Introducing the Heroic Quadrant Model of Psychology
A fractalizing, scalable model of psychology, based on the Campbellian Hero's Journey, that explains not only individual personalities but also community roles and relationships.
This model is the culmination of nearly fifteen years of study, analysis, writing and philosophy. As an undergraduate in behavioral neuroscience, I set out to create my own theory of psychology that, I hoped, could explain both individual and broader social mechanics with the same elegance as the formulas and theories of the physical sciences, and the same transcendental beauty as the spiritual arts. I studied behaviorism, biology, and the pathways of the brain; I studied the physical sciences themselves; I studied myth, spirituality, and religion; and I made observations as I moved through many different types of social organizations and experiences.
The Hero’s Journey of Joseph Campbell influenced me the most, as the story that explains all stories. I decided this was truly the engine of life itself. Taoism, with its simple elegance and its conformity with the movements and cycles of the natural world, easily observable in the clear and tangible principles of the martial arts, also struck me as one of the foundational structures of the universe. But without Paul Graham’s “Quadrant of Conformity”, I never would have made the leap to tie everything together into the cohesive theory I was seeking. I owe much to him for that, and I am thankful for his essay, which I read soon after it was published in the summer of 2020.
Graham’s quadrant, simply put, worked. It explained not only individual psychology, but also broader social mechanics, including the cycles of cultural change and power dynamics. It was both descriptive and predictive. It was simple, elegant, and more importantly, addressed individual psychology in the context of collective relationships. There was something fundamental in the division between the individual and the group that underlay its axes. Even so, I felt, after months of playing with it, overlaying it with other quadrants, and creating my own, I knew there had to be a division even more fundamental which could unify everything.
In a sense, he already had it. The division between the collective (conformist or “conventional-minded”) and the individual (independent thinker) is the same division between the left side of my quadrant and the right. But it is not conformity that is the true underlying factor, it is the world of the known — the world of Order — versus the unknown, or Chaos. The world of routine is also the world of the Village, the community, and the familiar; the underworld is also the world of isolation, independence, and the strange. But some Dreamers conform to conventional norms, and some Villagers think independently. I have known people-pleasers who have had very innovative ideas, and rule-breakers in one respect who conform in other aspects of their lives. I have known incredibly independent thinkers who behave like aggressive conformists. What gives?
The second axis, that of the passive vs. the aggressive, seemed even more fundamental. And, indeed, this characterization figures strongly in the analysis of my final version. But the term “aggressive” implies anger. Could there be a more neutral way to describe this division?
In one of the quadrants I had developed, which placed the lens on social power dynamics, I termed this “aggressive” energy “self-empowerment”, which reminded me of the Taoist “Creative”. The “Creative” and the “Receptive”, after all, is just another way to phrase the “aggressive” and the “passive”. But the Taoist concept encompasses so much more: the masculine and the feminine, the material and the formless, the ordered and the chaotic. In fact, the Taoist concept, a visualization of the abstract concept of opposites themselves, encompasses every potential opposite in the world!
I wondered what would happen, then, if I made a quadrant composed of two Taoist axes. Could I plot Graham’s quadrant successfully onto it? Could I plot Gretchen Rubin’s “Four Tendencies”? Could I plot my own other quadrants, or the quadrants of the Tarot? I tried it. What greeted me was a graph of the circle of the Taijitu, yin and yang.
Not only could I graph onto this almost every four-factor model I had been playing with, but I realized it was also a graph of the Campbellian Hero’s Journey itself — the monomyth! From there everything else fell into place. The quadrant itself was a process, a cycle, a story. What I was looking at was none other than the story of the human condition, the story of the universe, which itself was also the story of both the individual and the collective psyche! I had finally found that which I sought: something scalable not just within the field of human psychology, but which integrated the mechanics of human individual psychology with the mechanics of social psychology, the mechanics of nature and the physical world, and the mechanics of the universe itself.
I also owe much of this discovery to my philosophical ally and artistic mentor, Chris Friend. I met Friend perhaps in the year 2015 while I was working at a cheese shop in Silverlake, Los Angeles. In the seven or so years since we have shared countless hours in conversation analyzing, dissecting, charting, visualizing, and otherwise attempting to understand the mechanics of human psychology and society at large. Without those conversations I could never have refined my ideas to the point where I could finally elaborate them in an organized, cohesive way. I am immensely thankful for his friendship, and for the path that it has opened up for me to tread. Chris has developed his own psychological model, called the “Mind Kastle”, which he formulated simultaneously over the course of our discussions; and, since both our models actually happen to lock in together in an illuminating way, I wanted to include it here. I asked him to contribute a short essay, which has been included in Part III of the section on Advanced Social Theory.
