Next, I want to discuss Anthony Stevens' book The Two Million-Year-Old Self (1993). In it he makes the important point that archetypal wounding requires archetypal healing. But archetypal wounding results in abandonment feelings of the kind that Bradshaw and Anderson discuss. As we have seen, each of them recommends mourning abandonment feelings as the way to healing them. In Anthony Stevens' terminology, the healing that results from mourning abandonment feelings involves archetypal healing of the archetypal wounding that generated the abandonment feelings.
Next, I want to discuss the work of Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette regarding the archetypes of maturity. Even though they have written books only about the masculine archetypes of maturity, they have indicated unequivocally that there are feminine counterparts to each of the four masculine archetypes of maturity. Each of the four archetypes of maturity that the authors discuss has an optimal form and two related "shadow" forms. As the result of what Anthony Stevens refers to as archetypal wounding, most of us emerge from our early childhood years wounded. In the terminology that Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette use, we emerge as wounded children who are locked into locked into "shadow" forms of the archetypes of maturity in the archetypal level of our psyches. With respect to the four masculine archetypes of maturity in our psyches, we may be locked into one, two, three, or four "shadow" forms. With regard to the four feminine archetypes of maturity in our psyches, we may be locked into one, two, three, or four "shadow" forms. As Anthony Stevens suggests, our archetypal wounding must be healed through archetypal healing. As Bradshaw and Anderson suggest, our abandonment feelings that are the result of archetypal wounding can be healed through mourning work.
As Bradshaw has intimated in his most recent book, Aristotle has supplied us with a detailed discussion of the kinds of inner strengths that can emerge in us as the result of mourning abandonment feelings, as Achilles does to a certain degree. Granted Achilles looks like he is nursing his resentment at being dishonored by Agamemnon. But I am suggesting that Achilles is undergoing a deep mourning process, mourning abandonment feelings. Perhaps Achilles should have accepted Agamemnon's repentance and offer of gifts of restitution. However, in Anderson's terminology, it may be the case that Achilles mourning work had not yet spontaneously lifted, because Odysseus delivers a very persuasive speech to Achilles urging him to accept Agamemnon's gifts of restitution.
Finally, I should mention that archetypal healing can also occur in another way through the live interaction of two individual persons. In The Psychology of the Transference, C. G. Jung describes how this can happen "as the result of the foregoing preliminary talk which, at a certain moment, sometimes long delayed, "touches' the unconscious and establishes the unconscious identity of doctor and patient" (standard paragraph number 376). Let me try to paraphrase this. Let's back up first and review. Archetypal wounding occurs when the child has projected an archetype onto an adult caregiver, and the adult caregiver somehow does something wrong, or perhaps fails to do something for the child. In any event, the result is archetypal wounding. But Jung is describing how what Anthony Stevens refers to as archetypal healing can occur. Jung speaks of the unconscious being touched as the result of the doctor's empathetic talk with the patient. From this empathetic talk then the unconscious establishes the unconscious identity of the doctor and the patient. In other words, the healthy form of the archetype re-emerges despite the archetypal wounding, and the re-emerging healthy form of the archetype establishes the unconscious identity of the doctor and the patient. This interaction puts the patient on track from this point onward to draw on the energies of the healthy form of the archetype in question, instead of one of the "shadow" forms. When talk therapy works in this way, talk therapy is efficacious and beautiful.
In his brief statement Jung describes as well as he can how this kind of transformative interaction between doctor and patient occurs, when it does occur. In his book I and Thou, Martin Buber considers in detail how this kind of transformative interaction may occur between two persons. Buber suggests that this kind of interaction between two persons is a win-win situation because each person benefits from the interaction and so "wins" in the sense of benefiting. In their book The Art of Intimacy, Thomas Patrick Malone, M.D., and Patrick Thomas Malone, M.D., a father-son team of psychiatrists, suggest that intimacy as they define it (i.e., Buber's I-thou interaction) is a wonderful experience for each person involved in the intimate exchange. No doubt it is. No doubt the Malones are right in urging people to strive for intimacy in certain important relationships. However, the Malones devote a great deal of effort to explaining how intimacy as they defined it is different from closeness. They say that closeness is not intimacy. Closeness does not yield the kind of win-win transformative benefits that they claim intimacy does yield. Even though the Malones clarify and explain intimacy as well as they can, and even though they make intimacy as they define it sound like a wonderful and desirable experience, I suspect that intimacy as they define it will not become a widespread experience anytime soon, just as I-thou interactions are not likely to become widespread anytime soon.
But why not? What about the human condition is holding us back from experiencing such win-win transformative interactions? In the case of the Malones' thinking, our tendency to settle for closeness evidently hampers our efforts to open ourselves to the deeper experience of intimacy as they define it. Experiences of closeness are fine and good as far as they go. However, in my estimate, the problem for most of us is that we do not know what we are missing, so it is hard for us to pursue intimacy as the Malones define it. In addition, there may be a limit within us that prevents us from being open to the kind of experience that the Malones refer to as intimacy, even in such privileged contexts as the doctor-patient relationship in psychotherapy that Jung describes. So Jung and Buber and the Malones have called our attention to optimally efficacious experiences. But many of us have not yet experienced such optimally efficacious experiences, because we are dominated by "shadow" forms of the archetypes.
For the immediate future, most of us should work on trying to resolve our archetypal wounding through mourning our abandonment feelings. Anderson has given us more detailed guidance about mourning our abandonment feelings than Bradshaw has.
Regarding bereavement, Freud long ago referred to mourning work. Indeed, mourning is work, regardless of whether we are experiencing bereavement or abandonment feelings. There is no doubt about that much. Jung told us that we should endure legitimate suffering. Mourning is legitimate suffering.
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