Joseph Gelfer - The Masculinity Conspiracy: Chapter 6 Now Online

For those of us following along with Joseph Gelfer's online book, The Masculine Conspiracy, he has released a new chapter, Chapter 6: Archetypes.

The Masculinity Conspiracy: chapter 6 now online

Chapter 6 (Archetypes) of The Masculinity Conspiracy is now online.

This chapter examines how archetypes are mobilized in the conspiracy via two books: Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly, and King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette.

It shows how these books promote archetypes as being defined by fixed characteristics.

It then offers some different ways of thinking about archetypes in order to counter the conspiracy.

Here is a little background and information about the book.

About the Book

What if the biggest conspiracy in human history had gone completely unnoticed?

What if that conspiracy was responsible for some of the biggest problems the world faces today?

Wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want to do something about it?

Well guess what: You can.

Book Description

The Masculinity Conspiracy is a free online book about masculinity. It argues that nearly every assumption about masculinity in contemporary society is wrong. The result is nothing short of exposing a worldwide conspiracy that has been preventing humanity from reaching its fullest potential.

The Masculinity Conspiracy contains the following chapters:

• Conspiracy, Problem, Solution
• History
• Sexuality
• Relationships
• Fatherhood
• Archetypes
• Spirituality
• Conclusion.

Each chapter is divided into three sections:

• The Conspiracy (how the common understanding of masculinity functions in the chapter theme)
• The Problem (a critique of how the common understanding of masculinity functions in the chapter theme)
• The Solution (an alternative model for how masculinity should function in the chapter theme).

Each chapter is published online as it is written: about one chapter every two or three months. The book will be complete in late 2011.

Readers can leave comments regarding each section of the book: what they think is good, what they think is bad, plus new ideas that should be developed. Some of this feedback may be incorporated into the text, in which case the commenter is cited in an endnote. A change log indicates the nature of edits over time as they occur across the text.

A few folks have found the reading a bit of a stretch, in which case I urge you to go and read the short article, Appropriate Complexity.

And for a bit of fun, below you can even watch a short The Masculinity Conspiracy cartoon:

Tags: men, masculinity, books, psychology, Joseph Gelfer, The Masculinity Conspiracy, Chapter 6, Archetypes, Robert Bly, Iron John, Moore, Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine

Darrell Dobson - Aesthetic Experience and the Transformation of Self: The Mature Masculine

This talk/paper by Darrell Dobson was given at the 2004 International Conference: Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies in Newport, Rhode Island. I'm not a big fan of the Jungian approach to masculinity, especially the "archetypal masculinity" stuff by Moore and Gillette, among others, but this is still an interesting paper.

I like his premise of using self exploration - autobiographical self-study research - as a way to explore a topic. Obviously, a sample of one cannot be extended to men as a whole, but it does make for a unique perspective.

Aesthetic Experience and the Transformation of Self:
the Mature Masculine

Darrell Dobson
University of Toronto

In the last six months I have been immersing myself in aesthetic experiences, in both high art and popular culture, that are distinctly masculine. From the authors Ernest Hemingway and Michael Ondaatje, to the television series CSI and Law and Order, to the musicians Lou Reed and Dan Bern (an American folk singer I like to describe as a mix of Kurt Cobain and Bob Dylan), I have recently been partaking in art made by the guys. This has been a new phenomenon in my life as for some time, my favourite musicians have been the American folk duo the Indigo Girls and the Canadian singers Sarah McLauglin and Jane Siberry, and my favourite novelist has been the Brit Iris Murdoch (before the movie, I might add).

As a piece of self-study, this paper is influenced by Bullough’s and Pinnegar’s “Guidelines for Quality in Autobiographical Forms of Self-Study Research.” These authors delineate how it is that self-study transcends purely personal relevance: “When the issue confronted by the self is shown to have relationship to and bearing on the context and ethos of a time, then self-study moves to research” (15). This paper is a first attempt to make some sense of a recent phenomenon in my life and research, and I offer it to you because I suspect this scenario does transcend merely personal relevance.

In their book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, The Jungian analyst Robert L. Moore and mythologist Douglas Gillette acknowledge that Western society has been deeply patriarchal for thousands of years and that patriarchy has been oppressive and abusive of the feminine characteristics and virtues and of actual women, a situation which still exists and still needs to change. They are concerned though that “in their radical critique of patriarchy, some feminists conclude that masculinity in its roots is essentially abusive.” Moore and Gillette counter this view by asserting that “patriarchy is not the expression of deep and rooted masculinity, for truly deep and rooted masculinity is not abusive: patriarchy is the expression of the immature masculine. It is the expression of boy psychology, and, in part, the shadow…of masculinity… Patriarchy in our view is an attack on masculinity in its fullness as well as feminity in its fullness.” They go on to assert that “what is missing is not, for the most part, what many depth psychologists assume is missing; that is, adequate connection with the inner feminine. In many cases, these men seeking help had been, and were continuing to be, overwhelmed by the feminine. What they were missing was an adequate connection to the deep and instinctual masculine energies, the potentials of mature masculinity. They were being blocked from connection to those potentials by patriarchy itself, and by the feminist critique upon what little masculinity they could still hold onto for themselves” (xviii). In order to redress this imbalance, Moore and Gillette go on to describe what they see as four archetypes of the mature masculine: the king, the warrior, the magician, and the lover.

We live amongst a frequently undifferentiated condemnation of the masculine. Movies, books, ideas, systems, and attitudes are frequently critiqued and dismissed solely on the grounds that they are masculine. We educated men, particularly those of us interested in the arts, have learned implicitly and explicitly that the means of not being patriarchal was to become more feminine, and we have in many ways been rewarded for doing so. This powerful social phenomenon was exacerbated for many men by growing up with either an absent or negative father energy, and the confluence of these trends has often led us to be complicit in the suspicion and condemnation of the masculine. Those of us who have been trying ardently throughout our lives to not be patriarchal, trying in so many ways not to be our fathers, in such a context, can find ourselves alienated from our own mature masculinity.

The next step in understanding my recent predilection for the highbrow detective stories of Michael Innes leads me to Carl Jung, who in addition to addressing the symbolic nature of dreams, neuroses, myths, rituals and religions, writes directly about the arts in The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, where he considers the artistic process and the social role of art in depth. He writes much less on the individual role of aesthetic experience, the topic I am interested in here.

In her book on Peter Pan, Ann Yeoman, “We may turn to art to learn better how to create and continually recreate ourselves and to remember that the fully and consciously lived life is a life of deeply committed symbolic action” (119). This is a very compelling idea. Individual aesthetic response represents a process of self-revelation in the life of individuals. Personal responses to art function in a similar way and with a similar purpose as responses to other manifestations of the unconscious mind, like dreams, fairy tales, myths and rituals. Jung wrote, “A great work of art is like a dream” (SMAL 104), and he said, “[W]hen an archetypal situation occurs we suddenly feel an extraordinary sense of release, as though transported, or caught up by an overwhelming power…That is the secret of great art, and of its effect upon us” (82). The charged nature of aesthetic response signifies that the aesthetic experience reveals important psychological information. The fact that one has a charged aesthetic response is a signifier that there is an aspect of the art object or experience that triggers the individual’s psychology and that one ought to consciously reflect on this object or experience. It carries some import; it seeks to bring vital knowledge to an individual’s consciousness. One should note and reflect on the aesthetic response and approach it in the manner of approaching a dream in Jungian psychology.

