Thomas J. Farrell
University of Minnesota Duluth
Abstract: In the main body of my “Probe: John Bradshaw (1933-2016), Robert Moore (1942-2016, and American Liberals and Progressives Today,” I highlight (1) the life and work of the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist C. W. Jung (1875-1961); (2) the life and work of the American recovering alcoholic and self-help guru John Bradshaw, especially his profound book Healing the Shame That Binds You; (3) the work of the American Jungian psychotherapist and psychological theorist Robert Moore; and (4) the work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003). At the end of my essay, I discuss my conclusions with respect to American liberals and progressives today.
As I write today for the possible publication of this “Probe” essay in the Spring 2025 issue of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, American liberals and progressives have just recently listened to President Joe Biden’s sober nationally televised “Farewell Address” in which he praised our American experiment if representative democracy, did not mention Trump by name, and warned us about the tech oligarchy – a warning comparable to President Dwight Eisenhower’s waring in his “Farewell Address” about the military-industrial complex.
Now, American liberals and progressive are bracing ourselves for Trump’s second term as the president of the United States.
In the present essay, I have no new political advice to offer my fellow American liberals and progressive as to how to best prepare for the next four years with Trump once again the president of the United States.
Rather, the present essay is categorized under the category of life arts, as are many of my recent OEN articles. However, I do not offer the present essay as some kind of distraction from the real dangers of oligarchy that President Biden warned us about in his “Farewell Address.”
In my estimate, the American men today who contribute the most to the dangers that President Biden warned us about are conservative American men – in short, they are not American liberals and progressives.
Now, in the present essay, I address myself primarily to American liberal and progressive men as I write about what I refer to here as life arts.
Now, in a recent series of seven OEN articles, I have drawn extensively of the thought of the late Jungian psychotherapist and psychological theorist Robert Moore (1942-2016; Ph.D. in religion and psychology, University of Chicago, 1976) of the Chicago Theological Seminary about the eight archetypes of maturity and their sixteen accompanying “shadow” forms.
In my recent series of seven OEN articles in which I discussed Moore’s thought (between September 17, 2024, and January 10, 2025), I have also discussed his thought in connection with mom-son fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos on the internet and in DVDs:
(1) “Robert Moore on Optimal Human Psychological Development” (dated September 17, 2024).
(2) “Thomas J. Farrell’s Encore on Robert Moore” (dated October 10, 2024).
(3) “Texas’ War on Porn, and Robert Moore’s Theory of the Archetypes of Maturity” (dated December 6, 2024).
(4) “On Interpreting the Ubiquitous Mom-Son Porn on the Internet” (dated December 19, 2024).
(5) “Some Reflections on the Work of C. G. Jung and Walter J. Ong” (dated December 28. 2024).
(6) “Some Personal Reflections About Porn” (dated January 2, 2025).
(7) “Some Further Reflections about Cory Chase and about Donald Trump” (dated January 10, 2025).
(For links to each of my seven OEN articles, see the “References” at the end of the present essay.)
In the present essay, I address liberals and progressives. In my OEN articles. I assume that OEN readers are liberals and progressives – and that they are not misogynists. In general, I tend to see American conservatives as misogynists. As a result, I also see American conservatives as political opponents of porn. Conversely, I see liberals and progressives as potential defenders of porn in principle – based on the principle of freedom of speech. Of course, I understand certain liberals and progressives may be critics of certain forms of expressions in particular examples of porn.
I myself am not issuing a blanket approval in the present essay — or in any of my OEN articles — of all forms of porn that can be found on the internet. To avoid seeming to issue a blanket approval of all forms of porn that can be found on the internet, I have narrowed my focus in the present essay to discussing mom-son fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos on the internet and in DVDs.
Of course, I reserve the right to criticize and/or express certain reservations about certain other examples of porn on the internet – should I find reason to do so.
Now, in my most recent OEN article, “Some Further Reflections about Cory Chase and about Donald Trump” (dated January 10, 2025), I have suggested that the admirable pornstar Cory Chase’s various fantasy skits in her many, many mom-son porn videos may help her many male fans learn how to access the optimal and positive forms of the four feminine archetypes of maturity in their psyches:
(1) the Queen archetype of maturity in the human psyche;
(2) the feminine Warrior/Knight archetype of maturity in the human psyche;
(3) the feminine Magician/Shaman archetype of maturity in the human psyche;
(4) the feminine Lover archetype of maturity in the human psyche.
