An Anti-Hero's Journey

Abstract

Ellen Y. Siegelman, “An Anti-Hero's Journey,” The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 2005, vol. 24, no. 2, 47-57. Review of Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, New York, Doubleday, 2004. This review attempts to show how a novel remarkably captures the inner world of an adolescent boy with Asperger's syndrome, characterized by autistic hallmarks of social aversiveness and susceptibility to stimulus overload but with remarkable development in a single area, in this case, mathematical genius. Written in a first-person narrative, the novel is shown to progress from what appears to be a simple murder mystery to a much more ambitious story that embodies elements of rites of passage and the hero's journey: leaving a known place for an unfamiliar one, enduring great dangers and trials, returning to the familiar place with a changed worldview and a new sense of self. The reviewer, a Jungian psychoanalyst, emphasizes the importance of fiction as a means of making myths come alive through the imagination and the particularity of telling details.

Key Words:

• Asperger's syndrome
• archetypal fiction
• hero's journey
• myth