“Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources: our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong – otherwise one will never become strong.”
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
In this series we have been exploring how to escape “boy psychology” and attain the benefits of manhood. In the first video, we argued that the greatest danger to manhood is psychological regression. In the second, we put forth images of manhood which cross-culturally are used as antidotes to regression – as stimulants which encourage males to outgrow their escapist wishes and to cultivate the virtues of the heroic man.
In this video we are going to feature another antidote to psychological regression, this time in mythological form. Specifically, we are going to investigate a recurrent theme in hero myths across the world – that being, the hero’s fight with the dragon. As we will demonstrate, the dragon in hero myths is symbolic of psychological regression, and the slaying of it symbolizes the process of overcoming the regressive forces of our mind. Analyzing the fight with the dragon can prove fruitful in our quest to attain manhood, for as Jung never tired of repeating, mythological symbols express psychological truths, and when life is at a standstill, it is sometimes symbols alone which point the way to rebirth and transformation:
“…the symbol is of course not an external truth, but it is psychologically true…symbols act as transformers, their function being to convert libido [psychological energy] from a “lower” into a “higher” form. This function is so important that feeling accords it the highest values. The symbol works by suggestion; that is to say, it carries conviction and at the same time expresses the content of that conviction.”
Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
To appreciate the symbolic importance of the hero’s fight with the dragon, it will be useful to look at the role that aggression plays in the healthy development of a human life.
Early in life an infant is totally dependent on the mother. This dependence is normal and natural; for unlike other animals, a newborn human’s brain is undeveloped to a degree that renders it helpless. It is not until after a year or so of extrauterine development that the child is able to begin separating, both physically and psychologically, from the mother. This progressive movement away from the mother is fostered by the child’s aggressiveness – by its innate instinct to assert itself.
“It is in the best interests of a child to allow its aggression a free reign whenever possible. It will use its aggression in furtherance of his pleasure striving and not with intent to injure another person. It will have more pleasure and, as a result, become a more independent and creative adult. If, however, its aggression is blocked, it will become violent. It will fight to restore its freedom of action. Since violence is even more forbidden than aggression, the child is left with no alternative but to become passive and submissive.”
Alexander Lowen, The Voice of the Body
Given the importance of aggression, a child requires parents who encourage his aggressive drive towards independence. Unfortunately, even in the best of cases a child’s aggression is not always supported; especially today, it is more often punished or discouraged. When punished, a child develops a fear of asserting himself and so he will not feel impelled to forge a stable identity nor explore his environment. Rather, he will retreat from the world into his fantasies and dreams, and archetypal images will be activated from his collective unconscious – that ancient part of the psyche, common to us all, which Jung posited to the container of “all the images that have ever given rise to myths.” (Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious) Or as he further wrote:
That such [collective] contents exist in the child…is a well-attested fact. The most important evidence in this respect is the dreams of three-and four-year-old children, among which there are some so strikingly mythological and so fraught with meaning that one would take them at once for the dreams of grown-ups, did one not know who the dreamer was…from [the collective unconscious] also spring those flashes of insight and lucidity which give rise to the proverb: Children and fools speak the truth.
Carl Jung, The Development of the Personality
If the child’s aggressive drive to independence is inhibited by punishment from the father, the archetypal images activated in the child’s mind may be of giant-like authoritarian fathers – of a Chronus-like figure who, in fear of being overthrown by one of his children, devours them all. In our age of the absent father, however, it is more likely the child’s aggressive drive to independence will be inhibited by the mother, not with punishment but with her own anxieties and need for love. When the mother’s insecurities prove to be the fetters which cripple the child, the mother becomes a devouring mother, and in response, archetypal images of the Terrible Feminine emerge from the child’s unconscious.