Aesthetic response is not predictable nor is it guaranteed to be repeatable. Other individuals will not necessarily have a charged aesthetic response even when encountering the same art object or art experience. So, afterwards, one can reflect, Why did I find that experience or object to be beautiful, moving, or disturbing? Why does it stay with me? Why am I drawn to or repelled by that painting, dance, music, or poem? Other people did not and do not necessarily have the same experience. Why did those visual, musical, or literary representations affect me here and now? If one encounters the same art object or art experience at another time, one may or may not have the same or even a similar experience. One’s psychological position may be different, and so the unconscious does not necessarily attach a charge to the experience in the same way. The nature of aesthetic response is dependent on one’s current psychological position.

I do not want to present a view of aesthetic response that is interpreted merely as therapy, which might connote that an individual is ill and needs rectification. Jung is clear that the unconscious mind and its representations are part of a normal psychological state (MS 20); they are not merely important for the neurotic or psychotic or even the socially or personally maladjusted. Creating and responding to manifestations of the unconscious is a healthy part of normal psychological development. To do so is a means of knowing oneself and living a more holistic, balanced life. Aesthetic experience then can serve as a means of metamorphosis.

I can now consider the role that my interest in Hemingway, Dan Bern and CSI is seeking to play in my personal development, which brings me back to Moore and Gillette and their four archetypes of the mature masculine: the king, warrior, magician, and lover. In an original contribution to Jungian theory, they suggest that each of these archetypes has a bi-polar shadow, one characterized by an active stance, the other by a passive stance. They write, “An Ego that does not properly access an archetype will be possessed by that archetype’s shadow and left oscillating between the shadow’s two poles” (King Within 44). The mature King is good and generative, he comes close to being God in his masculine form in every man; he underlies and includes the rest of the archetypes in perfect balance (49). Two of his important functions include ordering and the providing of fertility and blessing (52). The immature masculine aspect of the king energy can be seen in its active manifestation as the Tyrant, who is not creative and generative, only destructive (63). He exploits and abuses others and is ruthless, merciless and without feeling when he is pursuing what he thinks is his own self-interest (64). The passive aspect of the Shadow King can be seen in the Weakling Prince formed when the baby boy’s grandiosity and gloriousness are attacked from the beginning and drop off into the unconscious for safekeeping (70).

The Warrior archetype has mostly been seen in his shadow forms and so people are often understandably uncomfortable with it, particularly women who have often been the victims of the immature active aspect of this archetype, the Sadist (74). The mature warrior is the active energy that moves one forward in life. It is the source of the energy that empowers one to actually do that which needs to be done, to move out of a defensive position about life’s tasks and problems and to take action (79), and is characterized by an alertness and presence of mind. The Sadist is the active shadow stance, hurting others, and the Masochist is the passive shadow stance, seemingly a pushover or whipped puppy, hurting oneself (94).

The Magician is the knower and the master of technology. In his mature manifestations, he is the shaman, the ritual elder. All knowledge that takes specialized training to acquire is the providence of Magician energy (98). The active shadow magician is the Manipulator, a sorcerer’s apprentice who has not mastered his technologies or himself and who reeks havoc. Think of the effect of our technologies on the world’s environment to see his work. The passive shadow Magician is the Denying Innocent One, who leaves us feeling manipulated but is slippery and difficult to challenge or pin down.

The Lover brings the masculine world of eros and is needed to balance and alleviate the other archetypes. He is the healthy embodiment of sensuous pleasure in the world and of the body without shame. He is the aesthetic sensibilities and the means of relatedness. In his active shadow he is the Addicted Lover and in his passive shadow he is the Impotent Lover.

In a synthesis of a Jungian perspective on aesthetic experience and Moore’s and Gillette’s explication of the mature masculine, I have discovered a context within which I can understand my recent experiences with high art and popular culture. They have served as a means of personal development and transformation in a manner similar to that of dreams. My interest in them reveals a compensatory drive from my unconscious and since both I and the art objects are also imbued with the imbalances of the collective unconscious, they also speak to a larger social relevance. My surreptitious attraction to action movies is really about my need for the mature Warrior energy in my own life, in which this energy is likely to be passive, and this need is shared by a present and historic culture dominated by the shadow warrior in his active stance, the Sadist. My secret affection for CSI and Law and Order (the original series of both, I should add) is really about a need to further integrate the mature Magician archetype, an imbalance again shared by the collective as evidenced in our facility for destroying our homelands with our technologies. The Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, whom you might remember as the author of the novel The English Patient, from which the movie with Ralph Fienne and Juliette Binoche was made, appeals to the mature lover in me, particularly in his novel In the Skin of the Lion, a poetic and sensuous work full of beauty and suffering, which I highly recommend. That there is a collective need for the mature lover can be seen in the continued reports that the predominant use of the internet remains searches for pornography, an aspect of the Addicted lover. My forays into some Tales of King Arthur arise because of a longing to further integrate a mature King energy in my own life; an imbalance again reflected in the collective mores, for which of our contemporary leaders, regional, national, or international might be considered to be drawing on the archetype of the mature King, generative and good? We suspect the field is occupied almost entirely by tyrants and weakling princes, but must remember that the shame cannot be projected onto one man, party, or country.

Ghandi declared that we must be the change we want to see in the world, and such is the personal path of the mature masculine. We must not simply project blame for the immature masculine onto others and do nothing ourselves, and so I take seriously my burgeoning inclinations in the high and low arts as a message from my unconscious about the life giving potential and growth to be found in further integrating the aspects of the mature masculine in my life.

According to Jung,

By giving [the archetypal image] shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. Therein lies the social significance of art: it is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. People and times, like individuals, have their own characteristics and attitudes…very many psychic elements that could play their part in life are denied the right to exist because they are incompatible with the general attitude…Here the artist’s relative lack of adaptation turns out to his advantage; it enables him to follow his own yearnings far from the beaten path, and to discover what it is that would meet the unconscious needs of his age. Thus, just as the one-sidedness of the individual’s conscious attitude is corrected by reactions from the unconscious, so art represents a process of self-regulation in the life of nations and epochs.

I have been so bold as to think you might be interested in my recent reading, viewing, and listening habits because I suspect that I have been interested in art that represents just such “a process of self-regulation,” as it is obvious that our epoch and nations desperately require the energy of the mature masculine. Thank you for your kind attention.

