Media as a Mirror
When I was in grad school for counseling, I went to PAX South under the banner of Zelda Informer. I was covering pre-release footage and gameplay of Breath of the Wild at the time and was able to get a nice press pass. With this, I was also given the opportunity to check out panels and concerts I normally wouldn’t have. This is where I met Dr. Anthony Bean. I attended a panel of his about Roleplaying, Archetypes, and their relationship to therapy. Granted, that was not the name of the panel, but it has been a while. To say that this rocked my counseling brain would be an understatement.
It all clicked with me in a way that I had never even considered before. It got me interested in Jungian psychology and I took a deep dive into it. This was a bit discouraged in my program, as Jung was not considered a viable theoretical model for a Christian counselor (a sentiment that I wholly disagree with, but that is for another day). I was already operating from a different theoretical framework from most of my peers - Gestalt theory, which seemed to click into place with the concepts put forth by the Jungian school of thought.
What really caught my interest was the use of archetypes in a therapeutic setting. Not only do they answer humanity’s need to categorize, but they also help inform the individual on the deeper parts of themselves. At the same time, I view them like I do diagnoses: they are descriptive, not prescriptive. Archetypes and diagnoses are helpful for us as both individuals and clinicians as they package up collections of traits or symptoms respectively. That is to say, I view archetypes as a mirror: we look at them and can see ourselves in them.
So where do archetypes come from? Well, myths, stories, and the like. One notable example is the monomyth, or “The Hero’s Journey.” The Hero is one of the many different archetypes and it is one of the easier to look for and understand. While most stories, especially grand tales or myths, follow the structure of The Hero’s Journey, said structure can often apply to our lives. The Hero’s Journey is one of the oldest structures for a story, dating all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. While it is definitely helpful to understand what The Hero’s Journey is, I believe that, for our purposes, it’s more important to understand the why.
Why do we tell stories? To what end? Entertainment is surely a part of it, but not every story is entertaining. I believe that we tell stories to understand ourselves. A good story does not need to represent me and I don’t necessarily need to identify with the characters in it. Instead, we identify with elements from the stories we tell or even use them as things to aspire to. For example, my favorite movie is Into the Spider-Verse; while I am not represented by Miles, nor can I identify closely with him, I can identify with the themes and trials of the story. Themes such as imposter syndrome, expectations, and more are all evident throughout the story and those are all things that I connect with. His struggle is not my struggle, but they share similar concepts. From there, I want to see Miles succeed. I want to see him overcome these struggles and come out on top. How he does so and who he becomes because of these struggles is what makes him such a great character.
The same can be said with any character in any of my favorite pieces of media; Simon from Gurren Lagann, Waver Velvet from Fate, the list goes on. Each of them has a specific trial to overcome and each individual can have their characteristics classified by their archetypes. Most of them go beyond The Hero, but that is always a good starting point. After all, we all want to be heroes in our own stories. We each have trials and tribulations and we want to persevere and come out on the other end like a hero.
Back to that panel, it helped me understand the relationship between stories - the ones we tell and the ones we are told - with our internal archetypes and how we process them. In fact, this is a huge component of therapeutic DnD: what do the characters we create and play say about us at both the conscious and subconscious level? And, yes, they will always say something about you. Creation is a reflective act in that our creations come from us and say something about our person. What does your self-serious halfling rogue or goofy dragon bard say about you? Your personality will spill out from them, whether it be your conscious choices or your subconscious insecurities.
But this goes beyond DnD. One of the examples Dr. Bean used at the panel was playstyle and what it says about the individual. Given the chance, does the player in Assassin’s Creed stick to stealth or choose to rush in guns-blazing? Do they prefer to be calculated and take their time or do they want to brute force things? What do you prioritize in Mario Kart? Speed, acceleration, handling? Maybe a healthy mix of all three?
Furthermore, what do the movies, shows, and books you engage with say about you? While most people are eclectic in the types of media they take in, there is usually a default that people fall back upon. There is a bevy of anime out there, but my comfort genre is the isekai (sent to another world) genre, so much so that several of my friends know that as a defining characteristic of my preferences. But what does it say about me? Well, maybe I like escapism, like escaping to another world. Maybe I like the idea of a hero that can overcome any obstacle (an odd staple of most isekais now)? There is plenty I can dive into and reflect on so that I may better understand myself.
Media has always been in response to something. Very rarely will you see media predicate culture; instead, media reacts and mirrors the culture around it. Media can reinforce, challenge, or try to change the culture around it, but it does not create the culture. From the very beginning, stories were told as a response to the culture, giving idyllic heroes to aspire to or to explain and explore our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. We can even go as far back as (or even farther) the inception of the Greek gods and the mythos surrounding them to see what the culture of the time valued and aspired to.
Stories play on our ethos, bringing us into the worlds they are describing by appealing to innate human desires and archetypes. They cannot, then, appeal to things that are not there. Media mirrors our archetypes; it does not set them. It reflects the values and desires of the time. More than that, though, it reflects the wants and needs of the individual. Jungian therapists will take a look at these archetypes and see what they say about the client. They can show things like emotional needs, physical needs, desires to be met for self-actualization, and more.
The question this leaves us with is: what does the media that I enjoy say about me? If our media mirrors our own wants, needs, and desires, then what is it we currently want? What needs do we feel are addressed or even sated by the media we consume? Reflect on our own reflection, if you will.
