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The Challenge of
Kingship for Contemporary Men
The Generative
Man: A vision for us
Your Ego Is Not the
Villain
Your Ego Is Not the
Villain
The key to Optimal Manhood is not, as some believe,
to abolish the Ego. Instead a conscious and
effective Ego has a central role to play in
reaching mature masculinity. An initiated man is
one who has developed the ego consciousness needed
to take moral responsibility for the great forces
in his psyche.
Mature man psychology has perhaps always been a
rare thing on our planet. It is certainly a rare
thing today. It is enormously difficult for us
males to develop to our full masculine potential as
human beings. The struggle with the infantile
within us exerts a tremendous
“gravitational” pull against achieving
that full adult potential.
Nevertheless, we need to fight gravity by dint
of hard labor and to build the
“pyramids,” first of boyhood and then of
manhood, that constitute the core structures of our
masculine selves. Each of us needs to build, brick
by brick, toward the goal of mature masculinity,
until at last we can stand on the high platform at
the top and survey our realm. Central to this
construction project is not only understanding the
building blocks, but developing the mature ego
consciousness that can serve as “project
manager.”
Building Blocks of Mature Masculinity
I see every man as having within him four
powerful archetypal forces: a King, a Warrior,
Magician, and a Lover. These four major forms of
mature masculine energies fit together like the
four sides of a pyramid. They all complement and,
ideally, enrich one another – if we learn to
regulate them properly to be a whole person: a good
King is always also a Warrior, a Magician, and a
Lover. And the same holds true for the other
three.
These four archetypes are mysterious entities or
energy flows. They have been compared to a magnet
beneath a sheet of paper. As iron filings are
sprinkled over the top of the paper, they
immediately arrange themselves into patterns along
the lines of magnetic force. We can see the
patterns of the filing on the paper, but we
can’t see the magnet beneath the
paper—or, better, we can never see the
magnetic force itself, only the visible evidence of
its existence. The same is true of archetypes. They
remain hidden. But we experience their
effects—in art, in poetry, in music, in
religion, in our scientific discoveries, in our
patterns of behavior and of thought and
feeling.
All the products of human creativity and human
interaction are like the iron filings. We can see
something of the shapes and patterns of the
archetypes through these manifestations. But we can
never see the “energies” themselves. They
overlap and interpenetrate one another, yt they can
be distinguished from one another for purposes of
clarification. Through our inner work, they can be
brought into conscious dialogue and
“remixed” so that we can realize the
desired balance among their influences in our own
lives.
The Ego as Chair of the Board
Jean Shinoda Bolen has usefully suggested that
we think of this process --untangling and isolating
the archetypes and then remixing them and blending
them -- as a well-run board meeting. The chair asks
each of the officers to speak his or her mind
honestly and openly about the question at hand.
After all opinions have been heard and the matter
has been thoroughly discussed, the chair calls for
a vote, and the decision is made. Often the chair
must cast the deciding vote.
Our Egos are like the chair of the board. And
the board members are the powerful archetypes
within us. Each needs to be heard from. The input
of each archetype--King, Warrior, Magician, Lover--
must be invited and welcomed. But the whole person
under the supervision of the Ego must make the
final decisions in our lives.
How does our Ego consciousness learn to do this?
What used to be done for us by society through
largely unconscious tribal ritual processes, we now
have to take on as our personal moral
responsibility. Our Western civilization pushes us
to become, as Jung said, “individuated”
persons. Any adequate psychology for our time must
be a moral psychology that aids us in taking
personal accountability for the great (often
grandiose) archetypal energies within us and for
consciously building a mature masculine self.
Construction Project Tools
A number of techniques can help us in this
construction project. Analysis of dreams, active
imagination (in which the Ego dialogues with the
energy patterns within, thereby achieving both
differentiation from and access to them),
psychotherapy in a variety of forms, meditation on
the positive aspects of the archetypes, prayer,
ritual process with a spiritual elder, various
forms of spiritual discipline, and other methods
are all important to the difficult process of
training our male Egos toward manhood.
King,
Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the
Archetypes of the Mature Masculine introduces
you to these energies within you as well as to
these techniques for learning to regulate them in a
balanced way.
This is the challenge facing us as men today. We
must step up to the task of becoming the kind of
man we wish we had had in our lives.
The Challenge of
Kingship for Contemporary Men
Kingship? How much a part of your contemporary
concept of the “mature masculine” has to
do with being a king? “Kings” have too
often gotten a bad rap.
