Boy Psychology – Jungian Theory continued…

'Boys pretending to be men' got that way because nobody showed them what a mature man is like. They go undetected because their controlling, threatening and hostile behaviours are misconstrued as manly strength. In reality they are displaying the underlying vulnerability of the wounded boy; fixated at an immature level of development. (The wife beater, the crabby boss, the ridiculing coach, the absent father, the damning therapist, the gang member, the unfaithful husband, the drug dealer, the ‘holier-than-thou’ pastor, the weaving political leader, etc)

We often admire, with affection, a boyish nature in our culture; in truth that is the boy in every man; playful, fun-loving, energetic, open-minded, ready-for-adventure. But alas, there is another kind of boyishness that remains infantile in our interactions within us and with others; when actually real manhood is required.

When they are allowed to rule what should be adulthood, without having properly built upon their boyhood archetypes, these pretenders act out the bad boyishness.
The four bi-polar archetypes of Boyhood are supposed to evolve into the bi-polar archetypes of Manhood:

The Divine Child (high-chair tyrant and weakling prince) should become the King (tyrant and weakling)
The Precocious Child (know-it-all trickster and dummy) should become the Magician (detached manipulator and denying ‘innocent’ one)
The Oedipal Child (mama’s boy and dreamer) should become the Lover (addicted lover and impotent lover)
The Hero (grandstanding bully and coward) becomes the Warrior (sadist and masochist)

The theory for the boy is as follows:

The Divine Child gives rise to the Oedipal Child and together they form the nucleus of whatever will be beautiful, energetic, related, warm, caring and spiritual in the man.
The boy’s Ego needs the Precocious Child’s perceptiveness to help it distinguish itself from the aforesaid energies, as all three Children birth the Hero, which breaks the Boy free from the ‘feminine’ unconsciousness and establishes the boy’s identity as a separate individual. The Hero prepares the boy to become a man.

The archetypes remain hidden, but their effects are experienced in our human creativity, human interactions, and patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings; as they overlap and interpenetrate one another. Through active imagination they can be remixed to realize a desired balance among their influences in our lives.

The thinking is this that the bi-polar attributes of each archetype become separated and on certain plains of each score only one part is carried and mixed through to manhood, dominating and nourishing an infantile state.

Which manifests as boys pretending to be men…? (I reckon age becomes irrelevant as to when we access and uncover these underlying archetypes)

Everything must change, nothing stays the same – let’s change for good, what have we got to lose???