Every single social issue in our culture today can be traced back to uninformed, abusive, or absent parenting. The science of Jungian psychology and the Four-Sides Dynamics offer a fresh perspective on many disciplines within our life. It reshapes how we approach our careers, relationships, and hobbies. It also offers us guidance and a plan to live out our potential. And yet, these aren’t even the most valuable things it has to give.
The most valuable thing that a thorough understanding of Jungian psychology offers is a measure of control over our futures. Both our personal and collective futures. It gives us access to a deep understanding of ourselves, and offers strategies to choose those who will be closest to us. It is with these decisions that future generations will be affected for eons to come.
Our ability to comprehend who we are and to understand others directly shapes how we treat the children of these future generations. It is with them that the fate of the world hangs. The discipline of Jungian Parenting displays its remarkable value here, demonstrating what a child needs to become someone who we can all entrust the fate of the world to.
Jungian Parenting shows us that, through the decisions we make today, we can have a say in how well families can stay families, and how well men and women can step into maturity and integrity to build better lives for themselves and others. But, maturity and integrity require a willingness to learn — in some cases re-learn, and often unlearn — the way the world is.
This willingness to learn begins with us paying attention. When we pay attention, we realize that there is a problem. What is this problem? Nothing short of an epidemic of brokenness, ignorance, and immaturity as a result of the problems in parenting.
At CSJ, Chase has explicitly said on multiple occasions that his primary motivation in building his company was for ONE thing: to bring an end to fatherlessness. This topic of Jungian Parenting is the most direct way we have ever gotten yet to solving this issue to date.
So, if you are interested in healing, being able to help foster the next generation, and beginning to repair the fragments of a society long cast into isolation and pain, then stay tuned — all hope has not been lost.
Jungian Parenting Can Save The World
Parenting Is Everyone’s Responsibility
The first order of business toward repairing society is destroying the commonly held belief that the responsibility for parenting belongs exclusively to the hands of the biological parents. The saying “it takes a village to raise a child” isn’t just a fun little saying. It’s the literal truth; and it’s the way Jungian Parenting ought to be.
Why is parenting all our responsibility? First, children need exposure to more than two of the sixteen archetypes. A child’s budding psyche is meant to be shaped by the entire spectrum of human cognition — not a small slice.
Secondly, the role of parenting belongs collectively to both the mature masculine and feminine. It is beyond the reach of just one man and one woman to display the entirety of archetypal maturity. A child should be getting access to the full range of expressions that mature men and mature women have to offer.
A child needs more.
Parenting is also all our responsibility because life is unpredictable. Fathers die. Mothers die. Divorces occur. Trauma scars. And, at the very end of the day, two people alone cannot meet the demands of life and fulfill every psychological need a child has.
In short, parenting is all our responsibility because, while parenting represents the source of most problems in society, it is also the solution to those very problems. Proper, informed parenting is the key to the higher path of joy and wellbeing. The discipline of parenting will dictate our future as a human race — for good or ill. Wouldn’t it be great to know how to do it right?
The Beginning
We all know how that begins. When a mommy and a daddy love each other VERY much, a child is born.
But, despite the best intentions, the dreams mom and dad had for a happy family didn’t materialize the way they imagined.
Friction builds in the home as mom and dad grow apart. Were they even compatible to begin with? Do they value the same things anymore? Maybe dad loses his job. Is he in a career even suited for him? Or mom becomes depressed. Is she still growing, or has she fallen asleep to her own nature? Perhaps dad becomes absent. Is he finding a second wind with another woman, or burying his pain at the bar? Maybe mom spirals into a neurotic state as the children can’t stand being in the house anymore. Are their needs being met in the home
Sadly, this story of fragmentation in the home has grown only more common with time as conflicts between men and women in relationships have heightened substantially. This problem could be laid at the feet of many things, but type incompatibility and archetypal immaturity are among them.
Yet, some of us feel we had better experiences with our family than others. Some of our parents were nurturing, informed, and present. And maybe we turned out alright. Still, for others, their parents tried their best but were defeated by life. And with others still, a tragedy happened, and the home life was fractured forever.
No theory of parenting can “fix” a life tragedy — and most of us have at least one. But what Jungian parenting offers, through the lens of the Four-Sides Dynamics, is the ability to meet a child’s needs — regardless of your natural compatibility with them — despite extremely trying circumstances. And Jungian psychology, as a whole, offers a method so that you can meet your own needs too.
Jungian Parenting also allows you to maximize your ability to connect with children. And, best of all, Jungian Parenting allows you to understand your child before they can even understand themselves; so that, when inevitable tragedies occur, you are prepared to guide your child in the way that works best for them.
An informed parent, then, is an oracle for their own child.
Let’s look at two specific concepts from Jungian Parenting that can help you become a better parent today (all this content is explored in much more depth in Season 23 available through the Journeyman Membership at CSJ).
Early Phases of Development
While growing pains are natural in adolescence, intense bouts of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and feeling fragmented should NOT be the accepted status-quo, as they have become. Ignorance of proper parenting causes children to have major setbacks before their adolescent years, which leaves them totally unprepared to deal with the struggles of life that we all face — including depression, anxiety, loneliness, and feeling fragmented.
When the child is young your influence as a parent is as high as it ever will be. But, as children get older, your influence fades and is replaced by the child’s own ego-investments and the influence of other people in their lives. From birth to adolescence, then, the return on investment for parenting is as profound as it will ever be. Put in a dollar, you may get ten thousand back.
