Some Explanations - The Hero Test

Explanation 2
Questionnaires were given to elementary and secondary school children for reading preferences, age-grade trends, sex differences, and characteristics of comic books. Split-half reliability of judged book characteristics was "reasonably high for all but one." The relationship between popularity of books and their characteristics indicated that boys selected books with masculine, "adventure," "violence," and "success for the hero " characteristics. Girls chose books having as characteristics "feminine," "adolescent," "romance," and "humor." ( Robert Butterworth, Journal of Genetic Psychology, vol. 78, pp. 71-96, 1951)

Explanation 3
Three stories from Indian mythological literature are considered--one each from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavatam. The experiences of the protagonists in the stories--the poet Valmiki, the warrior hero Arjuna, and the seeker Muchukunda--may be seen as variations on an archetype of the creative process. It is suggested that the story of Valmiki provides a complete paradigm of the creative process while those of Arjuna and Muchukunda are powerful instances of the interplay between ego and creativity. The article analyzes the creativity of the scientist Marie Curie, mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, and novelist Patrick White in the light of the mythic archetypes. The analysis is carried out to explore the complementary relationship of myth and creativity in real life. A secondary objective is to explore the relationship between culture and creativity, and its implications for cross-cultural perspectives on creativity. The article concludes that mythic models offer a valuable vantage point from which to study real-life creativity, and that essentially creativity and originality are transcultural in nature. (C. R. Ananth Rao, Creativity Research Journal, vol 17, no. 2-3, pp. 221-240, 2005)

Explanation 4
The relationship between "gynophobia" in American men & the creation of a superhero in comic fiction is examined. Previous works have pointed out the ambivalent situation of American women as derogated in society but most powerful within the family, which, according to psychoanalytic conceptions, produces a fear of F power among men. (Kenneth Adams, The Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 345-413, 1983)

Explanation 5
Industrial society would demand a mythic hero almost without adversaries against which to test his strength, for this is a society of impersonal forces. In effect on the reader, the Superman myth seems calculated to further erode the doctrine of responsibility & to continue the trend toward hetero-directed persons. Also, Superman's unbalanced response to problems, ie, his great shows of strength, work to erode the judgment & judiciousness of response typical of the inner-directed person. ( Umberto Eco, Communications, vol. 24, pp. 24-40, 1976 )

Some Explanations - The Hero Test

Explanation 1

The self-knower has become a hero within many contemporary cultures. This hero goes by various different titles, including, the "self-insightful," the "self-actualized," the "autonomous and mature," the "representative of independent thinking," the "morally virtuous," and many more. We have tried to trace the logic underlying the diverse self-knower movements and have found three common themes underlying them.

For one, the varieties of theories and treatments associated with self-knowledge are interested exclusively in the appearance of the self-knower. Each representative of the self-knower school has its own set of criteria for identifying the self-knowing person, and in turn, each member of the self-knower school represents certain convictions about how individuals should be evaluated.

A second common theme in the self-knower movement is its distaste for looking at the social circumstances or other elements in a person's background that might underlie the self-knowing essence. Social influence, childhood training, the implanting of society's values, and the like are all regarded as irrelevant to the accumulation of self-knowledge.

The third common theme is a thoroughgoing confusion of self with self-knowledge. The confusion amounts to the self-knower school's not recognizing that self-aspects, such as personality traits or values, can have an existence and history quite separate from knowledge of those aspects.

Elaborating on a commentary by Zurhorst (1983), our central theme is that the self-knower movement embodies a strong propensity to control individuals. In the course of this book, we look more carefully at these processes of interpersonal control. The reader's attention is drawn to empirical work that illustrates the control mechanism underlying the self-knower movement. It is shown that the observer--the perceiver of other persons--is especially reluctant to accord the other person self-knower status, maturity, creativity, and the like, when the other is not immediately controllable. Robert Wicklund, The self-knower: A hero under contro, Springer: New York, 1992.



Some Explanations - The Hero Test Explanation 1		The self-knower has become a hero within many contemporary cultures. This hero goes by various different titles, including, the "self-insightful," the "self-actualized," the "autonomous and mature," the "representative of independent thinking," the "morally virtuous," and many more. We have tried to trace the logic underlying the diverse self-knower movements and have found three common themes underlying them. For one, the varieties of theories and treatments associated with self-knowledge are interested exclusively in the appearance of the self-knower. Each representative of the self-knower school has its own set of criteria for identifying the self-knowing person, and in turn, each member of the self-knower school represents certain convictions about how individuals should be evaluated. A second common theme in the self-knower movement is its distaste for looking at the social circumstances or other elements in a person's background that might underlie the self-knowing essence. Social influence, childhood training, the implanting of society's values, and the like are all regarded as irrelevant to the accumulation of self-knowledge. The third common theme is a thoroughgoing confusion of self with self-knowledge. The confusion amounts to the self-knower school's not recognizing that self-aspects, such as personality traits or values, can have an existence and history quite separate from knowledge of those aspects. Elaborating on a commentary by Zurhorst (1983), our central theme is that the self-knower movement embodies a strong propensity to control individuals. In the course of this book, we look more carefully at these processes of interpersonal control. The reader's attention is drawn to empirical work that illustrates the control mechanism underlying the self-knower movement. It is shown that the observer--the perceiver of other persons--is especially reluctant to accord the other person self-knower status, maturity, creativity, and the like, when the other is not immediately controllable. Robert Wicklund, The self-knower: A hero under contro, Springer: New York, 1992.