Joseph Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: “Follow your bliss.”

Campbell’s ideas regarding myth and its relation to the human psyche are dependent on the work of Carl Jung, whose studies of human psychology, as previously mentioned, greatly influenced Campbell. Campbell’s conception of myth is closely related to the Jungian method of dream interpretation, which is heavily reliant on symbolic interpretation. Jung’s insights into archetypes were in turn heavily influenced by the Bardo Thodol (known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead). In his book The Mythic Image, Campbell quotes Jung’s statement about the Bardo Thodol, that it “belongs to that class of writings which, because of their deep humanity and still deeper insight into the secrets of the human psyche, make an appeal to the layman seeking to broaden his knowledge of life…

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