I want my model of personality to inspire others, in the spirit of the great Renaissance home scientists of several hundred years ago to which modern scientific institutions, in their corrupt and hollowed-out form, sadly can’t hold a candle today. For this reason I publish under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license. Anyone should feel free to add to, utilize, reference, build on, or disseminate this work, for the hopeful betterment of all. Thank you. —H.K.
How the Quadrant Works
The Heroic Quadrant is a scalable, fractalizing system of psychology based on the Hero’s Journey and the universal engine of the Tao. It describes not only states but also processes. The Heroic Quadrant layers the Hero’s Journey over the circle of the Taijitu, which is then plotted on a quadrant and divided into four cyclic phases (from the “process” perspective) or typologies (from the “state” perspective). That is, each square in the quadrant captures both motion and stillness.
Process Mode
From the “process” perspective, the direction of movement goes from the lower left corner (the “Villager” square) counter-clockwise, ending in the upper left corner (the “Teacher” square). This describes the cycle mythologist Joseph Campbell calls “The Hero’s Journey”, also known as the “monomyth”, the one story that summarizes the eternal human condition. It is also simultaneously the Taiji, that is, the “Tao-in-motion”.
The Hero’s Journey begins in the realm of the routine, in the state of unity, represented by the concept of a village. The Village symbolizes integration, stability, and community. In the Taiji this is the tip of the moving force of Order, which contains the eye of Chaos. It must inevitably pass into Formlessness, the world of Dream. And that is the direction it is going. In the monomyth, that sense of comfortable peace and security shatters inevitably before the “Call to Adventure”, which pulls the target out into the world of the unknown. The unknown is the source of all fear, because fear stems from uncertainty about what will happen in the future; but it is also the source of desire, because the unknown contains all sorts of tantalizing possibilities. The unknown is the place where anything can exist and anything can happen, which can be either a good or a bad thing. This dance between the known and the unknown occupies a profound place in the neurobiology of all creatures. It is so profound, so fundamental, so universal, that it can even be observed in plants and at the cellular level. This dance is what I define as consciousness itself — this process of venturing out from a place of routine familiarity, into an unpredictable, novel state of affairs, and adapting. The first phase of the monomyth is that step out from the known to the unknown, into the realm of possibility. The realm of possibility, phrased another way, is the realm of the Dream. This is the first phase of contact with the unknown. It is the tail of Chaos in the Taiji. Nothing is defined here. In the monomyth, this is called “Crossing the Threshold”. It is an entry into another world, frequently facilitated by some sort of guardian or guide, who will prepare the hero for the trials they must face as they upend their normal world and confront the unpredictable. This is a process of experimentation, of spiritual initiation, a complete letting go of control.
The third phase of the cycle is embodied by a series of Trials. It is the true “Adventure”. During this phase the hero goes into the deepest, darkest depths of the soul. Here one must fight monsters, solve puzzles and challenges, complete impossible tasks, and stretch themselves to the very limit of their abilities. This is a “forging in the fire”. One must confront whatever it is that they are most afraid of. There is no other way. Frequently the hero must face death itself. But as we see in the image of the Taiji, here within the darkest depths of Chaos there is an eye of Order. What we learn here is self-mastery — control of the inner world in the face of pandemonium without. This is the apocalypse: the revelation. If we rise to the occasion, we receive spiritual enlightenment, blessings from the gods, or other supernatural and priceless treasures. We become transformed into a stronger, wiser, more powerful, and better version of ourselves.
The cycle ends with reintegration, symbolized by the Teacher. The Hero returns to the world of the mundane and leaves behind the supernatural. But they are forever changed by their experience. There is no real return to the world, or to the life they had before. Their old ego or self has “died” in the darkness, and they have been “resurrected” like a phoenix from the ashes, into the body or spirit of a new being. Armed with their new wisdom, perspective or holy boons, they must seek a new role in their old village, one that allows them to utilize their newly-forged character and share their enlightenment with those whose turn has not yet come. This is the phase of adaptation, a re-establishing of order out of chaos, symbolized by the pure white tail of the Taiji. The tail moves downward into the “Village” to illustrate the pouring down of wisdom from the heavens. This wisdom, once re-integrated, stabilizes into a new communal harmony, where it lives a short while before again stagnating and ceasing to be relevant. At that point, the cycle begins anew, and the “Call to Adventure” once again demands that those made lazy by comfort venture into the unknown and grow.
