The Hero in the Mirror: From Fear to Fortitude

by Sue Grand

Overview

In times of stress, trauma and crisis—whether on a personal or global scale—it can be all too easy for us to externalize a larger-than-life figure who can assuage our suffering, a Hero who comes to the fore even as we recede into the background. In taking on our collective burden, however, such an omnipotent Hero can actually undermine us, representing as it does the very same characteristics we fail to note in one another. By granting the Hero to power to set things right, we seem to deny it to ourselves, leaving us temporarily lightened but ultimately helpless.

In response, Sue Grand deconstructs the myth of the Heroic and argues for the "ordinary hero," a more realistic figure with the same limitations, concerns and fears as the rest of us, but who nonetheless stands up for the greater good in the face of danger, despair and villainy. From the foundation of relational psychoanalysis, Grand incorporates cultural and ethical considerations in her examination of what this ordinary hero might look like, a trip that takes us from the consulting room to right outside our front doors, from the heart of a "civilized" nation to the myriad war-torn regions dappling the globe, both past and present. Along the way we meet individuals whose encounters with adversity range from the mundane to the catastrophic, and learn how they struggle against the dubious concept of the Hero looming large in their lives. Recounting this journey in finely-tuned yet imminently accessible and enjoyable prose, Grand demonstrates that the best place to ultimately find the ordinary hero is within each other: The hero is us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780881634822
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/18/2009
Series:	Relational Perspectives Book Series , #41
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Sue Grand, Ph.D., is faculty and supervisor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she holds a specialization in trauma as well as family and couples. In addition, she is faculty at the Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis, the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. She is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and author of The Reproduction of Evil (Analytic Press, 2000), and has a private practive in New York City and Teaneck, NJ.

Table of Contents

The Hero in the Mirror. Section I: Heroes and Warriors. Combat Speaks I: Heroic Performance, Civilian Desire. Combat Speaks II: Grief and Tragic Memory. Section II: Childhood and the Heroic Imagination. Fantastic Dangers: Reality Meets the Edge of the World. Strange Bodies in Strange Encounters: Transfiguration and Inquiry. Section III: Analytic Heroes: Finding Courage. False Courage, Analytic Lies. Intrepid Subjects: Rescuing Lost Generations. Section IV: Resisting Demonic Heroes. Restoring Reverence to Sacrificial Bodies: Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Torture. Dignifying the Abject: Genocide and State Terror. Epilogue.

Editorial Reviews

"This brilliant and passionate book debunks all the myths we have about the Hero - beyond fear, beyond evil, beyond us, soon to be arriving to our rescue. It is a call for the new hero - ordinary, struggling with insecurity and fear, life-affirming, in process. This is the hero I trust and long for: the one that lives in each of us, the one we make in our gathering, in our activism, in our struggle. The Hero in the Mirror is nothing less than a call for a new consciousness and a new way of being." - Eve Ensler, activist and playwright, The Vagina Monologues

"Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, The Hero in the Mirror is a book for our time. In the world of traditional heroes, everyone loses; trapped by the cultural imperative that constructed them, heroes are denied intimacy and tenderness, while those who idealize them diminish themselves by denying their own capacity for agency and courage. From the most personal to the most political, from childhood fantasies to psychoanalytic impasses, Grand redefines what it means to be heroic. This is a hopeful book, a call for a collectivity of small heroes who will resist the false comfort and polarization of the heroic cycle with ordinary goodness. Sue Grand leads the way." - Ghislaine Boulanger, Ph.D., author, Wounded by Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma

"Sue Grand has given us a series of compelling meditations on the lure and the risk of heroism. In these generous, personal, and creative clinical stories, I was particularly struck by the links between heroism and intergenerational transmission of trauma. This book is a gift to our profession." - Susan Coates, Ph.D., coeditor, September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds

From the Publisher