As I presented a portrait of “The
Generative Man” in last month’s column, I
acknowledged that my description of “Optimal
Manhood” may have a somewhat culture-specific
coloring, but I have found that the underlying
manhood structures remain trans-cultural.
Indeed, my research has shown that the qualities
most cultures identify as “masculine” in
most historical epochs are remarkably consistent.
Whether it’s the kings of myth and history,
the “big men” of New Guinea, the muy
hombres of Spain, or the “worthy men” of
the Samburu -- all are protectors, providers, and
procreators.
Great men manifest a selfless capacity
for hard work, risk- taking, courage, and
endurance.
- Mature men embrace these roles in order to
nurture their families and build their
communities.
- They are community bulwarks against natural
and human foes.
- Where able to accumulate wealth, they share
it liberally.
- They are expected to be energetically sexual
and to foster the next generation.
While there are local emphases on one or another
of the different functions of this transcultural
understanding of manhood--protector, provider, or
procreator—David Gilmore, in his Manhood in
the Making, notes that the pattern is
consistent.
The evidence from several other fields of study,
makes plausible, even compelling, the idea that
these traits of manhood are a transcultural
expression of the archetypes of mature masculinity
and, ultimately, of the incarnated King.
From Gilmore we can take a transcultural
perspective concerning the ideal mature masculine
Self, one we’ll be calling Generative Man. A
generative man may be
- communist or capitalist
- industrialist or peasant.
- an animal-rights advocate or a whale
hunter
- and is as much a poet as a soldier.
While a man’s lifestyle and work, under the
best of circumstances, will reflect his
generativity, Generative Man is the foundational
aspect of every man in every culture and the
closest parallel that modern psychoanalysis has
offered for the archetypal King.
“Generative Man” is a term
coined by the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. In our
view, Gilmore’s “manhood” and
Erikson’s “Generative Man” are two
similar ways of viewing the King. The man
appropriately accessing the King is the protector,
provider, and procreator for his people and his
world--whoever and wherever they may be.
Generativity is the true basis for mature human
being. Besides procreation in the biological sense,
generativity includes all the products of the human
imagination-cultural, religious, technological, and
ecological. For Erikson, as for Jung, there is no
inherent conflict between the instinctual drives in
human beings and their psychological and spiritual
aspirations. The so-called higher functions of
human being arise out of our animal roots. Erikson
calls the archetypes “action patterns,”
and when they are not distorted by psychopathology
of one kind or another, their push is always toward
generativity.
According to Don Browning’s analysis of
Erikson, Generative Man’s virtues are love,
care, and wisdom. As Browning says, “The basic
trust and hope of the generative man . . . gives
him the trust not only to continue his own
existence but to share in the generation of
succeeding generations and to help care for and
sustain their lives with hope.”
All the risks taken by a mature man and all the
wealth he accumulates are finally designed to care
for and sustain his family and community.
Ultimately, this caring and sustenance are intended
for his children, the world’s inheritors.
Trust and hope are products of strength and
maturity. Out of strength and maturity, Generative
Man can draw upon inner resources of autonomy and
will. Out of his autonomy and will, he desires and
has the capacity for intimate relationships. In
personal relationships, as far as the social
hierarchy will allow, he beholds the true worth of
others. He provides what Erikson calls “a
confirming face.” In other words, he mirrors
and blesses. This is certainly the case in the
male-bonded egalitarian brotherhoods that Gilmore
examines. For Erikson, Generative Man’s
relationships are not only intimate but societal as
well--he has the capacity and desire to make
meaningful contributions to the community.
All these qualities give a generative man a
viable identity. This identity incorporates
flexibility with integrity as well as with a
consolidated style of fidelity. Out of his
consolidated personality, a generative man is able
to make commitments to his family, to his society,
and ultimately to his God.
The initiated men of any society have
placed their personal concerns beneath those of the
larger social groups, and the social groups are
subordinated to a divine reality. To Gilmore’s
way of thinking, manhood can be either tribalistic
or universal in its general outlook and in its
visioning of its own tasks and duties. Real men,
for him, can function with a variety of definitions
of the greater good, from the most parochial to the
most expansive. However, Erikson goes a step beyond
Gilmore here. Erikson claims that Generative Man
must be a universalist. He must nurture his own
progeny, culture, and religion, as well as the
larger world of all human societies, and the
environment as an ecological whole. Generative Man,
for Erikson, balances the good of society with the
good of the planet by honoring both technology and
nature.