Now, for a non-Jungian psychological account of Trump, see the American psychiatrist Justin A. Frank’s 2018 book Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
Now, in Maureen Dowd’s column titled “Five Presidents and a Funeral” (dated January 11, 2025) in The New York Times, she aptly refers to Trump as “the emperor of Chaos” (her capitalization) – reminding us of what we can expect of him over the next four years in our American experiment if representative democracy.
Now, even though I have recently published OEN articles in which I have discussed mom-son fantasy skits in porn videos on the internet and in DVDs, I admit that porn is not widely discussed in other OEN articles – or in other articles generally, despite the extent of various forms of porn on the internet.
This lack of articles discussing porn on the internet may be due in part to prudery. However, this lack of articles discussing porn on the internet may also be due to the lack of quantitative information about the availability of porn on the internet.
When we turn our attention from possible quantitative information about porn on the internet to certain other possible ways to consider porn on the internet, we discover that there is no discussion of the positive influence of porn on the internet and in DVDs on our contemporary society. Of course, there are occasionally discussions of the alleged negative influence on minors. In general, American conservatives are against various forms of porn, and Trump’s second term as president of the United States may include unprecedented attempt to outlaw various forms of porn on the internet and in DVDs – despite the lack of substantial studies showing the supposed negative influence of porn. (Of course, there is also a lack of substantial studies showing the possible positive influence of porn.)
In any event, in the present essay, I am not going to discuss further the possible positive influence of the admirable Cory Chase’s mom-son fantasy skits further.
Rather, in the present essay, I want to discuss further Robert Moore’s theory of the eight archetypes of maturity in the human psyche and their sixteen accompanying “shadow” forms in connection with the deeply insightful work of the late American recovering alcoholic and self-help guru and bestselling author John Bradshaw (1933-2016) in his profound book Healing the Shame That Binds You.
In my OEN article “In Memoriam: John Bradshaw (1933-2016)” (dated May 10, 2016), I highlighted certain points of John Bradshaw’s work.
The New York Times ran the article “John Bradshaw, Self-Help Evangelist, Dies at 82” by William Grimes (dated May 12, 2016). In William Grimes’ NYT article, he says, among other things, “Mr. Bradshaw then came up with his own idea for a program based on his study of family-systems theory. ‘I went to Liz [Kaderli, a television producer for PBS] and said, “I want to do a series getting family systems material out there – looking at alcoholics, rage-aholics, incest, violent families, and helping people to see they are all about the child’s loss of emotions and about shame,”’ he told People [magazine].
“Only a few PBS stations picked up Bradshaw On: The Family, a 10part series. But when KQED in San Francisco broadcast it for 11 straight hours during a fund-raising drive, the station attracted more than $300,000 in pledges. The word spread, and stations all over the country ran the series. A book with the same title, published in 1986, became a bestseller, and Mr. Bradshaw was on his way.”
In addition, William Grimes says, “Mr. Bradshaw sold more than 12 million books. His many titles included Creating Love (1992). Based on a 10-part PBS series, and Family Secrets: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You (1995).
Now, in the present essay, I want to dwell on John Bradshaw’s most thought-provoking book Healing the Shame That Binds You, expanded and updated second edition (2005; orig. 1st ed., 1987). In the expanded and updated second edition, John Bradshaw devoted an early chapter to “The Healthy Faces of Shame (HDL Shame)” (pp. 5-19) and a chapter to “The Toxic Destructive Faces of Shame (LDL Shame”” (pp. 21-45). For John Bradshaw, this is a crucial distinction, because we need a healthy sense of shame.
In my estimate, Trump does not have a healthy sense of shame.
John Bradshaw revisits this crucial distinction in his ambitious book titled Reclaiming Virtue: How We Can Develop the Moral Intelligence to Do the Right Thing at the Right Time for the Right Reason (2009) – in the subsection titled “Two Kinds of Shame” (pp. 69-74).
Ah, but am I doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason by writing the present candid essay?
In any event, I reviewed John Bradshaw’s 2009 book Reclaiming Virtue in my widely read OEN article “John Bradshaw: A Sober Teacher for Our Troubled Times” (dated July 10, 2010).
Now, to spell out the obvious, in the title of John Bradshaw’s profound self-help book Healing the Shame That Binds You, he addresses his prospective audience as “You.” John Bradshaw’s “You” includes all human persons. All human persons have experienced early childhood traumatization – because in early childhood, all children are sensitive, resulting in early childhood traumatization.
All forms of early childhood traumatization “Bind” us, figuratively speaking, psychologically.
