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Mother Archetype III – Don Juanism

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In this post we’ll talk more about the specific effects of dysfunctional mother bond that Jung observed in adult men.

He dubbed the first and most visible effect of failed separation Don Juanism. Or what we call Shiny Object Syndrome – jumping from one woman to the other in unconscious search of mother. Being torn between love life and emotional ties to mother, sense of guilt and betrayal, failure to build deep emotional bonds with partner, even madness-like behavior in relationships are some of characteristics of this type. Needless to say, such life abounds problems in sexual life, relationships, especially, in marriages.  

Infantile Romantic, Revolutionary Spirit

Interestingly, the whole career path of such men, as bright as it seems, would just be an infantile wish to make mother happy. Boy, is this type quite successful in professional territory. But such success often comes at a high cost. As successful professionals they concentrate on developing manly side and the persona they put outside. Continuously repressing emotional side, they leave that part underdeveloped. Shall I say, they carry kind of little miserable, deranged woman inside that squeaks through the mouth of that strong man when tempers are lost in a hot debate? Apparently, the longer this state continues, the wider the cleavage becomes between the image a man puts on the outside and emotional dilemmas that boggle him inside.

Mother Complex, on the other hand, manifests as bold and resolute manliness; ambitious striving after the highest goals; opposition to all stupidity, narrow-mindedness, willingness to make sacrifices for what is regarded as right – kind of infantile romanticism. They are revolutionary spirits which strive to put a new face on the old, tired world.

Sincerely, this description scares me when I think of heroes of all times. While we saw them as heroes, they were battling (albeit, outside) the devouring bonds of infantile attachments inside. Anyway, there is a good news for those struggling with this problem. It is natural and in fact, destined to happen and be resolved. The younger years it happens, the healthier. Just like our body learns to drag along with limp foot or broken arm, our psyche learns to drag on with misplaced attachment too. But it comes at the cost of personal life. It is about cutting off that energy from that infantile attachment to direct upwards. Tip: here a big role is played by the partner, on whom another archetype – Anima gets projected! Next post about men who at the other end of the curve.

Read previous posts of the series:
Mother Archetype I
Mother Archetype II – Son Lover of the Mother Goddess
Mother Archetype IV – Homosexuality and Impotence
Mother Archetype V – Exaggerated Maternal Instinct
Mother Archetype VI – Home-wrecker with a mission
Mother Archetype VII – Daughter in Shadow
Mother Archetype VIII – Mom Hater
Mother Archetype IX – Part Human, Part Supernatural
Mother Archetype X – Motherland
Mother Archetype XI – Teenage Crisis – Libido
Mother Archetype XII – Incest: Problem or Solution?

The Mother Archetype I – The Great Mother

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The series of the Mother Archetype was published on social media first, namely, at my Instagram and facebook accounts where I post more frequently. Now, with few edits, I am publishing it here too. I’ll keep the number and lengths of the posts about the same. Let’s begin!

Tabula Rasa?

For a long time, scholars kept debating whether we are born as white papers (I mean our brains). Then some smart people started to suspect that our brain is capable of creating its own reality. Long debates of rhetoric revolved around the topic. Then psychoanalysts came along and took a more pragmatic position based on, let’s say, the data they collected from patients, or putting it less fancy, they summed up repetitive cases they have observed in their patients. One of them was Carl Gustav Jung, who suggested that when we are born, our body doesn’t have an animal shape. We do not look like clouds either. We have a definite shape that long history has formed. How come, this same thing didn’t happen inside our head? The same formation process must have taken place there too. He dedicated his whole life to the study of the structure of our psyche and reached some conclusions.

The Archetypes

According to his conclusions, our psyche has a structure – randomly organized crystal-form like boxes, or honeycomb. These boxes hold information based on feelings and feeling-toned thoughts. So, attention to the feeling toned thoughts or clouds of associated thoughts, which means they do not function the way we do in our waking life – no reason and no logic in there. He called them Archetypes. They are the ones that produce cryptic symbols, or primordial images as he sometimes called (this reminds me of the movie Da Vinci code). He even went further to say that we actually live in there and project everything to the outer world. Actually, these crystal form structures are powerful sources of energy. Apparently, one of these Archetypes is the Great Mother.

The Great Mother

Did we say that the feeling association is what keeps the information together inside those boxes? Anything that is associated with Containing, Nourishing and Safe Nest (keywords) activates the primordial image of Mother and we automatically project the Mother Archetype on that object. Now, the first object this archetype gets projected on is obviously actual Mother. Along the years as we grow up, get old and move towards the inevitable destination – the death, the projected objects of this Archetype change too.

Also read: The Unconscious – The Great Mother

Yet, I’d like to make an important projection that is ever present regardless which period of life we are at. The totality of psyche (or the unconscious) is like home (nest) to our rational mind that we’ve developed in the later years of evolution. So the psyche is like “mother” to this “new kid”. In times when our conscious ego faces difficulties in physical life (or the outer world), it craves to turn back home, to the unconscious depth, from where it “was born”. Do we repeat the same pattern in life? Yes, when we face hardships in life, we crave to go back to the carefree childhood or return to cozy home. Oops, we just did very common projection.

A recent claim of neuroscientist David Eaglemann that there is no smell, no sound and no color around us, we live in a pseudo reality translated to us by a skull-bound three pounds jelly matter called brain gave more scientific support to Jung’s suggestions.

I’ll stop here before going off-topic. We’ll talk about the Mother Archetype and its influence on sons in the following post.

Read other posts of the series:
Mother Archetype II – Son Lover of the Mother Goddess
Mother Archetype III – Don Juanism
Mother Archetype IV – Homosexuality and Impotence
Mother Archetype V – Exaggerated Maternal Instinct
Mother Archetype VI – Home-wrecker with a mission
Mother Archetype VII – Daughter in Shadow
Mother Archetype VIII – Mom Hater
Mother Archetype IX – Part Human, Part Supernatural
other Archetype X – Motherland
Mother Archetype XI – Teenage Crisis – Libido
Mother Archetype XII – Incest: Problem or Solution?

Photo: Pixabay.com, Gerd Altmann