Tags: Darrell Dobson, Aesthetic Experience and the Transformation of Self, The Mature Masculine, psychology, masculinity, archetypes, culture, art, Jung, Moore, Gillette, king, warrior, magician, lover, television, music, literature

David Tacey - Remaking Men: Jungian Thought and the Post-Patriarchal Psyche

This is another older (2007) article from David Tacey - Remaking Men: Jungian Thought and the Post-Patriarchal Psyche - at the CG Jung Page. Tacey is the author of Remaking Men.

Most Jungian approaches to masculinity studies in the last 25 years or so have focused on what became known as the mythopoetic movement, but this is an incredibly phallo-centric perspective.

Tacey is equally critical of the popular versions of Jung expounded by Bly and Moore & Gillette (among others), which exalts the father archetype, and the post-feminist men's studies agenda that seeks to kill the father. Neither is valid in his opinion. Here is his summary of the problem:

The Iron John tradition is virtually All-Phallus, while the contrary antimasculinist discourse is No-Phallus. Why can't we have the phallus without appalling idealisations or guilt-ridden demonisations? We must unpack and disassemble patriarchy, while at the same time develop new meanings and metaphors for masculinity, which must never be constructed as the "enemy" of men or women. I earnestly believe that we need to find a "third way", or a "middle path" between the extremes of patriarchal nostalgia (Iron John) and matriarchal identification (Oedipus). The zeitgeist urges us to defend the feminine, but the development of masculinity forces us to differentiate ourselves from the mother so that the feminine archetypes can be properly served and attended by a sensitive and invigorated consciousness.

This is a fairly concise proposal - finding a middle way between exalting the phallos and cutting it off. As a Buddhist, I generally approve a "middle way" approach.

Remaking Men: Jungian Thought and the Post-Patriarchal Psyche

Written by David Tacey
Wednesday, 31 January 2007

ABSTRACT
In this article on how to help men discover a new, post-patriarchal equilibrium, David Tacey uses mythological figures to reinforce the idea that traditional masculinity will "go on its consuming course...unless we break the cycle of power, conquest, and domination." Tacey poses the question "Is Jungian theory to be used to encourage change, or to escape from change?" and uses Jung's Psychological Types and other texts to explore that question.

The devouring father and Jungian conservatism

It seems to me that some desperate compensatory mechanism has been triggered in the Western psyche, and that there is an element of real urgency about the return of the feminine. The progressive spirit in society is pushing us toward an "androgynous" psychological condition, undoubtedly because the unchecked masculine has ruled for so long, and its excesses and desecrations are now painfully apparent to any alert person. We best advance the spirit of the time by admitting the feminine into our lives and hearts, into our social structures and political institutions. But patriarchy is notoriously resistant to change, and in Greek mythology it is well represented by the figure of Chronos-Saturn, the recalcitrant and static ogre who devours his own offspring lest they pose a threat to his hegemonic rule. Direct combat may not be the answer; instead we must, like Zeus acting on Rhea's plan, outwit the tyrant and trick him into releasing all the diverse and plural life-forms -- the lost femininities and "alternative" masculinities -- that he has systematically devoured. Chronos-Saturn will go on its consuming course, swallowing the feminine and converting all masculinities into a likeness of itself, unless we break the cycle of power, conquest, and domination.

Ever since Robert Bly's Iron John: A Book About Men¹ burst upon the international scene, we have witnessed a veritable avalanche of Jungian or pseudo-Jungian texts which attempt to "solve" the crisis of masculinity. But although this new tradition of "mythopoetic" writing about men is often insightful, and always alert to the critical situation of contemporary masculinity, I find it largely unsatisfactory. To me, this new tradition is basically reactionary, conservative, and backward-looking. It asks how men can recover their former balance, not how they can discover a new, post-patriarchal equilibrium. It assumes that men must reconnect with masculine archetypes, and it invents terms like the "Deep Male" and the "Inner Warrior" to remythologise this new pact with masculinity. But the "therapeutic" fix-it mentality is in danger of losing sight of the biggest cultural issue of our time: patriarchal masculinity must be challenged and displaced by the rising feminine.

If men are "cured" of the crisis, and if Saturn is returned to rule, then we are actually in worse shape, collectively, than ever before. Patriarchy is not merely some abstract entity "out there"; it has provided the deepest emotional foundations for the construction of traditional masculinity. Men must be allowed to feel the pain of the disintegration of their former props and supports, and the collapse of patriarchy must be genuinely registered in every individual heart. We have too much therapy that wants to numb the pain, heal the wounds, "initiate" men into outmoded patriarchal constructs, bridge the (necessary) distance that separates sons from fathers. Because of all this "helpful" therapy and mythopoetic cushioning - Connell calls it "masculinity therapy", where broken masculinity is dropped off for repair² -- we are in danger of employing depth psychology to outwit the psyche, and to stifle its important transformations.

The question I have to pose is this: Is Jungian theory to be used to encourage change, or to escape from change? It has long seemed to me that Jung, like Freud, can be used either to move ahead with the times or to betray the zeitgeist in a nostalgic recovery of the past. Because of the illusory "stability" and purported "timelessness" of the archetypes, Jung has proved attractive to the conservative opponents of change, and the revolutionary possibilities of Jungian theory have been denied.

The theory of archetypes is often wheeled out by "concerned" humanists and therapists who have seen enough social change -- and clinical casualties of change -- and who want to turn the cultural clock back fifty or even a hundred years, to protect men from the chaos and suffering of modern times. Jungian archetypes are viewed, quite wrongly, as fixed and stable elements embedded in an unchanging eternal mind. Just when the foundations of patriarchy are shaking, and when the potentials for real change are greatest, some Jungians (qualified analysts, as well as others) churn out best-selling texts which promise stable "archetypes" (read "stereotypes") of gendered identity. In popular Jungianism there is a hopelessly unrealistic view of psychological experience.

Popular Jungianism has degenerated into a new-age fantasy system, where everything we lack in society or personal experience is provided by the ever-reliable (and never rusting) "hard wiring" of the unconscious. Robert Bly, witnessing men turning "soft" through their contact with the feminine, enjoins men to toughen up by going "down" into the unconscious and reawakening the so-called Hairy Wildman. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, noting that the stereotypical models for men are disintegrating and losing credibility, use the theory of archetypes to convince men that the reliable old models, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, can be found again in the deep unconscious. Handbooks and manuals (again designed to attract the "practical" male reader) are produced to lead men into a step-by-step recovery of the broken patriarchal models.³ Guy Corneau and Alfred Collins, aware of the painful gap between fathers and sons, between old patriarch and rebellious youth, invent new archetypes such as "Fatherson", and conjure up other Jungian magical tricks, to will all gaps and ruptures away.⁴ Gregory Vogt insists that the Lost Son can, if he wants to, return to the bosom of the Great Father.⁵ With the power of archetypes, reality can be refashioned, reshaped, to suit the desires of any fantasy agenda.