Now, in Robert Moore’s psychological theory of the eight archetypes of maturity and their accompanying sixteen “shadow” forms, each of the sixteen “shadow” forms “Binds” us psychologically, figuratively speaking.
Now, in the title of John Bradshaw’s self-help book, the term “Shame” calls to mind honor-shame cultures. But honor-shame cultures are contrasted with guilt cultures, such as the ancient Hebrew guilt culture represented in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Christian guilt culture represented in the New Testament. In out Western cultural history, the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey represent the ancient honor-shame culture in ancient Greek culture.
Now, in the Freudian psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson’s summative book titled The Life Cycle Completed (1982), we learn that he connects “Shame” with stage II of the eight stages of psycho-sexual growth that he describes, and “Guilt” with stage III (see esp. the chart on pp. 32-33).
I have written about Erik H. Erikson’s Freudian account of the eight stages of psycho-sexual development in connection with the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann’s Jungian account of the eight stages of consciousness in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness, translated by R. F. C. Hull (1954; orig. ed., 1949) in my essay “Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today” in the well-organized anthology Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s Thought, edited by Bruce E. Gronbeck, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Soukup (1991, pp. 194-209).
Ong famously differentiated secondary orality from primary orality. For Ong, the term secondary orality refers to the orality associated with the communications media that accentuate sound (such as television, telephone, radio, movies, videos, and DVDs with soundtracks, including of course mom-son porn videos and DVDs, tape-recording devices, and the like).
For Ong, primary orality refers to orally based thought and expression in all world cultures before the impact of phonetic alphabetic literacy in ancient Hebrew culture and ancient Greek culture in our Western cultural history. In short, Ong differentiated orally based thought and expression in primary oral cultures and in residual forms of primary oral cultures from our contemporary secondary oral culture today.
Ong succinctly delineates what he means by orally based thought and expression in his 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982, pp. 36-56).
I have discussed Ong’s account of orally based thought and expression extensively in my article “Walter Ong and Harold Bloom Can Help Us Understand the Hebrew Bible” in Explorations in Media Ecology (2012).
Yes, my favorite scholar, the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, succinctly summarizes in his 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (pp. 10-11) the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann delineates in his book The Origins and History of Consciousness:
“The stages of psychic development as treated by Neumann are successively (1) the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with its tail in its mouth, as well as by other circular or global mythological figures [including Nietzsche’s imagery about the eternal return?], (2) the Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again), (3) the separation of the world parents (the principle of opposites, differentiation, possibility of change, (4) the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of the personalized ego) with its sequels in (5) the slaying of the mother (fight with the dragon: victory over primal creative but consuming femininity, chthonic forces), and (6) the slaying of the father (symbol of thwarting obstruction of individual achievement, [thwarting] what is new), (7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous [i.e., “married” within one’s psyche] kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness), and finally (8) the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism [such as Nietzsche’s overman] – or, more properly, personalism – of modern man [sic]).”
Ong also sums up Neumann’s Jungian account of the stages of consciousness in his (Ong’s) book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (pp. 18-19; but also see the “Index” for further references to Neumann [p. 228]), the published version of Ong’s 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.
For Ong, the impact of phonetic alphabetic literacy in ancient Hebrew culture and in ancient Greek culture marked the movement of those two respective cultures in our Western cultural history into stage (4) of Neumann’s eight stages of consciousness: “the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of personalized ego [consciousness]).”
In other words, for Ong, primary oral cultures worldwide are associated with stages (1), (2), and (3) of Neumann’s eight stages of consciousness.
For Neumann, stage (2) of the eight stages of consciousness involves “The Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again).”
Ah, but when I suggest that the fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos and DVDs may evoke unconscious contents in the psyches of the male viewers, I am, in effect, suggesting that those fantasy skits may evoke unconscious contents involving stage (2) of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann delineates in his big book The Origins and History of Consciousness.
I hasten to say that I say “may evoke” here, because I do not want to suggest that viewing the fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos and DVDs will necessarily evoke unconscious contents in the psyches of all male viewers always and everywhere. Simply stated, I have no reason to suspect that this will always and everywhere happen to all male viewers.
Nevertheless, as an understandable precaution, I want to explain here that evoking unconscious contents in one’s psyche can be dangerous, because the unconscious contents might possibly overthrow one’s ego-consciousness, thereby producing a psychotic break.
