpers of humanity and only the fulllment of
goals remains before deciding how best to bring
this gift to the masses of the ordinary world, the
community they sought to help before enrolling in
their graduate program.
Reection: Nadir & Apotheosis
It is quite common for students of mine to reach
out and discuss their low points. This happens
most often (it seems) at the deadlines for important
assignments. Whenever this happens, I am brought
back to the Hero’s Journey and the concept of
nadir. Nadir is, simply put, the lowest point of the
journey (Dybicz, 2012). At this stage, the powers
of evil have corralled the hero and are making the

27
best attempt to prevent the hero from ascending
to the highest summit. If the hero succeeds in
that nal task, they will claim the ultimate power
and be capable of truly battling back the forces of
evil. As an instructor, but also a former student,
I remember vividly the feeling of knowing that
I could complete an assignment if only I could
get to my computer and write it. As a side note
about me, I never once missed a deadline for an
assignment at either the master’s or doctorate levels
of my training. It never occurred to me that I might
not receive a zero for being a simple minute past
midnight, so I never tested it and never realized my
instructors appreciated this but were not nearly the
rigid tyrants I feared they could be.
Many students do test this structure of their
reality. They lend the power of nadir to their
circumstance, and they let the pressure mount. It is
also important to explain that in this metaphor nadir
is not just any discomfort related to progress. It is
the darkest discomfort when you are at the point
where you either meet the deadline or you don’t and
you either ght or surrender. My memory of this
feeling is coming up to the nal day of true writing
on my doctoral dissertation. I knew that if I could
only stay up until three or four in the morning, and
then, for the rst time, the full ve-chapter draft
would exist. This is a daunting thought to realize
and many people become afraid of that form of
paramount progress. We procrastinate because
we are afraid of moving forward in a true fashion
(Holmes, 2007). Most students appear to feel this
on every assignment, at least in small doses. The
true nadir occurs after the role of student is over
in the purgatory of internship where life still feels
stunted by the directive of achieving experience.
Nadir is experienced by this lifelong learner when
they begin to feel like the ultimate fulllment of
their licensure is an endless cycle of demands with
success permanently out of reach. All they have to
do is decide to ght for progress one more time.
The solution is found in another element of the
journey: apotheosis.
Apotheosis is the nal transformation of
the hero at the highest level in the journey from
ordinary to supernatural (Campbell, 1949). The
hero becomes divine through an epiphany that
leads to enlightenment (Jones, 2014). Evil no
longer holds power over the hero, and the hero is
fully capable of overcoming the obstacle of these
opposing forces. This is the phase of triumph. For
the counseling student, all challenges are complete,
and the student is engaged in the nal completion
of tasks for the rite of passage to become a
licensed counselor. All courses have been passed
and the degree received years earlier. Supervision
is completed and the hours experienced have
tested the abilities of the counseling intern. The
nal challenge of the licensure exam has also been
conquered by the counselor-in-training. All that is
left is using the knowledge from these experiences
to seize the ultimate gift and begin helping the
world through a new identity. The student has
experienced the full Hero’s Journey and become a
licensed professional counselor.
The Ultimate Boon: Licensure &
Counselor Competence
Once the professional counselor becomes
licensed, they are then able to exit from the
structures of supervision and frequent interaction
with senior members of the eld. In myth, this
distinction is being delivered from the World Navel,
which is the source of life, but through the very
corruptions and imperfections of life the source
also generated the discord that led the hero to seek
change. In our analogy, the state board of health
or other body governing the profession issues the
honor of licensure as this ultimate gift. Entering
the experienced professional phase (Rønnestad
& Skovholt, 2003), the hero’s abilities to help
will continue to rene themselves as new clinical
experiences are acquired. Techniques will become
more varied, common factors of change (such as
therapeutic rapport) will be rened to higher levels,
and greater trust in professional instincts will
become hallmarks of continued clinical work. The
ability to deliver exceptional clinical intervention
to clients and help guide others to change is the
ultimate boon in this conceptualization of the Hero’s
Journey. This journey is designed to explain how a
hero seeks to combat the phenomena of tragedy and
irony in the world of myth (Pieracci, 1990), while
the experienced counselor similarly affects change
in those experiencing depression, anxiety, trauma,
and other psychological difculties.
As the years continue, the maturity of
the counselor-as-hero extends into the senior
professional phase (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003).

Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | 2019 28
While the counselor has achieved recognition in
their community through years of service, they will
also have achieved the supervision role and become
gatekeepers for new heroes seeking to serve clients
in the eld. The leader role may feel like a good
t for some or may be intimidating to others. It
is critical not to be overcome by the isolation of
independence within the eld, to continue to
collaborate and engage in continuing education,
and not succumb to apathy and boredom pertaining
to the use of the gift of counseling (Glueck, 2015).
Once a sought-after treasure, this ability could
become the status quo, so it is important for the
senior counselor to preserve their passion of the
helping work in creative ways that reinvigorate
the enthusiasm of their past self. Despite the ebb
and ow of the endless use of the helping talent,
the counselor-as-hero would still intellectually
acknowledge the satisfaction from the work across
all phases of the journey (Rønnestad & Skovholt,
2003), even when the luster has faded from
enduring the temporal experience.
RETURN TO THE ORDINARY WORLD
Crossing of the Return Threshold
After a lifetime of service to the goal of helping
others suffer less in the ordinary world, the senior
counselor experiences a return threshold in a
few different ways. First, the return threshold is
related to the ability to have a personal life free
from the constraints of a graduate program or
the intensity of meeting demanding professional
requirements. Some heroes of myth do in fact
avoid this return to normalcy (Campbell, 1949).
If this occurs, those from the ordinary world may
seek out the hero and convince them to return,
while more comedic scenarios result in the gods
frantically pursuing the hero to force the return
to normal life. This shift in identity relates to the
truth that we make sacrices are made to pursue
our goals as counselors. Family and friends have
also experienced many things in life without
their friend who sought to become the counseling
professional. Completing the goals gives an
opportunity to restore balance that was knowingly
sacriced in service of this professional goal.
The return threshold is a metaphor for allowing
ourselves to not be students anymore but to
become lifelong learners who are allowed to be
complete people in service to our identity, which
is equal parts the counselor and ourselves. This
is called, for the hero, becoming the “Master of
Two Wo rl d s.”
Reection: The Master of Two Worlds
I am going to share a difcult truth as a
counselor educator who enjoys the daunting task
of being a lifelong learner and teacher to future
counselors and counseling educators. The bridge
between the master of two worlds for the hero is
sometimes a tough reality when understanding
what it represents as a counselor educator. The
world does not understand mental health. Our
clients come from the ordinary world with ideas of
how to help others and ideas of who can and cannot
be “saved” through psychotherapy. Most of the
time, these ingrained beliefs are well-intentioned.
Often, with focused teaching they can be addressed
and repurposed for effective use. However, not
everyone is in our classroom, and they continue
with these biases as if this is no problem at all. I have
seen many relationships in my life shift because of
this. This is not even due to the nefarious purposes
of those family and friends seeking to do harm.
It really just comes down to the world really not
understanding mental health, cultural competence,
active listening, self-care, ethics, and many of the
other key components of the counselor identity that
makes our profession a source of inspiration for
those in the world who are hurting.
In myth, the hero often tries to ee the ordinary
world or never returns to it. Frodo sails away to
the Grey Havens with Gandalf and the other
ringbearers (Tolkien, 1955). Luke Skywalker goes
missing to grieve his failures on the unknown
planet of Ach To (Abrams, 2017). These illustrate
the plight of the hero after the initial journey. The
lay person can be appreciative of the gift, but they
do not understand the burden of carrying it or the
implications of that responsibility on the psyche of
the hero. I see these concerns in myself sometimes
as I look at the movement of society, the phases of
new legislation, the opinions of the general public,
and the stigma related to mental health. Still, we
keep helping. I have to believe that we can learn
from these gures of reality and ction alike and
do better. After all, we have a gift for helping
others, and they are surely better off with us in the
battle to help, while keeping our presence focused
on things we can change and leaving things we