State Mode
From the “state” perspective, each quadrant represents a snapshot, or freeze frame, of the process just described. That is, the phases of the Hero’s Journey become typologies that describe parts composing a whole. Rather than focusing on the direction of movement here, we look at how each part contributes in an integral way to an entire, functioning system. It is a vivisection of the process in motion.
The “Village” becomes the “Villager”, the realm of “Dream” becomes “The Dreamer”, the “Adventure” becomes “The Adventurer” and the “Return” or “Reintegration” becomes “The Teacher”. Each type fulfills a role in a broader community by enacting a phase of the cycle. If all types are present and work in harmony with each other, they complete the process, creating a healthy community ecosystem. However, if they do not let go of their role to allow other quadrants to perform theirs, or if they perform their role in its toxic manifestation, the overall health of the community will suffer and the cycle will stagnate or fall out of balance.
The typologies scale. That is, one individual or group can occupy several different quadrants simultaneously at different levels of community. Someone can be a Villager in their family unit, an Adventurer in their workplace and a Teacher in their city. We can imagine that each quadrant can be divided again into four quadrants, and then each of those quadrants can be divided again into the four quadrants, and so on down into infinity. This allows us, in theory, to place every person in the world in a precise location on the initial quadrant, although of course, in practice this is probably impossible. What this also does is allows us to understand individual psychology in the context of a holistic community, since it is impossible to isolate someone from their ecosystem. We can now explain whole-community psychology at the same time as we elucidate and understand individual behavior, for the two influence and explain each other. We can isolate aspects of the whole system at will to analyze them in a closed way, or we can connect parts of the system together to understand how they work in conjunction and influence each other. It is modular and infinitely expandable or contractable.
The other important thing to note is that, unlike most theories of individual psychology, this system does not assume permanence. Until recently it has been generally assumed that a good theory of psychology will be stable, that is, that it will apply to a given individual from cradle to grave. This theory disputes that notion. Instead, it looks at individual psychology as a phenomenon that exists within a broader social context, a context that itself can change and that, in turn, can change the individual’s response. The Heroic Quadrant sees the Hero’s Journey as a universal human undertaking, and the cycle of the Hero’s Journey as a cycle that all of us inherently experience and seek to complete (even if, at times, we may reject passing from one phase to another). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that a changing social context may provoke us to engage with the cycle in different ways, as we attempt to maintain a sort of psychic homeostasis between ourselves and the changing world we inhabit.
My hypothesis is that one’s place in the Heroic Quadrant closely correlates with, but is not entirely dependent on, one’s position in the general social hierarchy of power. In general, Teachers will tend to occupy the upper echelons of the power hierarchy. They seek to maintain and propagate order, which means they probably enjoy a solid place in the current order system, and are highly invested in making sure others help them maintain that place. Villagers will tend to occupy the upper-middling places; they seek to preserve stability probably because they have a comfortable place in the existing order, and don’t wish to lose it. Dreamers, on the other hand, may be slightly maltreated by the existing system, or feel as if it doesn’t fit their needs; therefore, they retreat into fantasies, or quietly go their own way. Adventurers are perhaps the most polarizing of the categories; if they get lucky, their innovation and genius can catapult them to the highest levels of the social hierarchy, but more frequently they occupy some of society’s lowest echelons. If they do manage to rise from low, fringe positions to high ones, however, they may quite easily morph into Teachers.
We would expect, then, that since social position is generally stable throughout one’s lifetime, one’s typology will be, too. In the majority of cases people remain their whole lives in the same communities, the same geographical areas, and they occupy the same rungs in the power ladder throughout their entire lives. However, if people move through a variety of different communities, or if their social status changes, it is possible that their quadrant will change as well. This also explains why people might occupy different quadrants simultaneously at different levels of the whole system.
