For this reason, he refers to the diamond-shaped account of the human psyche.
More importantly, he refers to the eight optimal forms as constituting together the optimal self system. What Moore refers to as the optimal self systems has long been referred to by Freudians as ego-integrity. Ego-integrity is the outcome and result of healing archetypal wounding. Without the healing of archetypal wounding, ego-consciousness is diminished in proportion to the extent of our archetypal wounding. The greater the extent of the archetypal wounding, the more diminished our ego-consciousness is.
So that's the big picture of the structure of the human psyche according to Moore.
But not many among us have an optimal self system. As Anthony Stevens has pointed out, archetypal wounding from early childhood holds us back from being able to access the optimal forms of the eight archetypes of maturity. Archetypal wounding occurs through early childhood traumatization involving abandonment feelings. As Bradshaw points out, abandonment feelings from early childhood traumatization require grief work, usually in the context of working with a psychotherapist. When the grief work is efficacious, the lifting of the grief work is accompanied by archetypal healing of the archetypal wounding.
As Jung has pointed out, archetypal healing of archetypal wounding can also occur in another way through a special moment in the interaction of the psychotherapist and the client.
Either way, it sounds like psychotherapists should not be unemployed for a long time to come, if people undertake to work toward having an optimal self system. Nevertheless, many people may not be motivated enough to undertake a long-term commitment of psychotherapy. This appears to be the case for those people who rely exclusively on psychotropic prescription medications to try to control their symptoms. Such people appear to be happy to simply keep their symptoms under control, and big pharma makes big bucks from peddling such medications.
But what did our human ancestors do to cope with the diminishments of ego-consciousness as the result of archetypal wounding before big pharma was around to peddle prescription medications?
Fortunately for the human race, ego-integrity is not exactly the same as moral integrity, and vice versa. Even when we understand that we have not yet achieved ego-integrity, we can cultivate our own personal moral integrity. As Bourke sums up the approach advanced by Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy in his textbook titled Ethics (1951), we can cultivate our own personal moral integrity by cultivating the four cardinal virtues and by working to avoid as much as we possibly can the Seven Deadly Sins. As I will explain momentarily, we can use the four cardinal virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins as ways to help us operationalize Moore's thought regarding the archetypes of maturity.
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