Among the course offerings at Miami University of Ohio is the rather ambitiously titled What Is Human Nature? Students in this course are required to submit their own interdisciplinary research proposal on the topic, complete with a list of proposed reference works. It recently came to my attention that two students in this course — Shiree Campbell and Jocelyn Hauge — are proposing to research the topic of “Heroes and Superheroes:”

In our project, we will question what it is that pushes people to expect and want more for themselves. We also plan on determining what causes us to identify with certain heroes and superheroes, thus identifying which traits are the mostly sought out: strength, intelligence, popularity, or versatility, amongst many others.
Basically we are looking at the notion of heroes and superheroes in the human species, and how it is within our human nature to look for those we can imitate, strive to be, or admire greatly from afar.

Now, I don’t know much about Shiree Campbell and Jocelyn Hauge, but I do know that they are brilliant scholars with a keen sense of appropriate source materials. How do I know this? Because one of the reference works they cite for this important study is The Government Manual for New Superheroes.
I must confess that this comes as a relief. For some reason, people keep mistaking The Government Manual for New Superheroes for a work of humor, and it’s a pleasure to see two fine young scholars at long last recognize it for the useful reference work it truly is. Soon, no doubt, it will find its much-deserved place on the reference shelf of every psychiatrist, next to the DSM-IV.