Jordan Peterson on The devouring mother archetype This arch…

Jordan Peterson on The devouring mother archetype
This archetypal behavior was likely not intentional or even conscious to Jill Ker Conway. Like all Devouring Mothers she was doing everything for the children. That was the authentic impulse, certainly. But her conscious goal was to destroy the oppressive patriarchy and so, she must have known her efforts were all about power.
Jordan clarified how Devouring Mothers actually operated in current Western society:
“The devouring mother archetype is one that can be described as a woman who selfishly loves her children, “protecting” them from the real world to such an extent that they become permanent infants— incompetent wards of the mother for life. She is only loving when her children do what she wants, and she is hateful, cruel, and even homicidal when they don’t.
She is the various so-called civil rights movements that seek to suppress free speech in the name of political correctness. And she is the unacknowledged social policy that implores parents to lie to their children in an effort to “keep them safe” all while robbing them of the very life experience they need to face the world with wisdom.
Modern Devouring Mothers, such as university professors and administrators acting in loco parentis, would soon provide safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes, banishment of controversial speakers, and free coloring books, milk, and cookies for young adults who had been offended or might feel unsafe with opposing points of view or microaggressions on campus. These same young adults would also be encouraged to skip classes and engage in emotional direct action demonstrations for the rights of the oppressed. Of course, if they challenged the wisdom or motives involved, they were punished with lesser grades, possibly even banishment, forfeiting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars paid toward a degree that was promised to provide them with the key to wealth for life.”
This was a complete and convincing fairy tale, often lived inside the ivy-covered walls of replicas of medieval castles. They, the children, were fed, attentively cared for, and adopted into an academic family that stretched back generations. They were clothed with the venerable family crests of the University of Toronto, Yale, Dartmouth, and Harvard. They were given champions, warriors in shining helmets, to cheer for on fields of contest. But, like all fairy tales, a dark secret lie in wait, hidden by an enchanting dream.
The promised power to control their lives was being drained day by day. They were being educated with a road map to a life that in no way matched the world outside the fortified walls. Some realized this and rebelled. They were punished. But for most who continued to believe, they were inescapably trapped inside the castle walls, eventually isolated on their cell phones, and the tragic results soon became obvious.
[taken from Savage Messiah, a bio of JP, by Jim Proser]
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