Contrary movements: embracing the father and killing the patriarch

According to Robert Bly and the mythopoetic circle, "What Men Really Want" is to become one with the father and to be "initiated" into the father's world. They speak about this "initiation" as the fulfilment of desire, an almost intoxicating sense of belonging and deep reparation. But I read this cheap psychology as anti-psychological; it does not give men what they want at all, but merely caters to their regressive longing for an infantile and unconscious patriarchal paradise, replete with infantile idealisations of the father that any Freudian would immediately recognise. In times of epochal change and transformation, the sons must not simply repeat the traditional pattern and become part of the father's tribe. The sons must strike out anew, rebuild the world and refashion its politics, and the most creative sons of all must "father" themselves, not simply engage in a conventional "Return to Father", which only succeeds in propping up the ailing patriarchy. This is a lonely path, a courageous path, and it requires above all that men make a commitment to the creative spirit of the present and the dream of the future, not just to the spirit of the past.

At the other end of the spectrum, men engaged in the contrary discourse of what is called profeminist men's studies plot ways to overthrow the patriarchy, defeat the father's authority, and render impotent the Devouring Father of our culture. This primarily academic discourse, based in feminism, marxism, and revolutionary fervour, seeks to liberate men by killing off the father. For this intellectual tradition, no father equals freedom; whereas for the mythopoetic tribe, no father equals unbearable isolation and a psychological inferno. There is too much emphasis on direct confrontation, "revolutionary violence", and on murdering the father, rather than on tricking him or displacing his authority. In the mythic pattern I am interested in, Saturn is not assassinated, but simply "stripped of his authority" "by Zeus's force and deceitful cunning".

Too many academic radicals want to kill the father -- and what then? When the father is killed, we find that we unconsciously return to mother, to infantilism, satiety and self-destruction in the false paradise of the maternal source. The "defence of the feminine" in much so-called profeminist men's studies is actually an unconscious idealisation of the mother and an identification with her archetypal world. In some profeminist writings, the penis is linked with rape, manhood is synonymous with violence, maleness is a violation of an innately feminine nature, and indeed masculinity itself is no more than an abominable fiction or construct that "progressive" politics must attempt to destroy. The Oedipus complex is no real solution to the crisis of masculinity because masculinity must never be fused with the mother. If such a fusion occurs, masculinity falls into the unconscious, and then we can expect compensatory eruptions and explosions of primal, and probably fascistic, masculinity. Ironically, the radical killing of the father could bring on a social-political regression more terrifying than any "backlash" idealisation of the masculine.

The Iron John tradition is virtually All-Phallus, while the contrary antimasculinist discourse is No-Phallus. Why can't we have the phallus without appalling idealisations or guilt-ridden demonisations? We must unpack and disassemble patriarchy, while at the same time develop new meanings and metaphors for masculinity, which must never be constructed as the "enemy" of men or women. I earnestly believe that we need to find a "third way", or a "middle path" between the extremes of patriarchal nostalgia (Iron John) and matriarchal identification (Oedipus). The zeitgeist urges us to defend the feminine, but the development of masculinity forces us to differentiate ourselves from the mother so that the feminine archetypes can be properly served and attended by a sensitive and invigorated consciousness. Paradoxically, the feminine spirit of our time demands that the masculine be further developed so that a higher consciousness can realise the enormity of the challenge of integrated (masculine and feminine) awareness. It is through paradox, and the constant consideration of contrary points of view, that we discover the middle way out of our cultural dilemmas.

Spirituality and politics: eternity and time

Spirituality has an innate tendency to want to escape from the bounds of the real, but if spirituality is to be authentic and socially transformative, this innate tendency has to be arrested and spirituality must be politicised and linked with the social and historical process. From an intellectual perspective, any human experience is the product of its culture, so that a universalising spiritual discourse lacks credibility if it fails to engage the field of social reality. If the popular, Jung-influenced spiritual discourses are not firmly grounded in the real, they can readily, and perhaps rightly, be dismissed by hostile critics as so much froth and bubble, having little or no political consequence.

A case in point is the work of well-known Jungian populariser, Robert Johnson, who is so enamoured of the timelessness of the archetypes that he writes as if politics, social structure, and the historical process did not exist. His "depth" and profundity carry him away from reality to a mythic realm where time is measured in bundles of eight hundred years or more. Hence Johnson can tell us that the twelfth century version of the Grail myth holds the "spiritual prescription for our own time". With alarming naivete, Johnson writes about He, She, and We as if gendered experience had not changed since the time of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.⁶ Johnson's view is that the Man is essentially the provider, quester, hero, and "active partner"; whereas Woman is essentially nourisher, home-bound, domestic, and static.

I have sat in a crowded lecture hall and watched many spiritual seekers become entranced by Johnson's droning mythopoetics, while a number of more politically alert listeners became visibly disturbed and downright angry at his social blindness and lack of political awareness. Watching these opposite responses in the room is like witnessing my own contradictory response to mythopoetics: one part of me amazed, another part appalled.

The opposite problems attend much radical, academic discourse. Here, life is lived on the fast-moving surface. Progressive intellectuals sometimes anticipate huge social changes from a national convention, or expect a three-day leading-edge conference to change the world. They write books complaining about the rate of change, with titles like Slow Motion or Backlash.⁷

The problem with surface-level intellectual discourse is that it fails to see the extent to which the archetypes influence our lived experience. Much sociology of masculinity and gender theory strikes me as hopelessly inadequate; it calls for change and demands instantaneous release from stereotypes without even beginning to reckon with the powerful archetypes that regulate our lives, all the more powerful for not being seen by the intellectuals. Little wonder this facile sociology gets frustrated with the subjects it tackles, because it is made to see how hopeless its own methods are for accessing the core issues and getting to the root problems. It is astonishing how often we are told that masculinity is merely a construct of society, one that can be exploded simply if we stop believing in it. This is social positivism and extraverted awareness gone mad, completely unaware of its own limitations and arrogantly believing in the premises of its own social theory. How can theories of the human world dispense with or ignore the massive contributions of both Freud and Jung? Unless a depth dimension is taken into account, political and social science will remain frustrated and frustrating, a testimony only to the machinations of the hubristic intellect.

For their part, the Jungians -- especially the popular Jungians -- have an enormous amount to learn as well. I agree fully with James Hillman and Andrew Samuels that the Jungian understanding of the "inner world" has to be radically revisioned. For Hillman, the constant privileging of the "inner" has made the therapy-loving generations into political duds. ⁸Samuels argues insightfully that the inner life is not hermetically sealed off from culture or society, but our psyche is a "political psyche", intimately part of, and a major player in, the world of political events.

Therapy culture and academic culture: men's pain and men's power

The wetness of contemporary men's experience is repugnant to many dry intellectuals, who do not like crying, moist feelings, bleeding hearts, confessionals, or soul-searching. Academic men's studies and the popular men's movement, however, do have more in common than either would perhaps care to realise. Both groups inhabit a post-patriarchal world, and while therapy culture feels the legacy of an outworn patriarchy in the empty heart and suffering soul, academic culture thinks bout how to overthrow the remaining structures of political patriarchy. Both cultures will have to come together in a future radicalising discourse.