For the child, this period of life is characterized by extreme malleability. The child can seamlessly transition to their subconscious and access their Inferior with little anxiety. Chase has said that children often present as the type in their subconscious while they are young. From birth till about puberty, the Inferior has the potential to grow exponentially, and the looming quarter-life crisis can be avoided entirely with a few good years of parenting.
It is the responsibility of the parents and surrounding adults to support and help develop the Inferior function of children until they reach puberty.
Part of this responsibility begins with learning how to identify a child’s type. Then, throughout this period, you must push them to use their Inferior. You shouldn’t have to push hard; the child naturally wants to use it.
The human being is a creature of momentum. The direction we are given as youth often dictates the trajectory we will take for many years to come. How many of us are still trying to change the trajectory we were set on from our own childhood?
If we can give our children a head start, they will have ample time to develop their Ego, grow their Unconscious, and eventually take on their Superego. Here’s how can give your child a head start for the development of their Inferior — push them to:
- To think through things carefully, take the time to ensure they are using sound logic, to be open to other input, and to realize that making people “feel” good is only helpful when they know the truth about their situation is revealed, Ti-Inferior
- Read, listen, and watch as much material as possible to increase their awareness of the thoughts of others, and develop high quality, researched, opinions for themselves, so that they can begin to build renown for themselves, Te-Inferior
- Learn to be as helpful to other people as possible, to know that they have the power to lift other people up with their words and actions or tear them down, and to practice engaging socially with others so that they can become ultimately helpful, Fe-Inferior
- To pursue the development of their own moral principles, to find out which morality is worth suffering for and which can fall away, and to pursue being “good” every day of their life so that they can become a moral person that others admire, Fi-Inferior
- To learn that making any decision is usually better than not making one at all, and to believe that the art to choosing well comes from practicing the art of choosing to begin with, and that they can find a way through their struggles, no matter what, Ni-Inferior
- To verify the intentions of others before falling into fear about them, to learn to have faith despite the great “what if”, to go out of their way to make themselves as desirable as possible, to discern reality from conjecture, and to learn the art of ingenuity even though the unknown produces fear, so that they can become insightful, Ne-Inferior
- To learn to withstand discomfort, to develop discipline and endurance, to try new things even if it scares them, and to learn how to delay gratification so that they can grow strong, Si-Inferior
- To embrace practice as a means to excellence, to find multiple areas in their life to perform, and to learn to compare themselves less to others and to focus on improving themselves daily, so that they can become a top performer, Se-Inferior
The key to all Inferior functions, though, is humility. Humility is the most important ingredient for the orderly development of the Subconscious. Directing a child in humility involves reminding them that they have not “made it” when it comes to their Inferior, when they become over-confident.
Encourage children to use their Inferior functions as much as possible.
As children get older, our ability to directly and consciously guide them diminishes significantly. Jungian parenting requires the use of increasingly complex techniques to get through to a child. So, start young, if you can. But, if you can’t or didn’t, there is still another way to help a child grow.
Adolescence to Adulthood
As childhood comes to an end, adolescence begins. Puberty hits. The child matures. Their ego becomes more protected. And you can no longer target their Inferior.
With their Ego-investments solidified, and friends becoming more of an influence, there is a layer of armor around the adolescent’s vulnerabilities. They will not let you push their Inferior anymore. If you try, they will — at best — distrust you. At worst, they will hate you.
While you can occasionally encourage or test the Inferior in this stage, your attempts will generally be met with heavy resistance. It is best to find another path.
So, if we can’t develop their Inferior for them, what do we do?
We teach them how to develop their Inferior for themselves.
How do you help children develop their Inferior? Through helping them develop their Parent function. In turn, our Parent function will protect our Child and Inferior functions.
But, like the Inferior, we can’t develop their Parent function directly. So, how do you help them develop the parent function? Go through the backdoor of the Parent, the Critic function.
Give adolescent children the opportunity and pressure them to:
- Verify their beliefs, Ti-Critic
- Consider other peoples’ thoughts and allow them to challenge your own, Te-Critic
- Develop personal values and prove self-worth, Fi-Critic
- Consider other peoples’ values, and empathize with them, Fe-Critic
- Learn how to choose and will, Ni-Critic
- Make yourself desirable and verify other people’s goals before judging their decisions, Ne-Critic
- Be disciplined and steadfast, Si-Critic
- Develop your presentation, ability to perform, and hold others to a reasonably high standard of the same, Se-Critic
As humility is the key ingredient to developing the Inferior, learning to be wise is the key to developing the Unconscious, especially the Critic. To bring wisdom to the Critic, the child must learn to be responsible too, as the development of the Parent — which is the development of personal responsibility — is fundamentally tied to the Critic.
Push the Critic, and you will help your child develop responsibility. Responsibility will teach them wisdom.
What Really Is Parenting?
Any conversation about parenting needs to be properly sewn into a larger thread to be understood completely. What really is the process of parenting?
By our earlier definition — that good parenting is when society at large accepts responsibility for parenting and each parent has the proper understanding of their children— then we can see how every, single, man and woman is responsible. It begins there.
The main building block for becoming a valuable influence on youths is first to develop yourself, your maturity, your psyche, and the sacred archetypes that exist within you.
We will pick up there in next week’s article, where we will discuss how the sacred archetypes within each of us can be developed so that we can each step into the mature, integrated individuals we were meant to me — and that a broken generation is dying to meet.
Want to Discover more?
If you want to check out how your specific archetype can be optimally parented, explore our Journeyman Membership to discover all our exclusive content on parenting, relationships, and the path to self-realization.