It is important to emphasize that there are no value judgements here. No quadrant in itself is either “good” or “bad”. By fitting individual psychology into a whole-system perspective, we see that everyone fulfills a role in an eternal and complete cycle. When each of us fulfills our role, we are all seeking subconsciously to “balance out” the system. Now, not everyone will seek that goal in a harmonic way. There are “healthy” and “unhealthy” manifestations of the cycle. But once we understand that the underlying motivation for every action comes from this desire for completion, we can then look at how to flip “toxic” behaviors into “harmonic” ones in a way that satisfies both the original motivation of the individual, and the community as a whole. This perspective also allows us to accept people of different types, rather than wishing others were more like us. If someone does something that annoys or angers us, they are most likely members of a different quadrant! Understanding that each quadrant is important for the cycle as a whole, we now have a starting point from which to work out these differences. We can look to create a space for the individual to fulfill their role while serving the harmony of the whole system, rather than shutting them down or resisting their energy.
Other, existing systems of psychology map well onto the Heroic Quadrant. I have included just a few of them in the diagram above. Among them are Robert Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), which is the model that serves as a basis for the five-factor NEO-PI personality assessment, and is supported by underlying neurobiological pathways; Gretchen Rubin’s “Four Tendencies”, which also plots people out on axes of Internal vs. External and Order vs. Chaos (although she looks at this as attentiveness to Rules); the ancient divination system of the Tarot (which, in my opinion, was originally used as an early psychological framework and theory of personality); and computer scientist and venture capitalist Paul Graham’s “Quadrant of Conformity”, which I must credit as the original inspiration for the quadrant format, and as a key force in shaping the development of the final stages of this model. Without Graham’s work, I never would have understood the importance of the quadrant for graphing the circle, and this project would not be where it is today, so I thank Graham immensely for his contribution to the understanding of these dynamics.
Gretchen Rubin’s axes of Internal vs. External / Order vs. Chaos are represented using the corresponding trigrams of the I Ching, which are symbols for the alternating forces of the Taiji. The trigram ☰, represented by three straight lines, signifies “The Creative”, which is also the masculine force, the material, earthly world, the manifest, the rules-based order, and the active energy. The trigram ☷, represented by three broken lines, signifies “The Receptive”, which is also the feminine force, the formless, abstract, spiritual world, the unmanifest, chaos (the Biblical “Tohu and Bohu”), and the passive energy.
The colors were selected based on color psychology. Red is an energetic color that typically signifies conflict, danger, and a state of alertness, in nature as well as in the human world; therefore, it was applied to the Adventurer category. Green is a stimulating but calm color, the color of trees — a color that invites you forward and indicates friendliness (The Dreamer). Yellow tends to signify happiness, warmth, and social stability (Villager), whereas Blue is a spiritual color (the color of the skies and the sea), evocative of order and peace (the Teacher).
The upper quadrants, both seekers of internal order, or as indicated by the trigram, “Creative” energy with an internal source, have “active”, creative energy. These are the people who tend to structure and guide society. They are leaders and builders. By contrast, the lower quadrants, who both eschew internal structure, have “passive” energy. This does not mean they cannot be creative. In fact, on the contrary, they are often incredibly so. Rather, it indicates that they prefer to be led or guided by something outside of themselves. They are more open to outside influence and leadership.
Ideally, each quadrant should “move” in the direction of the Taiji engine, to promote the cycle of the Hero’s Journey. This keeps the energy of the engine flowing in its proper order. The next quadrant counter-clockwise provides the lessons that the previous quadrant needs to learn in order to grow. That is, Villagers must move out of their comfort zone into the unknown, but they must be shown hope and possibility in order to accept this (the forté of the Dreamer); Dreamers must learn to face their fears and withstand pain, but they need a transcendent reason to do so (the role of the Adventurer); Adventurers must learn to accept some measure of order for the sake of quality control, but they must still be allowed enough grassroots room to thrive (the Teacher’s role); and Teachers must accept the harmony of the whole, which includes impurity, but they must still be able to perceive a sense of stability (the Villager’s strong point). When quadrants go backward, they are comfortable but do not grow as much as they could; when they stagnate in their own quadrant they become toxic forces; and if they jump to diametrically opposed quadrants they usually experience intense conflict.
In the next few chapters, we will explore the static typologies in more detail, and then we will examine some of the implications and uses of this theory for community cohesion, individual psychological development and interpersonal and intergroup communication.