Although they look at each other with some alarm and disdain, therapy and academic cultures have grasped opposite ends of the same historical situation. Therapy culture assumes that patriarchy as a identity support structure is dead, and it sets about to inculcate a "survival mentality" that will help individual men in the task of rebuilding their lives. However, therapy culture fails to see that political patriarchy is still very much alive, and that although men may feel themselves to be disenfranchised and emotionally adrift, they are still in charge of social authority. There is a dangerous split here between the internal psychic reality (where we are all made to feel "inferior" and powerless) and the external reality (where Chronos-Saturn continues to rule).

Academic culture grasps very well the continued hegemonic power of men, but is blind to the fact that many men are already suffering, as it were in advance (and ahead of the feminist schedule), the emotional fallout of the disintegration of patriarchy as a psychological and identity-forming reality. Academic culture cannot see what the crying men are getting at: their tears are viewed as crocodile tears, indulgent sensitive new age tears, which have no validity and merely mask the reality that men still hold the power.

We live in a complex time where we have to come to terms with the paradox of men's power and men's pain. In my life as an academic, I talk the language of men's power on a daily basis. In my second life as a public speaker and participant in the therapy culture, I see men's pain everywhere and feel a great deal of it myself. Both sides of contemporary men's experience are real, and both have to be taken into account. We are not dealing here with a contradiction, but with a paradox, and only if the paradox is not understood is the link between pain and power lost. I would say that the ability to sustain this paradox, and the tension between power and pain, is what constitutes full psychological health in a postpatriarchal world.

The problem with the popular emphasis on "men's healing" is that it forgets why men are wounded in the first place. Before we remake masculinity we must unmake it, and understand why it had to fall apart. In our remaking efforts, we must become self-critical and be careful to distinguish between new and old masculinities, to differentiate the new self-esteem from the old masculinist arrogance, to separate the new happiness from the old complacency, to tell the difference between human rights and patriarchal privileges. Instead of using Robert Bly's Iron John as a textbook, or Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly, men's forum team leaders should look at Lynne Segal's Slow Motion, or Kenneth Clatterbaugh's Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity.⁹

I think if men knew more about why they are suffering, if they understood better the cultural, political and historical reasons for their disorientation, the effects of this increase in knowledge could only be positive. The personal mess is not then so terribly personal, and creative insight, rather than guilt-feelings, could be better mobilised. Jung puts it very well: "if the connection between the personal problem and the larger contemporary events is discerned and understood, it brings release from the loneliness of the purely personal, and the subjective problem is magnified into a general question of our society. In this way the personal problem acquires a dignity it lacked hitherto". ¹⁰ Ironically, for contemporary men to gain the larger, contextual view that Jung recommends, they need to read feminist and feminist-inspired writings, and not the popular Jungian material that wards off the social-political world.

We must, I believe, muddle away at getting both perspectives in our minds at the one time. Men's pain and men's power, spirituality and politics, feeling and reason: the claims of both sides must always be examined, balanced, and placed against each other.

David Tacey is a Senior lecturer in English at La Trobe University. His book Remaking Men will be published by Routledge in March 1997 in the UK and USA and by Penguin Australia in July 1997.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Robert Bly, Iron John:A Book about Men, Addison Wesley, 1990

2. R W Connell, Masculinities, University of California Press, 1995

3. Such handbooks and manuals include The King Within, The Warrior Within etc by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette published by Avon Books, New York

4. Guy Corneau, Absent Fathers, Lost Sons, Shambala, 1991; Alfred Collins, Fatherson, Chiron, 1994.

5. Gregory Max Vogt, Return to Father, Spring Publications, 1991.

6. Robert Johnson, He: Understanding Masculine Psychology, Harper and Row, 1974; She: Understanding Feminine Psychology, Harper and Row, 1984.

7. Lynne Segal, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, Virago, 1990; Susan Faludi, Backlash:The Undeclard War Against Women, Crown 1991.

8. James Hillman, We have a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and This is Getting Worse, HarperCollins, 1993

9. Kenneth Clatterbaugh, Contemporary Perspectives in Masculinity: West View Press 1990.

10. Carl Jung, Psychological Types,

Australian Humanities Review all rights reserved.
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/copyright.html for copyright notice.

The book, Remaking Men, can be ordered from Amazon.Com by clicking on the Amazon.com logo. The hypertext link will take you directly to the Amazon page where you will find the book.

Tags: men, masculinity, men's studies, psychology, archetypes, change, David Tacey, Remaking Men, Jungian Thought, Post-Patriarchal Psyche, phallo-centrism, mythepoetic men's movement, Robert Bly, Jungian, post-feminist men's studies, father, Oedipal, CG Jung Page, Remaking Men

Michael J. Formica - Sexuality, Intimacy and the Masculine/Feminine Archetype

[image source]

An interesting post from a few days back at the Psychology Today Blogs, from Michael J. Formica of Enlightened Living. This is a good look at the reality of personas (masks) and deeper interior selves - we sometimes tend to think that what we see is all there is, but that is seldom the case, especially with men.

Sexuality, Intimacy and the Masculine/Feminine Archetype

By Michael J. Formica on February 07, 2009 in Enlightened Living

A great deal of couples work focuses on intimacy and sexuality or, more to the point, the lack and loss of it. In a recent post, I mentioned the differences in the way that men and women approach emotional connection and sexuality. A bit of reflection upon that model begs an exploration of the role of masculine and feminine archetypes in this, and how those constructs complement and conflict with socially defined gender roles.

It's no secret that there is what we might call a cycle of declination when it comes to sex in relationships. We typically start out hot and heavy; we can't keep our hands off each other, grabbing a quicky, being adventurous, and trying new things, exploring each other and our limits. Fifteen years, a house, a dog, a mortgage, and a few kids in, most couples I talk with aren't even sleeping in the same room.

There are all sorts of reasons for this, questions often better left to experts on the subject, but the psychodynamics of this change tend to be expressed by couples in a fairly consistent fashion. Plainly put, women point to the emotionally unavailability of their partner, while men point to the sexual unavailability of theirs.

Read the whole post.

Here is a key quote:

If we peel away the gender roles here and look at the manifestation of the masculine and feminine archetypes in terms of personality and social presentation, something interesting happens. We get a grey area. It is no longer that men are linear and women global or women are contemplative and men physical. What arises is an awareness of the delicate balance of social roles, gender roles and archetypal tendencies.

I would add to this that we are also a mixture of the various "parts" or subpersonalities that inhabit our psyches, some useful and necessary and some disruptive and outgrown. We are never just one self, as the Buddha also taught, so to see someone else as just one thing is to disregard their full humanity.

