https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167818772201 Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2018, Vol. 58(4) 371–381 © The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0022167818772201 journals.sagepub.com/home/jhp Introduction Heroism and the Human Experience: Foreword to the Special Issue Zeno E. Franco 1 and Olivia Efthimiou 2 Provenance has always been important to me. Knowing who has handled a set of ideas, and how those ideas were shaped, helps us as scholars to under- stand the intentions given to those ideas and how best to apply them in future work. Heroism’s relationship to humanistic and existential psychology is not a modern one. Humanistic/existential approaches have their grounding in vir- tue, based on the ideas of the ancient Greeks; likewise, the word hero itself is Greek, and the ideal of courage and physical perfection extend from the pre- Socratics (Kahn, 1992), to Aristotle and Plato (Hardie, 1978; Kendrick, 2010), to modern philosophy (Roudinesco, 2008). Over time, the meaning of hero changed from focusing on physical prowess and fame to the physical or social expression of virtue ethics. From this perspective, heroism can be seen as the embodiment of actions that hold us to the highest standard of caring for another, even against great personal costs (Franco, Efthimiou, & Zimbardo, 2016). The History of Exchange Between Joseph Campbell and Humanistic Psychology Over the past century, while much of psychology was busy trying to make sense of the ravages of evil, prompted in large part by the events of World War II and the Holocaust, Joseph Campbell took a different path. In his magnum 1 Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA 2 Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia Corresponding Author: Zeno E. Franco, Center for Healthy Communities & Research, Department of Family & Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 53226, USA. Email: zfranco@mcw.edu 772201JHP XX X 10.1177/0022167818772201Journal of Humanistic PsychologyFranco and Efthimiou research-article 2018