Now, when those individual persons experience the freeing in their psyches of kinship libido involving their fathers (or father figures) in stage (7) of the eight stages of consciousness delineated by Neumann, those individual persons experience accessing the optimal forms of the four masculine archetypes of maturity in their psyches: (1) The King archetype of maturity, (2) the masculine warrior/Knight archetype of maturity, (3) the masculine Magician/Shaman archetype of maturity, and (4) the masculine Lover archetype of maturity.
In Ong's wording of Neumann's account of stage (8) of ego-consciousness, learning how to access the energies of the optimal forms of the four masculine archetype of maturity results in "the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering into new phases with the heightened individualism - or, more properly, personalism - of modern man [sic])."
Now, the individual personal transformation involved in stage (8) of the eight stages of consciousness delineated by Neuman in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness can be an enormously lonely experience for the individual person unless it is accompanied by what the Freudian psychoanalyst and psychological theorist Erik H. Erikson (1902-1994) refers to as the indispensable quality of generativity -- the key involved in the basic struggle of adulthood (in stage VII of the eight psycho-social stages of human development according to Erikson. See Erikson's summative book The Life Cycle Completed: A Review (1982, p. 32).
Generativity includes a man and a woman giving birth to and raising a child. However, Erikson uses the term generativity to include an expansive adult sense of life regarding the next generation. Erikson says, among other things, that "generativity always invites the possibility of an energetic shift to productivity and creativity in the service of generations" (1982, p. 53; his italics).
Referring to "the generative stage [VII] that preceded old age [stage VIII]," Erikson says that "old people can and need to maintain a grand-generative function" (1982, p. 63; his italics).
In the years of my adult life, I have not fathered any children, so I have not fulfilled my adult generative function by raising any children of my own. However, as a teacher from the fall of 1968 to the end of May 2009, I have fulfilled my adult generative function. Since I retired from teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth at the end of May 2009, I have enjoyed the stage of life that Erikson refers to as old age. In my old age of retirement, I have published more than 660 OEN articles. I this way, and through other online publications, I have maintained what Erikson describes as a grand-generative function.
In any event, Robert Moore teamed up with Douglas Gillette as his co-author to write a series of five books about the four masculine archetypes of maturity in the human psyche - the optimal form of each of which is accompanied by two bipolar "shadow" forms:
(1) King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine (1990);
(2) The King Within: Accessing the King [Archetype] in the Male Psyche, revised and expanded second edition (2007; orig. first ed., 1992a);
(3) The Warrior Within: Accessing the Knight [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1992b);
(4) The Magician Within: Accessing the Shaman [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1993a);
(5) The Lover Within: Accessing the Lover [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1993b).
In writing the present essay, I have been accessing the optimal and positive form of the masculine Magician/Shama archetype in my psyche.
Now, the most efficient way for me to provide you with an overview of Philip Shenon's bleak new 2025 book Jesus Wept is to tell you its parts:
"Introduction" (pp. 3-12; nine pages).
Part I: "Pius XII (1939-1958)"; with two chapters (pp. 15-35; twenty pages).
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