As Browning says, “To generate and maintain
a world, but in such a way as to include and yet
transcend one’s own issue, one’s own
family, tribe, nation and race -- this is the
essence of the generative man . . .”
A man who has accessed the King properly
demonstrates Gilmore’s “manhood” and
Erikson’s Generative Man. The King calls every
man into an Ego-archetypal axial relationship. Men
who can achieve such a relationship are modern-day
embodiments of sacred kingship.
When a man’s Ego is in the proper alignment
with the King, he achieves the humility of the
creature before its transpersonal source, its God.
At the same time he comes to realize that God is
within.
“If you knew me, you would know my Father
also,” said Jesus. Jesus’ statement
illustrates an Ego in an integral relationship with
the inner King.
I will be talking more about the role of the
Ego, in partnership with the Great King, as we
struggle toward developing a balanced kingship in
our lives as contemporary men.
For more of the challenge of kingship for men
today see the newly released The King Within:
Revised and Expanded Text.
The Generative
Man: A vision for us
As you read these words, all over planet earth the
forces of death, domination, and despair are led by
males of our species who are immature emotionally,
spiritually, and ethically.
Political and spiritual leaders constantly try
to understand why narcissism, sociopathic behavior,
and political corruption seem to become worse
rather than improving. They have sought almost
everywhere for the answer but have not looked in
the place where it can be found--in the masculine
soul and in our dismal failure to help the boys of
today to become initiated, mature, and responsible
men.
While no traditional culture should be
romanticized or idealized, we must awaken to the
fact that the ancient indigenous cultures of the
planet did a better job than Western colonialist
culture in finding ways to limit a narcissistic,
malignantly aggressive masculinity and to harness
its energies for the community. The challenge now
facing us is to learn from our forebears the
importance of male maturation and that mature,
responsible men are made--and not the result of
chronological aging.
Yet even our ancestors could not see beyond
their tribal visions to imagine the possibilities
of a vision of masculine maturity for our species
as a whole.
If the world is not soon to be ruled by heavily
armed "monster boys" in physically mature bodies,
then we must have an awakening of a new "EarthMan."
This new human man must be one who is conscious,
mature, and wise: one who --
- does not abuse women and children
- stands against tyranny in any form
- can show the way to the stewardship of
masculine power, aggression, wisdom, and love
for a democratic, just, peaceful, and
compassionate future for our grandchildren
throughout the world community--in order to
secure the well-being of the "seventh
generation" into our future.
What does this have to do with you? It
is my belief that men, women, and children of every
ethnic group and nation have suffered greatly
throughout the centuries through the abuse of power
by emotionally and spiritually uninitiated,
immature "monster boys" both foreign and
domestic.
It is my belief that a conscious and wise
response to this experience of domination by
immature males may enable Earth's Spirit Men to
become leaders in a worldwide movement to call for
a new and responsible masculinity at this critical
time in history. Many men around the world are now
beginning to awaken, not just to the enormity of
our challenge but to their immense potential for
spiritual and ethical leadership in the wider
world.
In this critical time I call on you and other
faithful and committed Spirit Men of your tradition
to bring your gifts to a pan-tribal coalition for
transformative leadership in what it means to be a
responsible and mature man in today's
EarthCommunity. It is my hope that you may be the
key vanguard in turning the tide against the reign
of the "monster boys" of Earth--and in the advent
of the mature EarthMan.
I am writing this column to invite your
partnership in visioning and embodying a new and
better Way for the human male. In my work I have
lifted up a comprehensive new vision for the mature
21st century male. We have already embarked on this
part of the Great Work of our time, but we have
barely begun embodying/incarnating this vision in
history. This incarnation will not occur without
your help.
In today¹s column I want to summarize the
vision of the new Generative Man that is actually
possible today. In subsequent columns I will offer
other reflections on achieving Optimal Manhood and
stewarding those powers for the human future.
What is an ideal generative man? Though
the portrait I suggest may have a somewhat
culture-specific coloring, the underlying manhood
structures remain trans-cultural. No man can fully
embody all of these qualities. However,
psychologists often will describe at length what is
wrong with us without providing us with an image of
what it would be like to be healthy and whole.
We’d like to address this imbalance here, for
“without a vision the people perish.”
The generative man, drawing on the
characteristics of the archetypal King, accesses
the Center, Transformer, Procreator, and Structurer
functions in an integrated way.
