On archetypal shadow systems

posted by Eivind on February 22, 2011, at 10:43 pm

I have been paying some attention to what’s going on in North Africa these days. First Mubarak and now Gadhafi. Gadhafi is insane to the point of going to war with his own people. Now, clearly these are King archetypes on the active side of the shadow system. We know them as Tyrants.

I have been thinking lately about how most Western men seem to be more prone to passive shadow expressions. We collapse into the Weakling King, the Masochist Warrior, the Innocent Magician, and the Impotent Lover. The number of Tyrants in the West is miniscule compared to the number of Weaklings, especially in the younger generations.

These thoughts combined with my reflections on Gadhafi today made me wonder if there is a connection between the dominant gender and men’s shadow configurations. My claim is that women are the dominant gender in the West today. Most of society is defined relative to a woman’s and not a man’s perspective. Mothers, in general, exert much more influence on men than do their fathers. So the men collapse into the passive shadow expressions.

In societies where fathers are the most dominant, however, I think that men are  more likely to express active shadow expressions. Clearly, Libya and Egypt are such socities.

This is a thought which is new to me and it may benefit from being somewhat “refined”. What do you guys think?