But not all invasions of unconscious contents in the psyche always result in a psychotic break. For example, when we fall in love with someone, we are projecting something archetypal in our unconscious onto the loved one. As a result of our projecting something archetypal in our unconscious onto the loved one, we experience being mildly euphoric. The experience of being mildly euphoric may be more than a brief experience. In any event, the experience of being mildly euphoric for a time involves our engaging with the unconscious archetypal content in our psyche.
The same psychodynamic involved in falling in love with someone is also involved when we become a fan of someone, regardless of the context involved.
Now, certain male viewers of mom-son fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos on the internet and in DVDs may fall, in effect, in love with the woman playing the mom – with her alluring body and her seductive performance. In short, a given male viewer may fall in love with the pornstar playing the role of the mom and become a fan of hers and watch her various performances in several different her mom-son porn videos – perhaps even several in a row.
In real life, when we fall in love with another person, we usually expect that there will be ups and downs in our love relationship.
But when a male viewer falls in love with a woman playing the role of the mom, his falling in love with her involves his infatuation with a fantasy person – that is, with a real woman playing a fantasy role. The male fan’s infatuation with her is a real infatuation on his part with a real woman performer. But the entire context in which he became infatuated with her is a fantasy. So the male viewer’s experience of falling in love with the woman performer is a real infatuation on his part, but based on fantasy.
Now, such a smitten male fan of a certain woman performer may even exclaim aloud his approval of and his enthusiastic appreciation of her performance as he watches her perform in mom-son videos. By exclaiming his approval of and his enthusiastic appreciation of her performance aloud as he watches, he may help evoke unconscious contents in his psyche – unconscious contents connected in his psyche with the four feminine archetypes of maturity and their accompanying eight “shadow” forms.
But when a male viewer evokes unconscious contents in his psyche, he should be prepared to process and contain the unconscious contents that he has evoked in his psyche – and not just walk around feeling mildly euphoric as a result of evoking the unconscious contents in his psyche – perhaps by writing about the pornstar’s performance that evoked the unconscious contents, or perhaps by writing about the unconscious contents that her performance evoke in his psyche. However, as we will see momentarily, something more than just writing may be necessary for processing and containing unconscious contents.
Now, when the famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist C. G. Jung (1875-1961) engaged in his dangerous self-experimentation using what he came to refer to as active imagination, he understood that he was putting himself in danger of having unconsciousness contents in his psyche overthrow his ego-consciousness. Joan Chodorow has gathered together Jung’s various statements about active imagination in the book Jung on Active Imagination (1997).
To safeguard himself from having a psychotic break, Jung developed an elaborate way to process and thereby contain the unconscious contents that he had deliberately evoked in his consciousness. He first recorded in his Black Books his recollections of the unconscious contents that he had evoked. In addition, he further processed his recollections of the unconscious contents he had recorded in his Black Books by making additional works of art and drawings based on them – images — in his Red Book.
So Jung first wrote in words about the unconscious contents he had deliberately evoked in his psyche through the use of what he came to refer to as active imagination. However, Jung then further processed the unconscious contents that he had evoked and recorded in his Black Books by making works of art and drawings – images. So Jung basically used two steps of processing the unconscious contents that he had evoked through his use of what he came to refer to as active imagination: (1) processing in words; and (2) processing in images.
Now, I have taken a hint about images from Jung’s example and displayed three nude photos – that I bought online — of the admirable and busty Cory Chase (born in 1981; started in porn in 2011 at the age of 28) in my home office in the back bedroom of my home in Duluth, Minnesota. From the time when Cory Chase started in porn in 2011 today, she has been prolific in making various porn videos. However, I do not know exactly how many mom-son porn videos she has made over the years – I don’t even have a ballpark figure to offer you.
Yes, in my own judgment, I happened to evoke and experienced unconscious contents as a result of certain viewing experiences I have had in recent months, starting in early September 2024, but not just experiences of viewing the admirable Cory Chase – and not just experiences of viewing mom-son fantasy skits in porn videos on the internet and in DVDs.
Yes, a certain other actress in certain DVDs I watched since early September 2024 on the big-screen television in the living room of my home in Duluth, Minnesota, helped evoke unconscious contents in my psyche. You see, in late August 2024 and early September, I watched the DVD version of the 1970s Wonder Woman television series starring the busty young Lynda Carter (born in 1951) on the big-screen television in the living room of my home in Duluth, Minnesota.
See, for example, my OEN articles (1) “Young Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman” (dated September 3, 2024) and (2) “Thomas J. Farrell’s Encore on Young Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman” (dated September 3, 2024).