He is creative himself, and he welcomes
creativity in others. He provides a safe,
containing space where the people around him can
flourish. He offers encouragement by taking care to
really see others. In beholding his fellows he
mirrors and affirms them. He confirms their
individuality and the reality of their suffering
and their joy. He is conscious of and sensitive to
their underlying feelings and motives. He blesses
their lives by sanctifying the fruits of their
inner and outer labors.
Because he is himself secure and centered, the
generative man can allow others to be themselves.
He does not experience them as extensions of
himself, but recognizes when he is confusing his
own motives and values, his own hopes or fears,
with those of others. He is not easily thrown off
balance by others. Even hostile and aggressive
people cannot easily get to him. His integrity is
such that sarcasm, innuendo, accusation, and
confrontation have little effect upon him. He can
manage in most situations to defend his legitimate
personal boundaries firmly, and without hostility.
Yet when a wrathful response is called for, he is
able to act aggressively. There are situations that
present clear and present dangers. The generative
man, drawing upon his Warrior-King reserves,
responds with vigor in these situations to
neutralize his foes.
A generative man seeks to free himself of envy.
Possessing all the power he needs for his own life,
he can dispense to those who need and deserve it
the affirming energy of admiration. He confers
deserved riches-- symbolic and material--upon
members of his family, his friends, his business
associates, and others. Rather than belittle
others, he supports them in their attempts to
contribute something of value to society.
In a leadership role the generative man
evaluates his subordinates’ ideas and
performances objectively and with compassion. If
others have good ideas, he celebrates them,
implements them, and gives credit where credit is
due.
At home, he lavishes deserved praise upon his
children when they come to him for mirroring;
however, he never exaggerates his praise. He speaks
the truth, and the truth he speaks gives every
member of his family a firm basis for
self-evaluation and self-affirmation. His truthful
words and actions help others feel their own
reality and get a sense of their own authentic
being. He deflates grandiosity and enables others
to discover their realistic greatness.
A generative man may be a mediator between the
archetypal King and his fellow human beings. He may
be further along than others in accessing the King
and the other mature masculine archetypes without
being overwhelmed by them. He is a seasoned veteran
of the dialogue between Ego-consciousness and the
depths of the unconscious. He is familiar with the
inner landscape we all share--its dangers and
pleasures, its angels and demons, its illusions and
truths. With the wisdom of this familiarity, the
generative man can help others in their efforts to
integrate. He can reflect back to others what he
hears their inner adversaries and allies saying,
because at one time or another he’s heard the
same voices himself.
A faithful steward of the creative life-force, a
generative man never engages in wanton destruction.
He is not indifferent to the plight of the
oppressed. He is vitally concerned about the
rights, safety, health, and material prosperity of
all human beings. Beyond this he is interested in
the welfare of the ecosystem as a whole.
Though he may be a master at utilizing the
physical environment for the benefit of his family,
his nation, or all humankind, he honors both
technology and the environment in a balanced way.
He encourages the harmonious interaction between
society and nature. He is neither the enemy of
science and industry nor an irresponsible dumper of
toxic wastes. He seeks a middle path which is
responsible to both immediate and long-range human
needs -- and to his planetary home.
The generative man vigorously pursues the
extension of the created order against the forces
of destruction and death. There are many facets of
these forces--drugs, racism, classism, nationalism,
religionism, poverty, child abuse, spouse abuse,
petty quarreling, ignorance, egoistic
power-grabbing, environmental pollution, political
and economic depression--and all are expressions of
human chaos. Their ultimate effect is always the
destruction of global well-being. A generative man
is concerned with law and order wherever that law
and order contribute to the flourishing of human
beings. He is a protector of the weak and
disempowered. He does what he can in order to
assure justice and equality of opportunity for all
people.
The man who adequately can access the archetypal
King is a reconciler of opposites. He listens for
what truths are spoken on all sides of a dispute.
He looks beneath the surface arguments to the fear
and anguish of the child within. He addresses this
deeper reality when he speaks to each of the
opposing sides. While he prefers diplomatic
solutions, when destructive impulses need subduing,
he acts swiftly and decisively to reestablish order
out of his own sense of integrity. Even though
others grumble about his severity, they know that
he is just. Everyone knows the difference between
men in leadership positions who are firm because
they are genuinely interested in our welfare, and
men who are severe out of their own grandiosity. A
generative man is able to help us subdue our own
self-destructiveness, and for this we deeply
appreciate him.
Self-sacrifice is an inescapable part of world
building, something this man realizes. The
generative man gives his life’s blood for the
people and causes entrusted to him. His hard work
and personal sacrifice both provision others and
advance the generativity of the world. He spends as
much of his life energy as he can to help others
build their worlds. At the same time he is no
martyr or masochist. He cares for his own welfare,
choosing to sacrifice himself only because of his
sense of an abundant and replenishable self-worth.
