For further information about Lynda Carter, see the Wikipedia entry "Lynda Carter" (2024).
For further information about William Moulton Marston, see the Wikipedia entry "William Moulton Marston" (2024).
For further information about Jill Lepore, see the Wikipedia entry "Jill Lepore" (2024).
Concerning J. R. R. Tolkien, see T. A. Shippey's book titled J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2001) and Joseph Pearce's Tolkien: Man and Myth: A Literary Life (1998).
For information about J. R. R. Tolkien, also see the lengthy Wikipedia entry "J. R. R. Tolkien" (2024).
Now, for a recent discussion of fantasy, see the self-described conservative columnist Ross Douthat's column titled "We Need a Great American Fantasy" (dated December 20, 2024) in The New York Times. In it, Douthat calls for "a quest for the Great American Fantasy story." Subsequently, he says that "someone could argue that the Great American Fantasy is actually an impossibility, since the fantasy genre is concerned with the transition from the premodern to the modern, the enchanted to the disenchanted, and America has been disenchanted and commercial and capitalist from Day 1." However, even though "someone could argue" that, Douthat says, "We do have a deep premodern past through our Native American inheritance, however obscured by conquest and dispossession its influence may be." So if the Great American Fantasy is to emerge, it will have to draw on the imagery and sense of life in "our Native American inheritance."
Now, throughout Lepore's 2014 book The Secret History of Wonder Woman, she traces of twentieth-century feminist thought. I see the twentieth-century traces of feminist thought as manifestations of what the Jungian psychoanalyst Edward C. Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in the psyches of twentieth-century feminists. See Whitmont's book Return of the Goddess (1982). But I also see twentieth-century feminist thought as being expressed in what Jung refers to as directed thought involving logic. But, of course, Marston also expressed his feminist thought through imagery of the busty and scantily clad Wonder Woman in his Wonder Woman comics involving fantasy thinking. The busty young Lynda Carter embodied the fantasy of Wonder Woman in the 1970s Wonder Woman television series with its catchy theme song articulating Wonder Woman's feminist spirit in directed thinking. Warner's twenty-first century DVD version of the 1970s Wonder Woman television series starring the busty young Lynda Carter brings the twentieth-century feminist fantasy superheroine alive and available to audiences in the twenty-first century - thereby perhaps also helping more people in the twenty-first century to experience the return of the goddess in their psyches as they fall in love with the busty young Lynda Carter in her wonderfully revealing Wonder Woman costume and Wonder Woman's wonderful heroics in the pilot and the subsequent 59 episodes.
Now, in the present essay, I am honoring the spirit of what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images and associated thinking by engaging in my own associative thinking. As a further instance of my associative thinking, I now also want to relate what Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in the psyches of certain people - twentieth-century feminists, for example, -- and what Ong says about the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann's Jungian account of the eight stages of consciousness in his landmark book The Origins and History of Consciousness, translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull (1954; original German ed. 1949).
In Ong's 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture, he succinctly summarizes the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann delineates:
"The stages of psychic development as treated by Neumann are successively (1) the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with it tail in its mouth, as well as be other circular or global mythological figures [including Nietzsche's imagery about the eternal return?], (2) the Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again), (3) the separation of the world parents (the principle of opposites, differentiation, possibility of change, (4) the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of the personalized ego) with its sequels in (5) the slaying of the mother (fight with the dragon: victory over primal creative but consuming femininity, chthonic forces), and (6) the slaying of the father (symbol of thwarting obstruction of individual achievement, [thwarting] what is new), (7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous [i.e., "married" within one's psyche] kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness), and finally (8) the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism [such as Nietzsche's overman] - or, more properly, personalism - of modern man [sic])."
Ong also sums up Neumann's Jungian account of the stages of consciousness in his (Ong's) book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality (Gender], and Consciousness (1981, pp. 18-19; but also see the "Index" for further references to Neumann [p. 228]), the published version of Ong's 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.
Now, what Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in the psyches of many people today involves Neumann's stage (7) of the eight stages of consciousness: "(7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness)."
Now, President Donald Trump is a misogynist, and so are his many male MAGA followers. They have not yet experienced stage (7) of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann delineates - nor have they yet experienced what Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in their psyches.
Ah, but what can I now say about the ubiquitous mom-son porn on the internet? The ubiquitous mom-son porn on the internet clearly involves the image each male viewer has in his own psyche of his real mom - and each male viewer of mom-son porn on the internet has libido energy in his psyche that is married to the image of his real mom in his psyche. This is what is meant by endogamous kinship libido. So the fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos involve an alluring mom figure in the porn video. The woman playing the role of the alluring mom may be any age over 18, just as the man playing the role of the son may be any age over 18. In the fantasy skits, the roles of mom and son typically involve the son referring to the woman as his mom. Moreover, I know of at least two women who have made many mom-son porn videos with their real-life husbands - who are clearly not young enough to looks like their sons (such is the power of words to establish the fantasy in the fantasy skits in mom-son porn videos; if you were to mute the soundtrack, you'd view two adults over 18 having sex without the titillation of the incest theme of mom and son).
Despite the ubiquity of mom-son porn videos on the internet, I do not see them as a threat to the centuries-old taboo against mom-son sexual relations. However, I do see the taboo against mom-son sexual relations as adding to the titillation of mom-son porn videos on the internet. No doubt the added titillation comes from the resonance that male viewers of mom-son porn feel with their own subconscious memories of their real-life moms. In addition, the male viewers of mom-son porn videos may feel a certain resonance with the feminine archetypes in the collective unconscious in the psyches. In some way, this deeper resonance strikes me as tapping into the mother-figure as a symbol of rebirth for the male viewers of mom-son porn videos on the internet. See Jung's chapter "Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth" in his book Symbols of Transformation, translated by R. F. C. Hull, second edition (1967, pp. 207-273) - which strikes me as an optimistic interpretation of the ubiquitous mom-son porn on the internet. In effect, the boys and men who view mom-son porn on the internet are drawn to it because of their desire for rebirth. Ah, but why do they desire rebirth? What exactly is the appeal of their desire for rebirth? Rebirth of their lives as what - or to what? Or is the symbolically expressed desire for rebirth actually expressing a desire for rebirth of one's spirit and life? After all, who wouldn't welcome a rebirth of one's spirit and life?
So in the psyche of each male viewer of mom-son porn videos on the internet, the image of the alluring mom figure in the video evokes the image of the male viewer's real mom in his psyche -- and the unknown-to-him feminine archetypes in his psyche as well. Judging by the sheer popularity of mom-son porn videos on the internet, I would have to conclude that the psychological experience of the interaction of the image of the mom figure in the porn video with the image of each male viewer's real mom must be an enlivening experience for each male viewer - based as it is in what Jung refers to as fantasy thinking involving images in the fantasy skit and associative thinking in each male viewer's psyche.
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