The images of the Terrible Feminine arising in the mind of a child with a devouring mother are akin to the images which have been expressed in countless myths and fairy tales throughout time and across the world. One of the more well-known images of the Terrible Feminine is that of the witch of Hansel and Gretel, who lures children into her house of cake and sugar and then proceeds to eat them. In Hindu mythology, the demon goddess Kali – another form of the Terrible Feminine – humiliates and decapitates her male consorts. In the West, the serpent or dragon is the most recurrent, and powerful, image of the Terrible Feminine. The relation of the serpent to the feminine has a long history in the psyche of mankind. For on the one hand, the serpent represents the potentially poisonous side of the feminine, epitomized in the example of Medusa, who turns any man who looks at her into stone – paralyzing them when they should be moving forward. But the serpent is also symbolic of the feminine’s mysterious and seductive appeal. And it is this twofold symbolic significance which renders the serpent an apt symbol for psychological regression. For just like the serpentine Terrible Feminine, our regressive tendencies hold us fast because they are simultaneously seductive and terrifying. When we remain in the psychological womb of the mother, become submissive and dependent in a relationship with another woman, lost in apathy or in an addiction to alcohol, drugs, or the inexhaustible supply of pornographic feminine forms, there is a pleasure we derive from our self-crippling. In all these cases we are in the grip of the Terrible Feminine – psychological regression has seized hold of our soul. As Erich Neumann, a student of Jung’s, wrote:
“In this sense, the Terrible Feminine becomes the antithesis of the ascending energy of ego-development; it becomes the symbol of stagnation, regression, and death. But this death that the dragon symbol of the Terrible Feminine signifies archetypally is not only something passive; rather, as something devouring, it is also an enticing, seductive force sucking one downward… The danger that issues from…the Terrible Feminine, corresponds to the regressive drive “backward” of wishing to let go, to fall, and actively to hurl oneself into the abyss. This danger is the basis of what Freud attempted to interpret as the death instinct.”
Erich Neumann, The Fear of the Feminine
Given that psychological regression is rooted in a desire to withdraw from life and find comfort in a pleasurable cocoon of dependency, to overcome regression we need to activate our aggressive potential. “Just as a child could not possibly grow up into an independent adult if it were not aggressive, so an adult must needs continue to express at least part of his aggressive potential if he is to maintain his own autonomy.” (Anthony Storr, On Aggression) To activate our aggression we can make changes in our lifestyle that increase our levels of testosterone, such as adopting a weightlifting routine or changing our diet. For to overcome psychological regression we need all the aggression we can get – we need to become akin to the mythological hero who embodies an excess of aggression, and thus the power to destroy the dragon causing chaos in his world.
The hero’s fight with the dragon follows a recurrent pattern in myths across the world. Firstly, the hero descends into a dark cavern, symbolizing the unconscious – the abode of the dragon of regression. There, the hero engages in a long struggle with the dragon, and in many myths, is even devoured by it. Eventually, the hero manages to free himself from the belly of the beast and thereafter slays the dragon, and in so doing, he wins for himself two great boons. Firstly, he releases a beautiful virgin held captive by the dragon, weds her, and founds a kingdom. This releasing of the virgin and the hero’s union with her represents a change in the hero’s relation to the feminine. For in slaying the dragon of regression the hero becomes, for the first time, capable of entering a mature and healthy relationship with another woman.
“What the hero kills is only the terrible side of the female, and this he does in order to set free the fruitful and joyous side with which she joins herself to him.”
Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness
Secondly, in slaying the dragon the hero is awarded what Jung called “the treasure hard to attain” – that ultimate boon more valuable than gold – psychological rebirth and renewal.
“The treasure which the hero fetches from the dark cavern is life: it is himself, new-born from the dark maternal cave of the unconscious where he was stranded by the introversion or regression of [his energy].”
Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
Battling the dragon of regression requires patience and persistence, as for some of us, regression is rooted so deeply in our psyche that it functions like the many-headed serpent Hydra which Hercules fought; in cutting the head off one manifestation of our regressive tendencies, two more may spring in its place. Given the difficulty of this fight, there will be days where the forces of regression pull us back, and when this occurs, we need to re-activate our aggressive potential, and continue on with the fight. For the psychological treasures attained from freeing ourselves from our regressive tendencies are well worth the struggle. In facing, and defeating, the dragon of regression, we will have overcome what cross-culturally is considered the greatest danger to man, and thus cultivated a self-trust that is not easily broken. As Jung wrote:
“…only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the “treasure hard to attain”. He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives some faith and trust, the pistis in the ability of the self to sustain him, for everything that menaced him from inside he has made his own. He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means. He has arrived at an inner certainty which makes him capable of self-reliance.”
Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis