Intuition (N)

Introduction

In the previous section I described how the infant begins to go through the process of separation-individuation, which causes it to register itself as separate from the Great Mother. As the infantile ego registers itself as a separate entity, the infant begins to feel increasing distance from and hostility toward the Great Mother.

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I will describe two stages of separation-individuation:  

• An early stage (the stage of the Son-lover) where the infant is still relatively merged with or "immersed" in the Great Mother; and

• a later stage (the stage of the Struggler) where the infant increasingly registers himself as separate from the Great Mother and "distances" himself from her accordingly. 

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Afterward I will try to show how the Son-lover and Struggler operate in a manner similar to extraverted Intuition and introverted Intuition.

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Note: The following sections are written from the point of view of a male ego interacting with the Great Mother. In this, I'm following the work of Neumann and Jung. But as I discussed in the previous section, infants of both sexes interact with the Great Mother in much the same fashion throughout the N level.

 

Infantile sexuality

Freud said that infants show evidence of unfocused pleasure/libidinal drives, a state that he called "polymorphous perversity." The Wikipedia article entitled "Polymorphous perversity" says that "The objects and modes of pleasurable satisfaction are multifarious, directed at every object that might provide pleasure. [...] Lacking knowledge that certain modes of gratification are forbidden, the polymorphously perverse child seeks gratification wherever it occurs. In the earliest phase, the oral phase, the child forms a libidinal bond with the mother via the inherent pleasure gained from suckling at the breast."[1]

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But if pleasurable experiences are perceived as sexual, then unpleasant experiences are registered as deprivation of sexual excitement, in other words castration. That includes unconsciousness and sleep: Recall that the Great Mother is registered as a hovering, threatening entity who both gives birth and kills. To fall under the sway of the Great Mother is to live one's life in a state of alternating matriarchal incest (pleasure) and matriarchal castration (frustration and pain). This is effectively another way of viewing the infant's world as an ongoing alternation between the Good Mother and the Terrible Mother.

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Naturally, assigning the idea of sexual and castration symbology onto the infantile mentality represents back-projection (see the previous section). But young infants have very little happening in their world aside from sleeping, eating, and registering things as either pleasure/sex or pain/castration. Freud emphasized the importance of sexuality in infantile and early childhood psychosexual development, and the Jungians agreed.

 

There was disagreement, however, on exactly how and why the infant begins to register castration anxiety. Freud pointed at Oedipal fears and the influence of the father in particular. The Wikipedia article on "Castration anxiety" says, "According to Freud, when the infantile male becomes aware of differences between male and female genitalia he assumes that the female's penis has been removed and becomes anxious that his penis will be cut off by his rival, the father figure, as punishment for desiring the mother figure."[2] But Neumann says that the "Antagonist" father figure is only a minor player in the world of the infant, often merely appearing as an attack animal or companion dutifully carrying out the bloody will of the Great Mother. So according to Neumann, at this early stage fear of castration results from the infant's interaction with the Great Mother herself, that is, from the ego's sexual attraction to the Good Mother and the ego's fear of retribution from the Terrible Mother. 

 

Neumann finds support for these ideas in the prehistoric fertility religions; he uses the interaction between the fertility goddess and the symbol of the "Son-lover" to illustrate the ego's relation to the Great Mother:

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The Son-lover

Neumann defines the Son-lover as follows: "This early stage of conscious-unconscious relations is reflected in the mythology of the Mother Goddess and her connection with the son-lover. The Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, and Osiris figures in the Near Eastern cultures are not merely born of a mother; on the contrary, this aspect is altogether eclipsed by the fact that they are their mother's lovers: they are loved, slain, buried, and bewailed by her, and are then reborn through her. The figure of the son-lover follows on the stage of embryo and child. By differentiating himself from the unconscious and reaffirming his masculine otherness, he very nearly becomes the partner of the maternal unconscious; he is her lover as well as her son. But he is not yet strong enough to cope with her, he succumbs to her in death and is devoured. The mother-beloved turns into the terrible Death Goddess. She is still playing cat-and-mouse with him, and she overshadows even his rebirth."[3]

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Neumann goes on to talk about the Son-lover's role as "phallic consort" of the Great Mother. The Son-lover plays out a cycle of birth, death, and then rebirth, which the Great Mother presides over in her role as fertility goddess. As I said in a previous section, life and death are opposites, but they flow into each other. They aren't separate; they are just different portions of the same eternal cycle.

 

Neumann says, "The young men whom the Mother selects for her lovers may impregnate her, they may even be fertility gods, but the fact remains that they are only phallic consorts of the Great Mother, drones serving the queen bee, who are killed off as soon as they have performed their duty of fecundation."[4]

 

Since the son is temporary and the Mother is permanent, the son basically just exists as a bearer of the phallus so that the Mother can breed the next generation of sons: "Man becomes her plaything, the goat is her mount, the phallus her constant companion." In mythology, such consorts often show up in the form of dwarfs, to show their subordinate status. The phallic nature of the Son-lover consorts shows up in numerous representations of goddesses with snakes. (This is the source of the snake eating its tail as the symbol of the uroboros.) "The attendant serpent--apart from its numinous nature--is likewise a symbol of the fertilizing phallus. That is why the Great Mother is so often connected with snakes. Not only in Creto-Mycenaean culture and its Greek offshoots, but as far back as Egypt, Phoenicia, and Babylon and similarly in the Bible story of Paradise, the snake is the companion of woman."[5]

 

In her book Provocations Camille Paglia also points out the Great Mother implications of the association of Eve with the serpent in the Bible story of Paradise: "Eve, seduced by a devious serpent in a garden, was probably originally a Middle Eastern nature-goddess whose emblem was the serpent."[6] Neumann goes on to note that the symbol of fertility goddess and snake eventually gets humanized into "the human Madonna with the human child."[7]

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In fertility religions, the phallic youths also become associated with vegetation. That is, they are fertility deities, but also "as something sprung up from the earth, they are the vegetation itself. Their existence makes the earth fruitful, but as soon as they have reached maturity they must be killed, mown down, and harvested." Thus the imagery of the Great Mother with the ear of corn, another phallic image: "The Great Mother with the ear of corn, her corn son, is an archetype whose power extends as far as the mysteries of Eleusis, the Christian Madonna, and the wheaten Host in which the wheaten body of the son is eaten. The youths who belong to the Great Mother are gods of spring who must be put to death in order to be lamented by the Great Mother and reborn."[8]

 

The boy is vegetation and renewable, therefore every boy born in the spring is the same boy: "[E]very beloved the same, the one beloved." Meantime, the Goddess exists eternally and is unattached to any single bearer of the phallus; the phallus is anonymous to her.[9]

 

Neumann talks about early fertility rites: There were orgiastic feasts which celebrated young boys and their phalluses, culminating in the castration, ritual killing, and dismemberment of those same youths.[10]

 

In his role as phallic symbol, the Son-lover was deemed to be both victim and willing participant in such rites. He was so identified with his phallus that he accepted the fate that came with it, as long as it gave him access to the Great Mother. In terms of the infantile ego, this would be the ego that is so enamored of the Good Mother's nurture and nourishment that it willingly accepts the "death" of unconsciousness that accompanies her. As I said in a previous section: The ego, to the extent that it exists at all, fights dissolution into the unconscious; but at the same time, it identifies with the uroboros and so finds the experience pleasurable in that sense. Later on, this experience of the ego will turn into masochism, which in turn is projected as sadism on the part of the consuming uroboros. Thus, the Son-lover actively offers up his ego to the unconscious and embraces martyrdom and sacrifice.

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In her book Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia suggests that this unconscious attitude resurfaces in sadistic female imagery such as the femme fatale, the "toothed vagina" (vagina dentata), and "women's latent vampirism." Paglia describes sex as a sadomasochistic transaction at the unconscious level: "For the male, every act of intercourse is a return to the mother and a capitulation to her. For men, sex is a struggle for identity. In sex, the male is consumed and released again by the toothed power that bore him, the female dragon of nature." [11]

 

Paglia says that man fears his own unconscious feminine; in contrast woman embraces paganism in the form of her own unconscious masculine as portrayed by female monsters: The Gorgon Medusa, Sphinx, Furies, Harpies, Sirens, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, and so on.[12] Paglia says, "Masculinity flows from the Great Mother as an aspect of herself and is recalled and cancelled by her at will. Her son is a servant of her cult. There is no going beyond her. Motherhood blankets existence."[13]

 

Or as Neumann says: "The emotional, passionate nature of the female in wild abandon is a terrible thing for man and his consciousness. The dangerous side of woman's lasciviousness, although suppressed, misunderstood, and minimized in patriarchal times, was still a living experience in earlier ages."[14]

 

Neumann goes on to say that the ministers and priests of the prehistoric fertility goddess were eunuchs: "They have sacrificed the thing that is for her the most important--the phallus. [...] The castration threat makes its appearance with the Great Mother and is deadly. For her, loving, dying, and being emasculated are the same thing. Only the priests, at least in later times, escape being put to death because, by castrating themselves, they have voluntarily submitted to a symbolical death for her sake."[15] Neumann says that this tradition comes down to modern times in the form of robes worn by priests and the shaving of the heads of some types of monks. These started out as demonstrations of effeminacy,  eunuch status, and devotion to the fertility goddess. He notes that eunuch priests were also sacred prostitutes.[16]

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Transition from the Son-lover to the Struggler

As I said at the beginning of this section, there are two stages of separation-individuation:  

• An early stage (the stage of the Son-lover) where the infant is still relatively merged with or "immersed" in the Great Mother; and

• A later stage (the stage of the Struggler) where the infant increasingly registers himself as separate from the Great Mother and "distances" himself from her accordingly.

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As separation-individuation proceeds, a new phase of ego development occurs: The Son-lover makes the transition to the Struggler. As the infant's ego increasingly focuses on the "Terrible Mother" aspect of the Great Mother, the child begins to test limits, actively oppose the wishes of the Great Mother, and throw tantrums. Of course, for a very young child it's effectively impossible to have any real freedom; the child still requires nurture. Thus, the Great Mother still imposes her cycles of castration and sleep on the ego. But a new relationship arises.

 

This new relationship is reflected in the cultural mythology by stories such as the Narcissus myth: The handsome Greek youth Narcissus spurns the love of the nymph Echo, and he is condemned by the gods to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool and die by suicide (drowning or starvation). Neumann sees the hallmarks of the Struggler in this myth: A boy fleeing a goddess and paying with his life for his rebellion.

 

The image of the boy falling in love with his own reflection gives rise to the term "narcissism," usually considered a character flaw. But Neumann notes that narcissism is a healthy stage in the process of late-stage separation-individuation: It's appropriate for the child to turn his gaze away from the Great Mother and instead seek to know himself. Neumann notes: "The tendency of an ego consciousness that is becoming aware of itself [...] to see itself as in a mirror is a necessary and essential feature at this stage. Self-formation and self-realization begin in earnest when human consciousness develops into self-consciousness."[17]

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Neumann mentions a couple more myths that concern boys in flight from a punishing goddess, among them the story of Hippolytus: Hippolytus is a hunter and sportsman who is disgusted by sex and marriage. As a result he worships Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, and ignores Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Aphrodite takes issue with this attitude on the part of Hippolytus and initiates a series of events culminating in the death of Hippolytus. Neumann says that this story emphasizes the role of chastity as a way to turn inward and self-reflect.[18]

 

Neumann says, "The youth struggling for self-consciousness now begins, in so far as he is an individual, to have a personal fate, and for him the Great Mother becomes the deadly and unfaithful mother. She selects one young man after another to love and destroy. In this way she becomes 'the harlot.'"[19]

 

In other words, previously the Son-lover was an active and enthusiastic participant in the sadomasochistic rites of the Great Mother; in contrast, the later Struggler is the very much the opposite: He resorts to chastity and flight in a bid to strengthen his independence. However, the end result is the same either way: Castration and death. The Great Mother is simply too powerful at this stage. At best, the Struggler can only take comfort in the idea that he at least tried to determine his own fate.

 

But in determining his own fate, the Struggler becomes complicit in his destiny. Flight turns into self-castration and suicide. Neumann says that the Struggler's fear of the Terrible Mother "expresses itself in various forms of flight and resistance. The primary expression of flight, which is still completely under the dominance of the Great Mother, is self-castration and suicide [...]. Here the attitude of defiance, the refusal to love, leads, nevertheless, to the very thing the Terrible Mother wants, namely, the offering of the phallus, though the offering is made in a negative sense. The youths who flee in terror and madness from the demands of the Great Mother betray, in the act of self-castration, their abiding fixation to the central symbol of the Great Mother cult, the phallus; and this they offer up to her albeit in their consciousness and a protesting ego."[20]

 

In mythology, the fleeing Strugglers often commit suicide (for example, Narcissus). Neumann says that this infantile image of "self-destruction, self-mutilation, and suicide" stays with us unconsciously. He says that later in life Strugglers may play the archetypal "struggling and reluctant lover" who is prone to falling into a suicidal mindset in the course of a turbulent courtship.[21]

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Son-lover versus Struggler as dichotomy

The Son-lover and the Struggler are both phases in the separation-individuation process; the Son-lover appears earlier when the ego is weak, and the Struggler appears later as the ego grows strong enough to start opposing the Great Mother. The Son-lover is the babe in arms; the Struggler is the toddler at 1-2 years old who is starting to throw tantrums.

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The opposition of the two phases is worth noting. Dichotomies are pairs of related opposites. The opposition of the Son-lover versus the Struggler suggests that they comprise a dichotomy. For example, consider the two through the lens of their level of engagement with the Great Mother. As I said above, the Son-lover is an active and enthusiastic participant in the sadomasochistic rites of the Great Mother as fertility goddess; in contrast, the Struggler resorts to chastity and flight in a bid to strengthen his independence. One could say that the Son-lover is immersed in the world of the Great Mother while the Struggler distances himself from the Great Mother.

 

Carl Jung labelled the opposition of certain psychological phenomena as "enantiodromia," which he described as "the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time."[22] It is similar to the principles of equilibrium or homeostasis. Life can't be maintained for very long under extreme circumstances. If we run too far to one extreme in our life, at some point we will have to reverse course and run in the opposite direction. In some ways we all live life as though on a pendulum, bouncing from one side to the other. 

 

In a sense, the Son-lover's earlier immersion in the world of the Great Mother creates a need for the later distancing of the Struggler from the Great Mother as separation-individuation proceeds. A lifetime of immersion is unsustainable; the growing ego increasingly needs distance if it is to develop into an independent entity.

 

Thus we can talk about a dichotomy of the Son-lover versus Struggler at the stage of the infant and early culture:

 

Son-lover: The Son-lover is an earlier stage of separation-individuation where the ego recognizes itself as a separate entity but is too weak to oppose the Great Mother. So he embraces the cycle of consciousness and unconsciousness (expressed in early culture as a birth-and-death cycle imposed by a powerful fertility goddess), willingly plays the role of "phallic consort" to the Great Mother, and actively offers up his ego to the unconscious and embraces castration and sacrifice. He welcomes participation mystique and union with the Great Mother.

 

Versus:

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Struggler: The Struggler is a later stage of separation-individuation where the ego identifies with consciousness and independence; it associates unconsciousness with the Terrible Mother, a "death goddess" hovering over it, and actively fights (unsuccessfully) unconsciousness and castration. The Struggler fights the feeling of participation mystique and embraces individuation in its place. The Struggler is exemplified by the myth of Narcissus fleeing the Terrible Mother and falling in love instead with his own image in the pool: The Struggler turns his focus away from the Great Mother and instead seeks to know himself in the interests of individuation.

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Once again, these colorful personas of the Son-lover and Struggler are due to back-projection. The infant doesn't originally perceive the world in the form of fertility goddesses and "phallic consorts," nor does the average mother do anything concrete in the rearing of her infant to earn the sobriquet of "Terrible Mother." But the infant does live in a world of vulnerability, fear, powerful parent figures, and equally powerful personal emotions and tantrums. As the individual grows up, ancient fears and rages become associated unconsciously with images of powerful goddesses and their consorts, or flight from a punishing monster; and early society projects these images outward into the world and acts them out as the fertility rites of early culture.

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Given the similarities of fertility religions around the world, the associations that humans draw from their infantile experiences appear to be very similar. It provides evidence for the existence of archetypal images and associations; see the Supplemental essay entitled "Weak Instincts as Brain Architecture" in the Preface chapter for more on that subject.

 

Immersion-versus-Distancing dichotomy

Based on the dichotomy of the Son-lover versus Struggler, it's also possible to extrapolate "proxy dichotomies" for the purpose of highlighting certain features of the interplay between the Son-lover and Struggler.

 

For example, I suggested one such "proxy dichotomy" just a few paragraphs above: I said that the Son-lover is immersed in the world of the Great Mother while the Struggler distances himself from the Great Mother.

 

Thus, I'm suggesting an Immersion-versus-Distancing dichotomy for the purpose of highlighting that particular facet of opposition characterized by the Son-lover and Struggler:

 

Immersion: The Son-lover  is enmeshed with the Great Mother to the point of being immersed in her fertility cycles, rites, and rituals. The Son-lover embraces participation mystique and can't imagine an existence separate from the Great Mother; he willingly accepts his role as her "phallic consort," leading ultimately to matriarchal castration and death.

 

The idea of immersion in the Great Mother is, of course, a back-projection of symbolism onto the natural state of early infancy, which consists of immersion in raw instinctuality and gluttony: The Son-lover stage of development corresponds to Freud's "oral stage" with its focus gratification via the mouth and food: Infants derive pleasure from feeding at the mother's breast, as well as from thumb-sucking and exploring their environment by inserting objects in their mouth. Eating is the infant's main way of receiving pleasure, and infants are generally gluttons. Similarly, Neumann says that early culture demonstrates a focus on food and digestion, such as early myths of gods eating their children and vice versa, sacrifices of food offered to gods to keep them from eating their creation, the cannibalism implicit in the sacrament of the Host, etc.[23]

 

For example, the pantheon of the Greek gods were initially born to the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Fearful that his children would one day overthrow him, Cronus ate each of the gods as they were born. But Zeus was saved, and he overthrew Cronus and freed the other gods, thereafter serving as king over them. Another food-oriented symbol appears in the Old Testament where man's fall from paradise is due to the consumption of forbidden food.

 

I have also noted, above, that infants experience pleasure as sexual; the infant's simple pleasure circuitry doesn't distinguish between types of pleasure. Hence, Adam's consumption of the apple in Eden is often interpreted as symbolism for man's first knowledge of the sexual act. It suggests an earlier, pre-patriarchal version of the creation myth whereby Adam is a Son-lover indulging a sin of gross instinctuality against a Great Mother figure, which brings punishment and death upon all mankind.

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Versus:

 

Distancing: The mythological model for the Struggler is Narcissus: He seeks to turn away from the Great Mother and distance himself from her. Ultimately the Struggler's fate is the same as the Son-lover's: Castration and death at the hands of the Terrible Mother. He remains enmeshed with her despite his efforts to the contrary. But his quest for distancing and independence is a sign of his greater progress toward separation-individuation, and will eventually lead to the development of the hero who fights against monsters (to be described at the next developmental level, that is, Sensing).

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Erich Neumann suggested the model of the Son-lover versus the Struggler in his 1949 book The Origins and History of Consciousness. Carl Jung was pleased with the idea; subsequently, in his own Symbols of Transformation Jung suggested a variation on the Struggler which he called the Wanderer. He noted the popularity of such legends as the Wandering Jew or the crew of the Flying Dutchman. Jung suggested that both the sexual Son-lover and the chaste Wanderer are both driven by fear of incest with the Great Mother: Where the Son-lover accepts death and/or castration in expiation for fulfillment of his incestuous desires, the Wanderer flees the mother and avoids the sin of incest by embracing sacrificial measures such as abstinence and denial. Jung says, "The heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longings of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother."[24]

 

To sum up: 

• Immersion springs from participation mystique and instinctuality

• Distancing springs from individuation and denial

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The Immersion-versus-Distancing dichotomy is also likely the basis for the psychological concepts of Attachment style and Personal Boundaries in relationships, which develop as the infant grows older.

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At its simplest, Attachment style can be described as a basic dichotomy of anxious attachment versus avoidant attachment at the two extremes.

• Adults with an anxious attachment style may become excessively attached to others in a relationship, to the point of neediness and dependency. They may be clingy, needy, or smothering and require constant reassurances of the love, approval, and fidelity of others; and

• Adults with an avoidant attachment style tend toward the opposite extreme: They may seek independence to the point that they keep others at a distance; they may have difficulty relating to others in a relationship.

 

Similarly, Personal boundaries concern the degree to which you let people into your life. Boundaries are usually represented in terms of a dichotomy of soft or low boundaries versus rigid or high boundaries.

• Soft boundaries represent the extreme of being too trusting and too yielding; you allow everything and everyone into your life (you allow in both the good and the bad);

• Rigid boundaries represent the extreme of being excessively rigid/inflexible (being too defensive), where you keep everything and everyone out of your life (keeping out both the good and the bad).

 

Clearly these concepts share a lot of common ground with the portraits of the infantile Son-lover and Struggler and with the Immersion-versus-Distancing dichotomy that I proposed above. For more on those subjects, see the Wikipedia articles entitled "Attachment theory" and "Personal Boundaries."

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Adult Intuitives: Care versus Autonomy

The dichotomies listed thus far are described mainly in the context of relations between the infantile ego and the mother or their reflection in the myths of early societies. The overall paradigm is as follows: The infant is in thrall to the Great Mother, and there is a vast power imbalance between the two. The infant deals with this power imbalance by either focusing on the nurture aspect (the Son-lover acts as faithful consort) or focusing on the separation-individuation aspect (the Struggler flees the Terrible Mother).

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In adulthood, on the other hand, it seems that N-level dichotomies tend to gel into one particular broad dichotomous "prism" through which N-Doms may see life: Care versus Autonomy. Adult N-Doms appear to retain their sense of a power imbalance--a world divided into "the powerful versus the powerless"--and react to it in one of two ways:

• A Care-focused ethic or philosophy of life that emphasizes nurture and support for the vulnerable and dispossessed; or

• An Autonomy-focused ethic or philosophy of life that emphasizes freedom, self-development, and the overthrow of bullies and oppressors.

 

The Care-versus-Autonomy dichotomy bears a number of resemblances to the Immersion-versus-Distancing dichotomy demonstrated by the N-level Son-lover and Struggler.

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Care: I have previously described the infantile (or mythical) Son-lover as the ego that is so enamored of the Good Mother's nurture and nourishment that it willingly accepts the "death" of unconsciousness that accompanies her. In adulthood the Son-lover may retain a sense of life as a system of power imbalances and personal vulnerability and project that view onto the world around him. Thus he tends to see others as needing care and nurture and he himself assumes the role of caregiver; or in some cases he may see himself as overwhelmed by powerful and malevolent forces and assume the role of victim. 

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In the personal life of the adult Son-lover, a focus on Care may result in an emphasis on immersion in the form of participation in community and collectivism. This is a throwback to participation mystique and a sense of the numinous, which lends the world a sense of connectedness and oneness. Care-focused adults (male or female) define themselves in the context of human relationships and in terms of their ability to care; they value empathy and the need to experience other's needs or feelings as one's own. Cooperation and service to others will be preferred over competition and personal achievement.

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Alternatively, in the realm of philosophy and politics the Care outlook can result in a focus on inequality and the fate of the poor and dispossessed. The Care-focused adult views life from the angle of vulnerability. He or she may enthusiastically adopt social and political causes such as ethical treatment of animals, help for refugees, support for the poor, assistance for wounded veterans, etc. Care-focused N-Doms may view government as a beneficial force protecting the vulnerable from rapacious corporations or powerful elites.

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When taken to excess, however, a focus on Care can be self-destructive. Excessive immersion in the form of self-sacrifice to the community may result in feelings of martyrdom or victimhood; society's endless demands on the individual can seem punitive and overwhelming. "Excessive immersion" leads to a sort of regression to the negative aspects of the Son-lover and the Maiden: The community serves as the devouring Great Mother, and the Care-focused individual lives in thrall to the community to his or her own detriment.

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Autonomy: I have previously described the Struggler as identifying with separation-individuation, consciousness and independence; it associates unconsciousness with the Terrible Mother, a "death goddess" hovering over it, and actively fights (unsuccessfully) unconsciousness and castration. Like the Son-lover, in adulthood the Struggler may retain a sense of life as a system of power imbalances and personal vulnerability. But where the Son-lover projects a vision of victims in need of nurturance and care, the Struggler sees others as immersed in oppression and seeks to teach them autonomy and freedom: For example, freedom from substance abuse and other self-destructive attachments, freedom from a right-wing capitalist system that exploits workers, freedom from a left-wing government that robs workers of their hard-earned pay via punitive tax rates and tries to turn everyone into helpless wards of the state, and so on.

 

In the personal life of the adult Struggler, a focus on Autonomy may result in an emphasis on distancing in the form of self-sufficiency, independence, competitiveness, and achievement. Autonomy-focused adults (male or female) define themselves in the context of morality predicated on a legalistic understanding of fairness. Equality is achieved through a rigorous search for mathematical impartiality, not empathy and feelings. The workplace and its emphasis on metrics, production, and predictability feels safer than relationships, which are unpredictable and fraught with entrapment and betrayal.

 

Alternatively, in the realm of philosophy and politics the Autonomy-focused individual will often utilize social hierarchies and legal structures as a way to limit government and ensure personal rights, maximize freedom, and legitimize competition as values that benefit society. The Autonomy outlook is often associated with political libertarians or conservatives who embrace "Don't Tread on Me" rhetoric. But a focus on Autonomy can also be at the core of liberal social justice and anti-capitalist movements; virtually any kind of government or economic system can be viewed as political oppression from which a populace or a minority group needs freeing. Viewed through the Autonomy lens, governments of all stripes are often seen as an oppressor. In the eyes of the freedom-fighter, just about anything can become an infringement on freedom.

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When taken to excess, however, a focus on Autonomy can be self-destructive. Excessive distancing in the form of self-sufficiency may result in feelings of selfishness and lack of connection to the community; without community to provide context and meaning, Autonomy can turn into a lack of purpose, cynicism, and self-centeredness. "Excessive distancing" leads to a sort of regression to the negative aspects of the Struggler/Wanderer and the Muse: The community serves as the devouring Great Mother, and the Autonomy-focused individual tries to flee from the community to his or her own detriment.

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Care versus Autonomy: Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written extensively about "moral foundations theory," which identifies six innate moral foundations that cultures use to develop and justify their various moralities. Haidt considers these moral foundations intuitive in the sense that they are genetically imprinted on the human mind as weak instincts and are present at birth. (See my supplemental essay on "Weak instincts" as brain architecture for more on this subject.)