Tags: psychology, men, women, archetypes, parts, Sexuality, Intimacy, Masculine/Feminine Archetype, Michael J. Formica, Psychology Today, stereotypes, expectations, masculinity, femininity

More on Politics and Masculinity

This article ran on Monday at The Moderate Voice. It ties in with the Susan Faludi piece I posted this morning.

Obama-McCain: Manhood Now and Then

June 16th, 2008 by ROBERT STEIN

In the wake of Father’s Day, John McCain and Barack Obama offer, among other contrasts, a confrontation between old ideas about manhood and new–the hard-drinking, womanizing Navy flyboy turned politician and the New Age husband in equal partnership with a powerful wife.

Stereotypes, yes, but the biographical facts are beyond dispute. On his nostalgia tour after clinching the nomination, McCain talked about misadventures in the places he was visiting.

“I remember with affection the unruly passions of youth,” he said in Meridian, Miss., where he had organized an off-base toga party for military buddies and local girls.

At his Virginia high school, he recalled that his disobedience earned him the nickname “worst rat” for sneaking away to Washington burlesque houses and bars.

Outside the Naval Academy in Annapolis, McCain described “nocturnal sojourns” and the hundreds of miles he was forced to march for insubordination.

“I wanted,” McCain recalled in Pensacola, “to live the life of a daring, brash, fun-loving flyer…In truth, the image I aspired to was, in the end, only irresistible to one person–me, and it was a very childish attraction.”

McCain’s vision of manhood comes from life as a carousing son and grandson of admirals and then his sobering experiences as a POW and a Washington politician.

Obama, on the other hand, as he tells it in his books, was an uprooted young man searching for a sense of the father he barely knew and, despite experimentation with drugs, a serious and ambitious young man, described as “grounded, motivated and poised” by his peers.

As they present themselves to voters, McCain and Obama are both remarkable products of their life histories, representing a contrast in styles of American manhood that go far beyond their other generational differences.

Cross-posted from my blog.

The question facing American voters is whether or not they want another cowboy president, or a man who is more in touch with his emotions and more complete in his masculinity.

I think we can safely say that McCain represents the old frontiersman archetype that Faludi talks about in her article from the New York Times. McCain even promotes himself, albeit through his surrogates, as a hero. Yet, the hero is an adolescent archetype, a form of boy psychology, not a mature masculine psychology.

It's hard to say if Obama is more mature or not. But he seems to be more balanced in his masculine and feminine psychology. I think, maybe, he gets it though in a way that McCain doesn't. This is from his Father's Day speech.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

***

It’s up to us — as fathers and parents — to instill this ethic of excellence in our children. It’s up to us to say to our daughters, don’t ever let images on TV tell you what you are worth, because I expect you to dream without limit and reach for those goals. It’s up to us to tell our sons, those songs on the radio may glorify violence, but in my house we give glory to achievement, self-respect and hard work. It’s up to us to set these high expectations. And that means meeting those expectations ourselves. That means setting examples of excellence in our own lives.

The second thing we need to do as fathers is pass along the value of empathy to our children. Not sympathy, but empathy — the ability to stand in somebody else’s shoes; to look at the world through their eyes. Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in “us,” that we forget about our obligations to one another. There’s a culture in our society that says remembering these obligations is somehow soft — that we can’t show weakness, and so therefore we can’t show kindness.

But our young boys and girls see that. They see when you are ignoring or mistreating your wife. They see when you are inconsiderate at home; or when you are distant; or when you are thinking only of yourself. And so it’s no surprise when we see that behavior in our schools or on our streets. That’s why we pass on the values of empathy and kindness to our children by living them. We need to show our kids that you’re not strong by putting other people down — you’re strong by lifting them up. That’s our responsibility as fathers.

Because of McCain's background, having grown up with a highly successful father and followed in his footsteps, he would never have thought of a speech like this.

Obama grew up without a father, from a very young age, but he clearly had family who helped him as best he could. McCain jokes about his misadventures as a young man, but they are child's play -- the fun a rich young military officer can have when he has few worries.

Obama's dabbling in drugs was the result of his being lost without a father figure at a crucial time in his life. I've been there and done that. And I know that I am a better person for having gone through those things. It wasn't easy, as I'm sure it wasn't for Obama, but what doesn't kill us makes us stronger . . . buit only if we are willing to learn from our mistakes. I did. I think Obama did too.

In the end, I am more likely to trust someone who has been through the shit (not that being a prisoner of war was a walk in the park). Maybe McCain has that whol war hero thing going for him, but that experience likely made even more narrowed in an immature form of masculinity. My hope is that Obama's experience have made him more open to a mature form of masculinity, for the first time in any politician I can think of.

Tags: Politics, Masculinity, archetypes, psychology, boy, man, mature, hero, fathers, Susan Faludi, Moderate Voice, Robert Stein, manhood

Two Outdated Masculine Archetypes

[image source]

There have been many images of what men should be like in popular culture, from Teddy Roosevelt in the early part of the century to John Wayne in the later decades. But two images, one American, one British, have persisted -- the Frontiersman and James Bond. Both are outdated and less than mature.

Here are a couple of articles that look at these archetypes.

Think the Gender War Is Over? Think Again, By Susan Faludi

FOR months, our political punditry foresaw one, and only one, prospective gender contest looming in the general election: between the first serious female presidential candidate and the Republican male “warrior.” But those who were dreading a plebiscite on sexual politics shouldn’t celebrate just yet. Hillary Clinton may be out of the race, but a Barack Obama versus John McCain match-up still has the makings of an epic American gender showdown.

The reason is a gender ethic that has guided American politics since the age of Andrew Jackson. The sentiment was succinctly expressed in a massive marble statue that stood on the steps of the United States Capitol from 1853 to 1958. Named “The Rescue,” but more commonly known as “Daniel Boone Protects His Family,” the monument featured a gigantic white pioneer in a buckskin coat holding a nearly naked Indian in a death’s grip, while off to the side a frail white woman crouched over her infant.

The question asked by this American Sphinx to all who dared enter the halls of leadership was, “Are you man enough?” This year, Senator Obama has notably refused to give the traditional answer.

The particulars of that masculine myth were established early in American politics. While the war hero-turned-statesman is a trope common to many countries in many eras, it has a particular quality and urgency here, based on our earliest history, when two centuries of Indian wars brought repeated raids on frontier settlements and humiliating failures on the part of the young nation’s “protectors” to fend off those attacks or rescue captives. The architects of American culture papered over this shaming history by concocting what would become our prevailing national security fantasy — personified by the ever-vigilant white frontiersman who, by triumphing over the rapacious “savage” and rescuing the American maiden from his clutches, redeemed American manhood.

Aspirants to the White House have long known they must audition for the Boone role in the “Rescue” tableau. Those who have pulled off a persuasive performance, from Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy, have proved victorious at the ballot box. Even candidates lacking in martial bona fides have understood the need to try to fake it with the appropriate accessories — riding high in the saddle (Ronald Reagan), commanding tanks (Michael Dukakis), wielding shotguns (John Kerry) or brandishing chainsaws and donning flight suits (you know who).