Yes, my real-life mom was busty. Yes, in the summers when I was a teenager growing up in Kansas City, Kansas, my mom typically wore only her panties and bra around the house – thereby showing off just how busty she was.
Now, as I watched the busty and beautiful young Lynda Carter perform in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume, I fell in love with her gloriously beautiful body – that is to say that the image of her gloriously beautiful body on the big-screen television in my living room evoked in me unconscious contents in my psyche. No doubt the busty young Lynda Carter evoked memories in my personal unconscious of my real-life busty mom. However, I am reasonably sure that the image of the busty young Lynda Carter’s gloriously beautiful body also evoked in me unconscious contents involving the feminine archetypes of maturity in the collective unconscious in my psyche as I became infatuated with the busty young Lynda Carter, fell in love with her, and became a fan of her.
Now, it does not follow from the example of my experience of falling in love with the busty young Lynda Carter that any other male viewers of the DVD version of the 1970s Wonder Woman television show would or will fall in love with her as a result of viewing her perform in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume in the show.
Yes, it could happen. But, no, there is no guarantee that it will happen.
The more important inference to make regarding other male viewers is that they might fall in love with certain actresses in other television shows they watch. When certain male viewers do fall in love with certain actresses, those male viewers are evoking unconscious contents in their psyches and projecting the unconscious archetypal contents from the collective unconscious in their psyches onto the actresses involved – the implication of which is that the male viewers who do this also need to process and contain the unconscious contents involved, just as Jung processed and contained the unconscious contents that he evoked in his psyche through his dangerous self-experimentation with what he came to refer to as active imagination.
Now, in 2009, W. W. Norton and Company published Jung’s Red Book: Liber Novus as an oversized art book edited by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani.
In 2020, W. W. Norton and Company published the seven-volume set of Jung’s Black Books: 1913-1932: Notebooks of Transformation, edited by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Martin Liebscher, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani.
Now, I should point out here that Neumann also published another big book titled The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, translated by Ralph Manheim (1955).
Now, in my 1991 essay “Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today,” I explicitly refer to the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann’s account of the eight stages of consciousness in his big book The Origins and History of Consciousness (1954) and to the Freudian psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson’s account of the eight stages of psycho-sexual development in his book The Life Cycle Completed: A Review (1982).
However, in my 1991 essay “Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today,” I do not explicitly refer to Erich Neumann’s other big book, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype – or to the Jungian psychoanalyst Edward C. Whitmont’s 1982 book The Return of the Goddess, by which he means the return of the feminine realm in the human psyche to interacting with the ego-consciousness of certain persons in our contemporary secondary oral culture today.
Now, in my 1991 essay “Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today,” I suggest the Erik H. Erikson eight stages of psycho-sexual development and Erich Neumann’s eight stages of consciousness are equivalent with one another. Thus, Erikson’s stage II in the eight stages of psycho-sexual development is the equivalent of Neumann’s stage (2) in the eight stages of consciousness. In addition, Erikson’s stage III in the eight stages of psycho-sexual development is the equivalent of Neumann’s stage (3) in consciousness.
Let me now be more specific about what exactly I am claiming here. Erikson describes stage II in the eight stages of psycho-sexual development as involving the crisis of Autonomy versus Shame, Doubt, with the core pathology of the Basic Antipathy of Compulsion (p. 32) – which I associate with the historical emergence of honor-shame culture in our Western cultural history. Shame calls to mind the title of Bradshaw’s profound book Healing the Shame That Binds You – and the notion of the core pathology of compulsion calls to minds Bradshaw’s wording about being bound by something in our psyches. Erikson sees the successful resolution of the psychosocial crisis of stage II of the eight stages of psycho-sexual development as involving the development of the psychological strength of Will (p. 32).
Erikson describes stage III in the eight stages of psycho-sexual development as involving the crisis of Initiative versus Guilt, with the core pathology of the Basic Antipathy of Inhibition – which I associate with the emergence of guilt culture in our Western cultural history, perhaps most notably in ancient Hebrew culture. Erikson sees the successful resolution of the psycho-social crisis of stage III of the eight stages of psycho-sexual development as involving the development of the psychological strength of Purpose (p. 32).
Next, I want to briefly discuss here Erikson’s account of stage I of the eight stages of psycho-sexual development – because I see stage I as crucial when it comes to Healing the Shame That Binds You (as John Bradshaw puts it in the title of his profound book). Erikson sees the psycho-social crisis of stage I as involving Basic Trust versus Basic Mistrust. He sees the successful resolution of the psycho-social crisis of stage I as resulting in the development of the psychological strength of Hope (p. 32).
