The ‘Power of myth’ is a six-part TV series and a book on six one-hour conversations between mythologist Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers. The series debuted on PBS in 1988. The discussions were based on universal and enduring themes which have featured in mankind’s oldest stories, and both men have tried spotting the relevance of the same in the modern world. According to Campbell, ancient myths are “clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life.” The talks in ‘Power of Myth’ include excerpts from Campbell’s other work ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces.’ Its central theme is that mythology is humanity’s universal way of seeking the transcendental and ‘following your bliss’ is the timeless formula for spiritual satisfaction.
Existentialism is hard to define but one can say that it is the spirit of one’s response to human existence. It lays emphasis on individual existence, choice and freedom. Existentialism centers round the belief that a human is what he believes he can become. Humans are ultimately alone and are known to be subjective in an objective world. Everyone has freedom over their internal nature and thus, the source of values is always internal. Existentialism is defined by the motto: Existence precedes Essence. This means that there is no predetermined nature that controls us, our actions or what is of value to us. We can respond independently to external stimuli, and that human nature is created via free choices. Values also come from free choices.
The personal construct theory represents a comprehensive psychology of personality which has relevance for psychotherapy. It was a metatheory, or rather a theory about theories, drafted by American psychologist George Kelly. The basis of his theory was that man is capable of deriving meaning from things and building them over time. He said humans were incipient scientists who creatively make constructs, or hypotheses, about some irregularities of life in order to get an understanding of the same and even be able to predict outcomes of certain situations. Kelly derived a philosophical position from this metatheory, called constructive alternativism which assumes that alternative interpretations are always available to people about situations and the meaning they place on them.
Kelly believed that people construe events on their personal hypotheses and not on the basis of reality. Constructive Alternativism refers to the fact that all our interpretations of the world are prone to revision. This is because people look at the world from different angles at different points in time. Thus, what may hold true for them at one point in time will become void later on. He also viewed humans as naïve scientists because they may employ certain systems to understand the world, and these systems may be idiosyncratic and therefore, not applicable to the reality of their current situation. This theory was later incorporated into more advanced forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy into intersubjective psychoanalysis.
Works Cited
"Bill Moyers - On Faith and Reason." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html>.
"Summary of Some Main Pointsfrom Sartre's Existentialism and Human EmotionsLecture OutlineEntire Lecture can befound here." Existentialism. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. <http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sartreol.htm>.
"Chapter Outline." Theories of Personality | . N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2013. <http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072316799/student_view0/part5/chapter15/chapter_outline.html>.