Read the rest.

The British, and to a large extent Americans, as well, have a slightly different archetypal male image, James Bond.

James Bond as Archetype (and Incredibly Cool Dude), By Michael Dirda

A couple of years ago, I happened to be giving a talk to the graduating seniors at a Catholic girls' school. During the question period, one young woman asked, "If you could be any character in literature, who would you choose?" Given that I write about books for a (hardscrabble) living, I could see that she expected me to name some obvious literary heavyweight, such as Odysseus, Prince Genji, or Huckleberry Finn — all of whom flashed through my mind as good answers. Instead I paused for a moment, put on my most sardonic look, and huskily whispered into the microphone, "Bond, James Bond." It brought down the house.

Of course, people thought I was kidding. And, of course, I wasn't.

Having just read Devil May Care, by the novelist Sebastian Faulks "writing as Ian Fleming," and recently enjoyed Casino Royale, Bond's latest cinematic adventure, I don't see any reason to change my answer. It is a truth universally, if seldom publicly, acknowledged that virtually every American male, from puberty onward, would love to be 007. He's got the best toys, attracts gorgeous women, and wins at every game, be it golf, baccarat, or — in Devil May Care — tennis. Such (arguably) shallow benefits might be sufficient to explain part of Bond's appeal. But there's something even more primordial to his mythic glamour.

What, after all, is a man's deepest wish? Freud talked about "honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women" — and Bond certainly encompasses all those. Still, that libidinal litany can be boiled down to a single desire, half hidden in the shadowy reaches of the male psyche and more clearly delineated in world mythology: As Joseph Campbell would say, men long to be heroes. No doubt about it. And yet I think the masculine ego also hungers for something a bit more noirish, if you will. At least some of the time, guys want to be thought of as … dangerous. While it's gratifying to be called a hard-working professional or a good provider, those admirable traits don't make our hearts beat quicker. By contrast, to overhear oneself described as "a man not to be trifled with" — that's quite another matter.

Read the rest.

What each of these archetypes have in common is that they are hero images. As Moore & Gillette point out so well in their work, the hero is an adolescent archetype, immature and not fully formed as a man. [More on this in a future post.]

Both of the images present above fit that category. We need better images, more complete masculine archetypes. Until we get them, we will continue creating immature social structures, having immature relationships, and holding immature dreams for our lives ("he who has the most toys wins").

Tags: Outdated Masculine Archetypes, masculinity, archetypes, culture, Susan Faludi, frontiersman, James Bond, hero, gender wars

Where Is Your King, Warrior, Magician & Lover?

Yeah, yeah, the whole archetypal psychology approach to men's growth is so 1990s. But there is still some very useful ideas in that work. Moore and Gillette, in their well-known book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine.

This article takes a look at that work. Try to ignore the ads for products - the site is trying to sell us their products.

Where Is Your King, Warrior, Magician & Lover?

Welcome everybody. This is Matt Clarkson of The Mind-Body Training Company … welcome.This Sunday is Father’s Day. So a big thank you to all the Dad’s out there! Today I want to talk about how to develop mature qualities of confidence, courage and a sense of unshakable mental stability … qualities that are often associated with the energy of the mature masculine. First of all, I want to back up a bit and talk about two concepts that are essential to what I’m going to talk about today and in fact everything we do here at The Mind-Body Training Company. Throughout all our programs and everything we teach you’ll always see two key concepts come up over and over again. We believe they are essential for a life of health, happiness and success.

Key Concept #1: Training or Practice.

So why training? Well, Western culture is all about getting the result. It’s about “push-button” results and get-rich-quick. Nothing wrong with that if it actually produces the results you want without any negative consequences. But more often than not, these things get you nowhere and waste your time. Now it might be a better marketing strategy to say “instant results” but what we’re interested in at The Mind-Body Training Company is what works in the long term. And when you look at ANY successful result in ANY area of life, there’s always been training and practice that led to it.

We believe that effective training is the true path to excellence in any area of your life — in terms of your health, relationships, finances and spiritually. If we want a result in life, whether that is better health, more financial abundance, better relationships, anything at all, we accept that regular training or practice is crucial. It’s not even so much about the individual results we think we want along the way, (the new car or the new lover) it’s about the training, the process, the practice that allows you to continually grow and evolve.

Key Concept #2: A balanced and holistic approach in our training.

The second important concept is that training should be holistic and balanced in nature. We’re not interested in half measures that only partially address the real issues. We know that effective training needs to be complete, balanced and holistic. We need to train the MIND and the BODY we need to train BOTH SIDES of the opposite.

So with this Sunday being Father’s day, I thought it would be good to talk a little about the qualities of the balanced, mature masculine energy. Don’t worry if you’re a woman — this applies to you as well! I’ll explain how in a minute. I recently read a great book called “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine” by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. This book has really helped me identify some areas where frankly, I still had some growing up to do. So I thought it would be good to take the time to share these insights with you on Father’s Day.

Moore and Gillette argue that Western society is in a real mess right now because we’ve forgotten what mature masculinity means. We think mature masculinity is abusive or domineering and society has suffered immensely for that. Moore and Gillette say that we’ve got into this situation for two reasons. First of all, unlike primitive cultures, Western culture has no ritualized initiation of boys into manhood. Also, in recent times, women have reclaimed more of their power after much suffering and injustice at the hands of IMMATURE men. Both men and women NEED mature men and we need mature masculine energies to encourage us, nurture our development and help us grow.

So let’s celebrate Father’s day by talking about qualities of the mature masculine.

Get ready because this is deep stuff!

The concepts from “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” come from the work of Carl Jung and his theory of the archetypal Self. Jung thought that we come hard-wired with what he called “archetypes”. These are core-level programs or pre-dispositions that influence how we develop and grow throughout the various stages of life. Jung thought that we come in with these biological mechanisms that pre-dispose us to grow in certain ways. Of course, we still need the correct external role models and influences to help develop these energies correctly.

So what are the energies of maturity?

As the title of Moore & Gillette’s book suggests, Jung thought that the archetypes of mature masculinity are The King, The Warrior, The Magician and The Lover. Today, most of Jung’s contemporaries agree that these archetypes apply as much to the mature feminine and they do the mature masculine. We tend to develop one of the archetypes of King (or Queen), Warrior, Magician or Lover more fully than the others. This is called a Jungian “temperament”. But more importantly, Jung argued that to be mature, we need to access EACH of the FOUR archetypes correctly and in the balanced proportions. So let’s look at each of the archetypes now.

The Magician

My personal favourite! The Magician is the master of knowledge, both technological and spiritual. For example, over the last few years I’ve been pretty focused on marketing, growing and reaching more people with The Mind-Body Training Company. I’ve spent a lot of time accessing “The Magician” archetype — reading books about human behaviour, working with people to help them change their lives, figuring out how best to develop myself and others.