Now, in Neumann’s account of the eight stages of consciousness, he sees stage (1) as represented by “the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tale-eater), the serpent with its tail in its mouth, as well as by other circular or global mythological figures” (in Ong’s wording, quoted above).
As I have already indicated above, I see Erikson’s eight stages of psycho-sexual development as essentially equivalent to Neumann’s eight stages of consciousness. So I see Erikson’s stage I as the equivalent of Neumann’s stage (1).
But I have also indicated above that I see the final successful experience of Healing the Shame That Binds You as involving revisiting the psychodynamic of Erikson’s stage I and of Neumann’s stage (1). So when male fans of a certain pornstar who plays the role of the mom in mom-son porn videos, such as the admirable Cory Chase, evokes unconscious contents in their psyches, those male fans need to revisit in their psyches and, in effect, re-live and re-experience “the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with its tail in its mouth” (in Ong’s wording, quoted above). If certain male viewers thereby heal the shame that binds them, good for them!
So when I suggest that viewing of mom-son porn videos on the internet and in DVDs may evoke unconscious contents in the psyches of the male viewers, I am, in effect, also suggesting that the unconscious contents evoked in their psyches may bring to the surface of their psyches either, or possibly both, the core pathology of Compulsion of “the Shame That Binds You” in Bradshaw’s words – and/or the core pathology of Inhibition by “The Shame That Binds You” in Bradshaw’s words in the title of his profound book Healing the Shame that Binds You. In addition, I am suggesting the unconscious contents evoked in their psyches may bring to the surface the possibility of revisiting Erikson’s stage I and the profound level of Neumann’s stage (1).
Now, for Jungians such as Robert Moore, memories of honor-shame cultures involve the collective unconscious in our psyches – the realm of the eight archetypes of maturity and their sixteen accompanying “shadow” forms.
Now, in the title of John Bradshaw’s profound self-help book, Healing the Shame That Binds You, the blanket term “Healing” covers an extensive process of deep psychological healing – not just the healing of one “shadow” form, but the healing of all the “shadow” forms that “Bind” us.
Ah, but exactly how are we healed of each “shadow” form that “Binds” us?
For all practical purposes, each of John Bradshaw’s self-help books is dedicated to delineating certain ways in which we can be healed of the “Shame That Binds” us.
Now, Robert Moore co-authored with Douglas Gillette the following five books about the four masculine archetypes of maturity and their accompanying eight “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; 1st 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).
Yes, the five books co-authored by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette can also be categorized as self-help books. In each of their five co-authored books, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette provide explanations of Robert Moore’s elaborate theory of the four masculine archetypes on maturity in the human psyche and their eight accompanying “shadow” forms. However, unlike John Bradshaw’s various self-help books, their five books do not provide exercises for the readers to try on their own in order to try to access any of the four masculine archetypes of maturity. But I hasten to add here that I am not sure that I can provide any such exercises either.
Suffice it to say here that the healing of each “shadow” form of each of the four masculine archetypes on maturity in the human psyche, and the healing of the “shadow” forms of the four feminine archetypes of maturity in the human psyche, involves what John Bradshaw refers to as Healing the Shame That Binds You.
In conclusion, Trump and his millions of male supporters are misogynists. Consequently, they are not interested in learning how to access the four feminine archetypes of maturity in their psyches. Moreover, it strikes me as reasonable to say that Trump and his millions of male supporters are not likely interested in learning how to access the four masculine archetypes of maturity in their psyches. Therefore, it is up to American liberal and progressive men and women today to learn how to access the optimal and positive forms of the eight archetypes of maturity in their psyches – and to do this, American liberal and progressive men and women today must first learn how to heal the shame that binds them in their psyches to the sixteen “shadow” forms of the eight archetypes of maturity.
References
Bradshaw, J. (2005). Healing the shame that binds you, expanded and updated second edition. Health Communications. (Original work published 1987)
Bradshaw, J. (2009). Reclaiming virtue: How we can develop the moral intelligence to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. Bantam Books.
Dowd, M. (2025, January 11). Five presidents and a funeral. The New York Times URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/opinion/five-presidents-and-a-funeral.html
Erikson, E. H. (1982). The life cycle completed: A review. W. W. Norton and Company.
Farrell, T. J. (1991). Secondary orality and consciousness today. Media, consciousness, and culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s thought (pp. 194-209; B. E. Gronbeck, T. J. Farrell, and P. A. Soukup, Eds.). Sage Publishing.
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