In the process of composing my paper for the upcoming Dream Meetup Group class I was reminded of the nature of the archetypes in the our everyday lives. Having been brought up without the benefits of the aegis of a father I always felt that lack of guidance had a profound influence on my behavior in early adulthood. Specifically the three failed marriages between the ages of 19 and 42. I've used that theory often in discussions of why I could not 'stay married' to three wonderful women. A lack of a father figure in a boy's life is definitely a factor in the child's evolution. That's common sense. But what I had not considered as a substantial influence was the archetypal father, Jung's hypothesis of the innate 'parent' as a 'programme for life'. In reading Anthony Stevens' Jung: A Very short Introduction' he wrote this in explaining the archetypal father:

The boy whose father was not ‘good enough’ {in my case, not there} may fail to actualize his masculinity potential, or he may be unable to sustain a relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

In considering Jung's theory as factual, as I do, along with the biological 'law of contiguity' influences, I can see now why I had such a propensity to 'run away' from my marriages. It doesn't reconcile the hurt and harm I caused but does help give expression to those unconscious forces that lent themselves to my lack of maturation. If society were more aware of the 'two sets of parents' that support our being {biological and archetypal} then perhaps we would be better able to accommodate the inadequacies of parental support in early life, when a 'parent is not good enough'.

Jerry

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