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savannahhayes's review
3.0
Good read if you want your brain to hurt for a while. But also gives you a great great tool and new perspective to carry with you into everyday life. Would give it higher stars if I re-read it while taking notes and trying to understand the philosophy more. It says its about the archetypes of a man, but I truly found that you could apply these archetypes to any gender
johntra44's review
3.0
This book is a proposed solution to the masculine problem of initiation (and it is a problem). Men, before in a modernized world where they lived in tribes, lived their life having initiation to pass from boyhood to manhood; and this was mostly beatings and tests, some includes the solitary abandonment in a forest that he had to endure while ants were "eating" him. Compare that to the modern world, men now live their life mostly without initiation. Yes, some may have lived through initiation, like a military or maybe the local gangs of a city, but it is not mature masculinity (in the sense that you're becoming more humbler, not destructive, both to yourself and others, life-generating, etc.)
In seeing the prevalent lack of initiation to real maturity, these authors turn to Jungian psychology, and that's exactly what's this book about: a manual to regain mature masculinity through changing how to see our psyche (the mind).
One crucial thing to understand these four archetypes is to know what archetypes mean. Archetypes are the patterns of our unconscious (imagine your psyche is comprised of two hierarchical levels, the conscious at the top and the unconscious at the bottom). These archetypes, because they are patterns, are evident in our behaviors. For example:
You can say that when you read a poem, like Pale Fire poem,
(I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;)
you immediately picture a bird (and you as the bird) and how the bird dies after flying to a sky, not knowing that there's a glass separating you from the outer world. This, Jungians would call, the Lover archetype. You feel you can picture the words that you read and live as if you're a waxwing bird. And this is only one mature masculine archetype. There are others that really fundamental to be said, but I leave that for you to read.
In the end, the book is useful to our journey for mature masculinity. Whether you believe Jungian psychology is true I leave it to you, but one system's usefulness is another matter from its truth. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette has shown a way from an impasse one strain of psychology can offer.
In seeing the prevalent lack of initiation to real maturity, these authors turn to Jungian psychology, and that's exactly what's this book about: a manual to regain mature masculinity through changing how to see our psyche (the mind).
One crucial thing to understand these four archetypes is to know what archetypes mean. Archetypes are the patterns of our unconscious (imagine your psyche is comprised of two hierarchical levels, the conscious at the top and the unconscious at the bottom). These archetypes, because they are patterns, are evident in our behaviors. For example:
You can say that when you read a poem, like Pale Fire poem,
(I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;)
you immediately picture a bird (and you as the bird) and how the bird dies after flying to a sky, not knowing that there's a glass separating you from the outer world. This, Jungians would call, the Lover archetype. You feel you can picture the words that you read and live as if you're a waxwing bird. And this is only one mature masculine archetype. There are others that really fundamental to be said, but I leave that for you to read.
In the end, the book is useful to our journey for mature masculinity. Whether you believe Jungian psychology is true I leave it to you, but one system's usefulness is another matter from its truth. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette has shown a way from an impasse one strain of psychology can offer.
ben_smitty's review
3.0
A more via media corrective for those who lack healthy male role models in their lives. May be helpful to read for those who are disillusioned by John Wayne republican evangelicalism because they read Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne or Beth Allison Barr etc. Moore is at his best when he pulls from a variety of myths, poems, and fairy tales to illustrate how each archetype is reiterated throughout history, making up a sort of collective unconscious that coincides with Jung's project (and more emphatically in Joseph Campbell's works).
Moore is sometimes a bit over the top with his claims though, and it's really off-putting: "It is because of [the Egyptians'] discovery of the warrior within themselves that Egyptian morality and ethics, as well as such fundamental religious ideas as judgment after death and a paradise beyond the grave in which righteous souls would become one with God, became a part of our own Western system of ethics and spirituality." Lolwut? You believe in a collective resurrection? Thank the male Egyptians with extra testosterone for that idea.
Moore is sometimes a bit over the top with his claims though, and it's really off-putting: "It is because of [the Egyptians'] discovery of the warrior within themselves that Egyptian morality and ethics, as well as such fundamental religious ideas as judgment after death and a paradise beyond the grave in which righteous souls would become one with God, became a part of our own Western system of ethics and spirituality." Lolwut? You believe in a collective resurrection? Thank the male Egyptians with extra testosterone for that idea.
bookofkells's review
3.0
Liked the premise a lot but felt it wasn’t taken as far as it could be...and that it was a bit outdated. Still decent though.