The Boys and Men Crisis and the emerging Population Crisis that we hear about in the news every day are largely being created by women who have moved into stage 4 of their Animus Complex Development, and men who are stuck in stages 1-3 of their Anima Complex Stages, preventing women and men from moving into stage 5, which would be necessary to address these and other crises and wicked problems facing humanity.
The following five stages of female Animus Complex Development are descibed in the book Female Authority by Female Authority: Empowering Women Through Psychotherapy – A Jungian Approach (1990) by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Florence L. Wiedemann.
5 Stages of Animus Complex in Females:
● Stage 1: Males as alien outsider: she fears, hates, and is strangely attracted to men.
● Stage 2: Males as father, God, or king: she wants approval from men.
● Stage 3: Male as hero: she wants to look up to her partner/husband (marry up to him).
● Stage 4: Males as independent beings: she wants to find out who she is outside of male relationships/patriarchy.
● Stage 5: Male as equal partner: she sees him as an equal and opposite partner.
5 Stages of Anima Complex in Males:
● Stage 1: Female as mother: he wants a mommy to take care of him.
● Stage 2: Females as sex objects: he wants women to admire him and be sexually submissive.
● Stage 3: Female as supportive partner: he wants her to be his caring, loving wife and mother of his children who he protects and provides for.
● Stage 4: Females as creative/spiritual guides: women challenging and inspiring him to find meaning/love from a source other than women and relationships.
● Stage 5: Female as equal partner: he sees her as an equal and opposite partner.
The first three stages are the traditional ways in which females and males with divided gender roles co-created nuclear families, tribes/communities, and societies.
Now, many women enter Stage 4 of their Animus Complex when they become educated and able to earn their own income, and thus no longer need, want, or find men, (“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” Irina Dunn/Gloria Steinem), as shown in the two charts below, and often remain child free.
Image above: PEW reserach showing almost two men for every single woman who is looking for a partner
Image above: PEW research showing that single women struggle to find men who meet their expectations
With the exception of very few men who are in stage 5 and cannot find partners, most men are stuck in Stages 1 to 3 of their Anima Complex, with no individual or societal support from male role models and institutions to move into stage 4 and eventually stage 5, in part because education and the helping professions are now dominated by women (see below) who are often single and stuck in Stage 4 (and suspicious of men in Stage 5), and who are more likely to support girls and women in their liberation from traditional gender roles and fulfillment than boys and men, who are stuck in their old, increasingly outdated roles.
Image above: Dramatic male drop in teaching and helping professions
This prevents both men and women from advancing to the healthier stage 5 and leads to the crisis of boys and men, and to shrinking and overaging populations with potentially more negative than positive consequences, especially the radicalization of men (and some women) who want to turn back the clock, as we see most painfully in Afghanistan and other developing countries, but also in developed nations. See, for example, the popular book Why Liberalism Failed, by Patrick J. Deneen (endorsed by President Obama and NYT’s David Brooks) in which he argues for a restoration of our inherited (patriarchal??) civilized order—norms learned in families, in communities, through religion, and a supportive culture—by a strong (male?) leader, one with the will to take back what has eroded under the influence of the liberal social and political state.
I addition to the suggested solution by Richard Reeves in his book “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do” below, I suggest the following solutions:
1. Add relational skill development to the current school curriculums.
2. Differentiate more clearly between sex and gender, healthy and unhealthy feminine and masculine polarities, and the anmima/animus complex, instead of simply differentiating boys/men and girls/women.
3. Stop conflating masculinity with male and support the development of healthy feminine and masculine polarities in both sexes instead of denouncing all masculinity as “toxic” while glorifying all feminine traits as positive, pure, and healthy.
4. In addition to (or instead of) career counseling and focus on increasing earnings, support boys/men and girls/women in first identifying their natural talents and support related skill development so that they can live and share their biological, transformational, and transcendental purpose as adults in healthy relationships.
5. Educate teachers and helping professional about teaching healthy “Integral” relationship skills (Integral Relationship Practice) and healing complex developmental trauma (e.g. using NARM) and make therapy easily accessible to men and women and covered by health insurance.
Reeves offers the following solutions:
1. Start boys one year later in school than girls, as their brains develop later (he correctly differentiates sex and gender.)
2. Create a boy and male-friendly education system with more male teachers and career advisers of color.
3. Help men (and not only women) to move into professions in the growing fields of Health, Education, Administration, and Literacy, or “HEAL”.
4. Bolster fatherhood as an independent social institution.
5. Help men adapt to the dramatic changes of recent decades without asking them to stop being men.
6. Create a prosocial masculinity for a postfeminist world.