 

In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Haidt describes two moral foundations similar to the Care versus Autonomy dichotomy:

• A "Care/Harm" foundation or moral value that focuses on compassion for the vulnerable stemming from early attachments between mother and infant;[25] and 

• A "Liberty/Oppression" foundation or moral value that focuses on egalitarianism and opposition to bullies.[26]

 

Haidt doesn't relate his moral foundations to Jung's psychological functions or pair up the foundations as dichotomies; he is mainly interested in exploring the extent to which they are represented in political differences between people and parties. But it is certainly tempting to see these particular two moral foundations as an outgrowth of the dichotomy of the Son-lover versus Struggler, with their shared emphasis on N-level power imbalances. (For a broader description of Haidt's moral foundations, see my essay Reconciling Politics, Religion, and Morality.)​​

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Female Intuitives: Maiden versus Muse

Concerning the Son-lover versus Struggler, I said above that the material so far has been written from the point of view of a male ego interacting with the parents; in this, I'm following the work of Neumann and Jung. But in The Fear of the Feminine Erich Neumann says that there is no basic difference in development between boys and girls at the N level. Both go through separation-individuation and live in the shadow of the Great Mother in the same manner. "In regard to the primal relationship to the mother, i.e., the first phase of childhood, the same conditions hold true for both the boy and the girl."[27]

 

Nonetheless, I would like to propose a female equivalent for the Son-lover versus Struggler: I call it the Maiden versus the Muse. In various writings Jung and Neumann provided a couple descriptions of female profiles that seem very similar to the Son-lover and Struggler. Jung and Neumann didn't relate them to Son-lover and Struggler or to any particular cognitive function. But I thought I would summarize them here for comparison.

 

The Maiden: In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious Carl Jung proposes an N-level archetype that he repeatedly encounters in his practice in the dreams and fantasies of patients. It's a variation on the myth of Persephone and Demeter that reflects the N level. In it, Demeter represents a cruel Great Mother goddess who torments her daughter Persephone. Like the Son-lover, Persephone exists at the whim and command of the punishing Great Mother figure and never seems to make it out of childhood. 

 

An Antagonist figure in the person of the god Hades carries off Persephone to the underworld and rapes her. This follows the pattern of the ancient custom of the "marriage of death" dating back to the old fertility religions, as described by Erich Neumann in Amor and Psyche. "Seen from the standpoint of the matriarchal world, every marriage is a rape of Kore, the virginal bloom, by Hades, the ravishing, earthly aspect of the hostile male. From this point of view every marriage is an exposure on the mountain's summit in mortal loneliness, and a waiting for the male monster, to whom the bride is surrendered. The veiling of the bride is always the veiling of the mystery, and marriage as the marriage of death is a central archetype of the feminine mysteries. In the profound experience of the feminine, the marriage of doom recounted in innumerable myths and tales, the maiden sacrificed to a monster, dragon, wizard, or evil spirit, is also a hieros gamos.* The character of rape that the event assumes for womanhood expresses the projection-typical of the matriarchal phase-of the hostile element upon the man."[28]

* "Divine marriage." See the entry "Hieros gamos" in Wikipedia.

 

Eventually Hades returns Persephone to Demeter, but thereafter Persephone is fated to spend six months of each year with Demeter and the other six months ruling the underworld with Hades. In other words Persephone eternally cycles through life and death (a symbolic murder and resurrection under the baleful eye of the Great Mother) like the Son-lover. 

 

All in all, this archetype of the Maiden seems to revolve around N-level sadomasochism, which was a hallmark of the Son-lover as well.

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For additional background material on this subject, see the following supplemental essay:

Link to supplemental essay: The Maiden

 

The Muse: In The Fear of the Feminine Erich Neumann describes a stage in the development of female consciousness where, like the Struggler, the daughter undergoes separation-individuation and flees the Great Mother. But like the Maiden, the Muse never manages to escape; she falls into the clutches of the Antagonist acting as companion to the Great Mother. This entrapment by the Antagonist elevates the daughter out of the sexual realm of the Great Mother and into a higher spiritual realm: It's a father-daughter bond where the daughter serves as the "muse" of the Antagonist.

 

However, this captivity keeps the daughter at the stage of a child and becomes a prison for her. Furthermore, the daughter remains in the orbit of the Great Mother: The punishing Terrible Mother figure is still lurking in the background, haunting and tormenting the daughter. Neumann says that the daughter's estrangement from the Great Mother leaves the daughter alienated from her own earthly, feminine side. Neumann says that to grow to full maturity the daughter needs a positive bond to the Great Mother; without such a bond, the daughter remains an undeveloped child. 

 

As a result, like the Struggler, the Muse distances herself from the Great Mother and yet never really escapes. She becomes a prisoner of the Antagonist and at the same time a child and a Wanderer, unable to find her way back to an identity of her own. And as Muse to the Antagonist she plays an influential role in the world, but she does so from a "distanced" perspective: She interacts with the world at second hand, through the agency of the father figure who holds her captive.

 

For additional background material on this subject, see the following supplemental essay:

Link to supplemental essay: The Muse​

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Son-lover versus Struggler in myth and literature

One could refer to the stories of the Son-lover and Struggler as "archetypal myths." In the Preface on developmental levels at the start of this website, I argued that Humans are born with a mental architecture already genetically programmed into their brain, much in the same way that animals are born with instincts genetically programmed into their brains. Infants have roughly the same limited experience and perception of life everywhere in the world, and the stories of the Son-lover and Struggler could represent fairly universal themes and serve as "templates" underlying various folk tales, myths, and artistic creations.

 

Thus:

 

Son-lover myths: I mentioned above that Son-lover myths were fairly common in early pagan fertility religions: The Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, and Osiris figures in the Near Eastern cultures are not merely born of a mother; on the contrary, this aspect is altogether eclipsed by the fact that they are their mother's lovers: they are loved, slain, buried, and bewailed by her, and are then reborn through her.

 

The Greek myth of Oedipus is usually more familiar to modern readers than the myths mentioned above: Abandoned as a newborn and raised in a foreign land, Oedipus never knew his true parents. As a young adventurer, he encounters his father in battle but doesn't recognize him and kills him. He subsequently wins a kingdom when he bests the Sphinx, a female monster, in a contest. But the kingdom that he has won is ruled by his widowed mother, Jocasta, and when he claims the kingdom he unknowingly weds his mother and has children by her. The crime of incest by Oedipus and Jocasta causes the gods to send a plague upon the kingdom, and to address the plague Oedipus must delve into his origins. When he learns that he has committed incest, Oedipus blinds himself.

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Thus all the elements of the Son-lover myth are present: Oedipus is immersed in the environment of the deadly Great Mother. The Great Mother is fragmented into her various aspects and represented in those aspects by the female Sphinx, Jocasta, and the goddesses known as the Furies who hover over Oedipus and his family and determine their fates. (Fragmentation into aspects is a common psychological mechanism; I will be discussing fragmentation of the Great Mother in the material on Sensing.) And blinding is often interpreted as a symbolic form of castration. The power of the Oedipus myth is well-known to any student of psychology; Freud made it the cornerstone of childhood sexuality, and both Neumann and Jung recognized in it the myth of the Son-lover.

 

​​One can even speak of a genre of modern literature where male heroes live in the shadow of powerful female figures, that is, under the baleful and threatening eye of the Great Mother in a manner of speaking. For example, "The World According to Garp," by John Irving (published 1976) and "Portnoy's Complaint" (published 1967). Son-lover figures generally don't come to good ends; the hero of the first book is murdered by a feminist activist, and the hero of the second ends up in therapy for impotence.

 

Versus: 

 

Struggler myths and stories: I mentioned above that Neumann's primary model for the portrait of the Struggler is the myth of Narcissus: Spurning the love of a goddess, Narcissus is condemned by the gods to die alone and abandoned, turned in upon himself and in love with only his own reflection. Carl Jung later amends this archetype somewhat to include the portrait of Wanderers such as the Wandering Jew or the crew of the Flying Dutchman.

 

The Wanderer in particular is a recurrent motif in children's fairy tales such as "The Ugly Duckling": Individuation results in a duckling who looks different from the rest, and the duckling is cast out from its family and must wander the world to find kindred spirits. In other tales, children are punished and then ostracized by their step-families and must fight for survival in a dark forest against a monster or a witch.

 

Modern literature and art similarly represent Struggler or Wanderer stereotypes, ranging from rugged individualists who spurn society and roam the wilderness trying to "find themselves" (shades of Narcissus), to monastics, ascetics, drifters, and nomads who follow some spiritual path of their own. For an example of world-class literature on this theme, read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf about a middle-aged man who has become suicidal after spending his life as a Wanderer, a "wolf of the steppes," unable to fit in with society.

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Conclusion

To sum up, the dichotomy of the Son-lover versus the Struggler/Wanderer can be represented as follows:

• "Phallic consort" for the Great Mother versus chastity and flight away from the Great Mother

• Immersion versus Distancing (Anxious versus Avoidant attachment styles, Soft versus Rigid boundaries) 

• Care versus Autonomy

• Female analogue: The Maiden versus the Muse

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~Posted October 19, 2023