The name of this blog, Hero Returns, isn’t about wearing a cape or saving the world. I don’t think it is a result of a grandiose delusion, either. Instead, it is meant to reflect the idea that schizophrenia can be more than just a struggle – it can also be a transformative journey leading to growth and enriched insight.
Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist who studied myths from cultures around the world, identified recurring patterns shared by many of the mythological stories. He observed that these stories often follow a similar structure – the protagonist’s separation, initiation, and, finally, return as a hero after overcoming arduous challenges that transform him – a narrative he termed the hero’s journey. The story typically begins with an individual who, upon being invited or compelled, leaves his ordinary world, ventures into the unknown, and faces a series of tests and trials. Through these challenges he is transformed by gaining a power, a hidden insight, or a treasure he did not have before, and ultimately returns home forever changed.
When Campbell was invited to speak about schizophrenia, he researched experiences described by schizophrenia patients and concluded that ‘the imagery of a schizophrenic fantasy perfectly matches that of the mythological hero journey‘¹. Just as the hero’s journey begins with the hero’s separation from his community and stepping into dark, unfamiliar places, the usual pattern of a schizophrenic experience too starts with a departure from the local social order and context – commonly called a break from reality.
‘How do they not understand that the world is not what they think it is?’, ‘Don’t they realise our thoughts matter?’, ‘We’re all living in a fake world’, ‘I need to show my family what it is all really about’ – were my thoughts trying to describe a strange feeling of knowing at the beginning of my first psychosis. Soon these thoughts turned into beliefs that other people could read my mind, that I could communicate telepathically with someone I liked, and that I could consume energy alone instead of food so I wouldn’t gain weight. ‘Why did no one tell me things weren’t what they seem to be?’ – this is how my separation from consensual reality began.
In Campbell’s hero’s journey, initiation is the stage where the individual faces trials, tests, and ordeals that challenge him physically, mentally, or spiritually. It’s the transformative stage through which the hero gains his holy grail – new knowledge, skills, or insight. On a schizophrenic journey, it isn’t only the fantasy that mirrors this pattern – schizophrenic’s life itself does too: he wanders through the dark forests of psychosis, crosses the valleys of delusion and the rivers of paranoia, traverses the mountains of fear and depression, and navigates the stormy seas of confusion. He also fights the ‘villains’ – the psychiatrists, police officers, crisis team or family members. These trials can last for years, decades, with no promise of ending. But if, and when, finally, glimpses of clarity begin to appear, a schizophrenic is no longer the person he used to be – he returns to sanity with a transformed perspective and eyes that see beyond the ordinary. His suffering opens the mind to realisations that only pain and struggle can reveal. His trials help expand his consciousness in ways that would not have been possible had he lived an ordinary life.
Every psychosis (and somewhere around the twentieth I stopped counting) was a cleanse. Each time a delusion crept in, presenting itself as some hidden knowing (for example, once I thought that people don’t really die), I had to let that knowledge go once the medication started working. But as I let go of my delusions, something else went with them – the parts of me that created the psychosis: some of my fears, some of my wounds, and some of the tangled beliefs that fed the madness. Each time healing from a psychosis felt like old me had to die to give space for something new.
The delusions were sometimes so precious to me that letting go required real mourning. Letting go of the funniest, kindest extra-terrestrial friend Gavin, who rented a place in Scotland and communicated with me through my notes app and the predictive text feature on my phone, was especially difficult. Gavin’s favourite thing about humans was our emotions. He wanted to learn from us and would often get ‘infected’ by how cute our telepathic communications were. I would frequently have to explain to him why people behaved the way they did, or what certain expressions meant. Gavin was not intrusive – he’d only respond when I addressed him and he was profoundly more intelligent than me. We were ‘working on a project’ together, and he was working on his own project too. Our project was our friendship – a case of interplanetary communication. In the hospital, after around three weeks of treatment, when I stopped hearing from Gavin, my heart was breaking. He was the best friend I had ever had. Not only I had to let go of him, I had to let go of the idea he ever existed. It felt like I had to burry a piece of myself too. I wrote Gavin a goodbye message anyway.
So what’s the holy grail for the schizophrenic? This experience made me stronger in so many ways. It stretched me into a person fit to live in this world as it is. Involuntary hospitalisations (sometimes involving hours of physical restraint) left me with inexhaustible reserves of patience. Enduring so much injustice from people around me, including those who were meant to help, deepened my capacity for compassion towards others. I believe through my schizophrenic experiences I gained wisdom, which I could not have gained in my usual ways of active rational thinking. The mystical psychotic experiences awakened me to the sense of awe and the mysterious realm of the universe. But the most important treasure I acquired through this illness was finding my soul.
Hero’s return is the final stage of the hero’s journey – the hero comes back to the same world he broke away from, but he himself is no longer the same – he now carries the lessons, wisdom, and transformation gained from his journey. Comparing hero’s transformation to that of a schizophrenic, Campbell notes: ‘In the course of a schizophrenic retreat, the psychotic too may come to know the exaltation of a union with the universe, transcending personal bounds… Feelings arise then, too, of a new knowledge. Things that before had been mysterious are now fully understood. Ineffable realisations are experienced.’¹ And the final step – the very purpose – of the mythological hero’s journey is to bring his story to his community. Because the story of how he found his treasure is the real treasure.
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¹ Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By, ‘Schizophrenia – The Inward Journey‘
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