He volunteers in causes that awaken both his
compassion and his just anger. In these and other
ways a generative man provisions the world.
Like the sacred kings of the Far East, the
generative man works toward harmony and order in
his own inner life. He views setting his own house
in order as a prerequisite for helping others order
their own lives. He is relentlessly honest with
himself about his failings. He takes his share of
responsibility when things go badly, but no more
and no less than his share. Out of this empowering
stance he is able to do something positive and
concrete about the problem that confronts him. He
may be involved in some form of psychotherapeutic
process. He knows that where his own integrity is
at stake, one way or another he must work to
develop his own psychological and spiritual life.
He is open to criticisms, for he realizes that they
will usually hold some truths. He is not, however,
a misguided moral perfectionist. Rather he urgently
engages himself in a quest for wholeness and moral
seriousness.
Out of his deep loyalty to himself the
generative man is able to be loyal to others--his
family and friends, his company, any voluntary
organizations he may be fostering, his community
and his nation, and ultimately his world. These
loyalties may at times be at odds with each other
and set up intense conflicts within him. To the
extent, however, that a man can be generative, his
loyalty will be to the greatest good for the
greatest number. His loyalty in the end will be to
a Transpersonal Other that is deeply compatible
with his own sense of self.
Finally, the generative man has achieved a rich
masculine identity both by building his inner
masculine structures and by valuing his inner
feminine characteristics. He has come to know the
mystery that his masculinity is enhanced to the
extent that he is appreciative of his Anima. He has
experienced within himself the sacred marriage of
the King with his Queen. Full generativity, he
realizes, in psychospiritual affairs just as surely
as in biological ones, is possible only where the
masculine and feminine energies are united. He is
almost certainly sexually active and eager for
intimate relationship with a partner as capable of
intimacy as he is. Together they may generate and
nurture children; if not, their energies combine in
more subtle but still tangibly creative ways.
Protector, provider, procreator--the
generative man is a Center for world building, an
axis mundi around which others may rally.
At his Center he is unassailable. He provides
stability to his inner world, and to others who
come to him looking for order in themselves. His
own opposite impulses are reconciled at his Center,
and through his experience of this, he helps others
to do the same.
As a Transformer, he makes usable the creative
life-force he carries within him. Others draw from
him a sense of their own empowerment.
He may be a Procreator in the specific sense of
fathering the children he cares for and teaches.
Certainly he is a Procreator in the broad sense of
initiating creative advance in the world he has
been given to steward.
He is also a Structurer, establishing calm in
the midst of chaos and facilitating order through
determined action. He is committed to the
preservation and the extension of a civilized, yet
vigorously instinctual, way of life. In these ways
he incarnates the potential in the actual, the
sacred in the profane.
He is an image of mature masculinity toward
which all men may strive.
In the columns to come I will talk further about
this image of Optimal Manhood and using its powers
for the human future.
For more of the Generative Man described here,
see the newly released The King Within: Revised and
Expanded Text, Chapter 5.
© 2010, Robert L.
Moore
* * *
Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but
he has not been able to destroy them. - Octavio
Paz
Dr. Robert
Moore is an internationally recognized Jungian
psychoanalyst and consultant in private practice in
Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is the Distinguished
Service Professor of Psychology, Psychoanalysis and
Spirituality in the Graduate Center of the Chicago
Theological Seminary, where he recently founded and
become director of the new Institute for Advanced
Studies in Spirituality and Wellness. He is a
Training Analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of
Chicago and Director of Research for the Institute
for the Science of Psychoanalysis. Author and
editor of numerous books in psychology and
spirituality, he lectures internationally on his
formulation of a Neo-Jungian paradigm for
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. He is the author
of, among other books,
The Warrior
Within,
The Magician
Within, The
Lover Within,
The Within
Quartet: King,
Warrior, Magician,
Lover; The
Archetype of Inintiation: Sacred space, ritual
process and personal
transformation;
The
Magician and the Analyst: The archetype of the
magus in occult spirituality and Jungian
analysis; and
Facing
the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual
Grandiosity. Also an
audio with Malidoma Some, John Lee and Robert Bly
called Who
Welcomes the Newborn to this World? African and
Western Perspectives.
His most recent book is The
King Within: A revised and expanded
edition Accessing the King in the Male
Psyche.
www.robertmoore-phd.com
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