29
cannot change to others. Every day when we nish
helping others, we can remember one last stage of
the journey for the tested hero: the freedom to live
for themselves.
Freedom to Live
This nal stage of the monomyth before the
circle is complete is the realization that the hero has
the freedom to live for their self (Campbell, 1949).
This occurs later in life and relates most directly
to retirement from the helping profession or even
the time to reect positively on a life lived with
integrity through healthy functioning of the ego
(Goodcase & Love, 2017) and the deeper meaning
of a life lived helping others. The battle becomes
less about good and evil in this phase for the hero,
and for the counseling professional the journey
is understood as the relationship between health
and dysfunction. The goal was never to eradicate
suffering at all but rather to show the world that we
can nd value in the appreciation of joy, meaning,
and contentment wherever they are to be found.
With any hope, counselors will feel effective as
they experience this journey, and then they can
nd that place where they live a life that benets
from everything we come to learn about the human
condition. If this occurs, we will have achieved
true freedom to live a life well-lived. The journey
is then complete.
DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION
This discussion has sought to connect the
Hero’s Journey, as illustrated in the monomyth,
archetypes, literature, lm, and ction, back to the
realities of pursuing the fulllment of the counselor
identity. To this point, the principle of the Hero’s
Journey had been used in several instances of
publication but always related to the growth of the
client (Fortune et al., 2016; Pieracci, 1990) or the
development of research/writing ideas (Holmes,
Figure 2. The H ero’s Journey: As appl ied to counselo r development
Adapt ed from t he origin al char t as seen in C ampbel l (1949, p. 2 10)

Journal of Instructional Research | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | 2019 30
2007; McBride Steinberg, 2014). It is likely the
experience of teaching counseling theories, skills,
and various other courses can be enhanced by
integrating the Hero’s Journey as a way to illustrate
the concepts of growth and philosophy inherent
in many foundational concepts of our treatment
approaches. With any hope, this concept can
ourish among other educators in counseling to
create a memorable hook for narrative development
of what occurs symbolically across the growth
of a counselor but also as a resource for helping
incoming students to understand in a memorable
way what kind of academic experience they are
enrolling in, and what it will take on an existential
level to achieve fulllment in this profession.
The change within the person is the key to
understanding counselor development as the Hero’s
Journey. Students learn through forming strong
conceptual connections with material that grants
the idea greater cognitive power (Rowley, Fook,
& Glazzard, 2018). By creating an opportunity to
learn that utilizes easily recognizable characters
and situations, the imperative of the idea is retained
and with greater enthusiasm. This is the purpose
of the monomyth throughout time (Campbell,
1949). The journey of the hero means more to us
because it feels familiar, but it is also new with
each retelling. This new vision of the journey’s
story is how a lay person becomes a master of the
art that is counseling. From being a person who
wants to help others in the world but lacks the skills
and moving all the way through the challenges of
a master’s program, state internship, licensure
exams, and then maneuvering the quests of practice
in a complex and ever-evolving eld, counseling
is a source of hope similar to the promise of the
empowered hero. At least, it can be if the instructor
of the courses that capture the imagination of new
minds entering the eld believes in the metaphor.
The phases of the hero (departure, initiation,
and return) give a full-spectrum understanding
of counselor growth and related professional
challenges. With any hope, this idea will continue to
be expanded upon in future writings to establish the
complete realization of the idea. As the monomyth
is timeless, it is expected that we can retell this
story again and again from different angles and
emphasizing new challenges. The goal is to
connect deeper with our conicts to reach a sense
of meaningful resolution, which comes through
having the understanding and empowerment
to interact with the struggle. It is my hope that
students who learn from their mentors can grasp
the importance of having counselors in the world,
and this paper serves as a synthesis in sharing a
creative way of illustrating why counseling truly is
a gift that can affect change in our ordinary world.
Declaration of interest: The author reports no
conict of interest. The author alone is responsible
for the content and writing of this article.

31
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