The Magician archetype is concerned with knowledge, both spiritual and technological. Examples of the Magician would be your local Medicine Man, Merlin in the stories of King Arthur, Don Juan in the famous books by Carlos Castaneda. But in modern times, the magicians are also the scientists and the technologists who make “miracles” happen. The Magician is the knowledge worker — both scientific/technological and spiritual.

The Secret to Understanding Archetypes

Moore & Gillette argue that if ANY the archetypes are not accessed correctly, we see the “Shadow” or dysfunctional version of the archetype manifesting itself. This basically means there is either an unhealthy attachment to this energy type or an aversion to it. On the attachment side of the Magician’s Shadow, we get “the detached manipulator”. This is the person who is more interested in accumulating power for himself rather than what’s best for all.

Unfortunately, our society is awash with the manifestations of the “detached manipulator”. We see this all the time in TV advertising. We also see it a great deal in the self-help community when the focus is on learning “tricks” and “techniques” to manipulate others and get your own way. There’s nothing wrong with learning techniques and understanding what makes people tick, but when it’s all about manipulating people for your own benefit, then the healthy Magician energy has fallen into that shadow aspect.

On the aversion side of The Magician archetypes’ Shadow, we have someone who is afraid of their own power, the person who denies their knowledge and likes to play dumb. This is the person who is afraid to take responsibility or take the lead in an interaction. The Magician energy, like all the archetypes is a force for good in the psyche and in the world when properly accessed.

Stop for a moment now and consider…

How is your Magician archetype? Do you need to develop more qualities of the Magician? If you do, I’d recommend Secrets Of Meditation, Health & Manifestation as a great introduction to meditation, breathing work and the art of manifesting your desires. If you’re already familiar with meditation and manifesting, I would recommend Secrets Of Abundant Energy. The Magician archetype needs to work with the energy of the King (or Queen) in order to balance the psyche.

The King (or Queen)

The King/Queen servers two functions — the blessing of others and maintaining order. The King is wise and loving. He wants to help others grow and mature. The King keeps order throughout the Kingdom (both internally and externally) and protects the Kingdom from de-stabilizing influences. The King needs to work with the Magician, Warrior and Lover energies in the correct balance for there to be order and positive growth.

An unhealthy attachment to the energy of The King happens when we become identified with it — when we believe we “are” the King energy. Then we fallen under the influence of the King’s shadow archetype, “The Tyrant”. The tyrant wants more than anything else to bolster his own position and his own sense of power. An example of The Tyrant would be Darth Vador in Star Wars or King Herod in the story of Jesus. The tyrant may be ruthless in achieving his objectives, but underneath he’s terrified of his own weaknesses (hence Herod tried to kill the baby Jesus who he saw as a threat).

On the aversion side of the King’s Shadow, we have “The Weakling” who perceives himself to be either unable or unwilling to take control of the situation. He’s paranoid, feels a sense of constant fear and is destabilized at the slightest remark. The King energy properly accessed brings stability, order and a sense of caring for self and others.

Stop for a moment and check inside.

How are you accessing your King archetype? Do you need more of that stabilizing, rational, ordered sense of confidence and community? If so, I highly recommend you take a look at Spiritual Growth Monthly.

The SGM community is run by one of the most mature people I know — Kevin Schoeninger. Kevin is our highly experienced instructor with over 25 years teaching experience. He is a certified personal trainer, meditation instructor and holistic fitness expert. He is here to serve you. He LOVES working with members to help you realize your full potential. Your membership allows you to ask him whatever questions you feel are important. You can ask them on the members blog or email Kevin privately. He answers personally to all coaching questions and we have a great community of people who are here for each other.

The Warrior

The Warrior archetype is not abusive or domineering as we might think. Yes, the Warrior is fierce, courageous and determined, but abusive he is not. If the warrior energy becomes abusive, it has actually become one of the shadow aspects of the Warrior — “The Sadist”. The Warrior has had a bad rap in recent years, mainly because people confuse the Warrior with his shadow archetype The Sadist. The Sadist takes pleasure in dominating others and inflicting suffering for his own amusement.

We often see The Sadist in warfare when our soldiers go too far. In the United States and in the UK, we’ve seen in the news that our soldiers have abused Iraqi prisoners and in some cases, tortured and killed them. This is actually quite common in all warfare on all sides. Of course, the Warrior archetype is an important one. Properly accessed, the Warrior is a motivating force for good providing much of the drive needed for success. The Warrior energy fights for just causes, but perverted it can easily become as bad or even worse than the “enemy”.

Throughout our history, women have suffered terrible abuse and injustice inflicted by the shadow aspect of the warrior — The Sadist. What we need more than anything else is not more sadists but more mature men and women who are accessing their Warrior energy correctly for each other’s benefit.

On the aversion side of the Warrior’s shadow we have “The Masochist”. This is the energy of taking pleasure in your OWN pain and suffering. So how do we access the aversion side of the Warrior’s shadow, the Masochist? Well for me, the best way to access the masochist is to dress myself in leather, cover myself in whip cream, and get a hard spanking until I cry like a girl … Just kidding! But have you noticed how we see these archetypes all over the place — in art, in religion, throughout our culture. The fact that these archetypes appear over and over again is strong evidence that these structures run deep within us.

Do you need to develop the positive aspects of The Warrior archetype? If so, I highly recommend Kevin Schoeninger program The Power Of Practice.

The Lover

The Lover feels deeply connected to all things. The Lover is creative and likes to express itself through art and other expressive activities. Here was have the musicians, the painters, the sculptors and the poets. Many people in the spiritual community have a deeply developed Lover archetype, sometimes without developing the others as well. The Shadow of the Lover on the attachment side is obsessed with Love and “can’t get enough”. On the aversion side we have the “impotent lover” who feels overwhelmed by the feminine and rejects the oneness in order to maintain his artificial sense of individuality.

Accessing the Lover correctly is going to make us more in touch, in sync and connected with ourselves and others. If you need to develop more of the Lover energy then I think meditation is a great practice to help with that. If you’re new to meditation, check out Secrets Of Meditation, Health & Manifestation. If you’ve been practicing meditation for a while and want to go deeper into natural meditation practices, then check out Kevin Schoeninger’s program Learn Qigong Meditation.

So there we have it … the four archetypes of maturity according to Carl Jung as well as Moore & Gillette. At this point, you might be asking — how do I apply this in my life to become more balanced and mature for myself and for others?

I recommend you start by asking some basic questions…

1) Which archetypes King, Warrior, Magician & Lover are you accessing correctly?

2) In which of the four quadrants are you accessing the Shadow aspects?

3) Which archetypes are you’re preferred temperaments?

4) Which archetypes do you need to work on developing?

If you go back and look above, you’ll see I gave recommendations and links for programs that will help you access these archetypes correctly. Go back and have a look at that.

Tags: King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Robert Moore, Douglas Gillette, mature, masculinity, archetypal, psychology, culture, archetypes, Matt Clarkson, The Mind-Body Training Company