Moore and Gillette’s four

Moore and Gillette’s four describe what they call the mature masculine, set against the boyish forms that precede it and the distortions that result when an archetype is not fully accessed. The King orders and blesses; the Warrior acts with discipline and aggression in the service of a cause; the Magician knows, initiates and keeps hidden knowledge; the Lover feels, connects and delights in the senses. The distinctive move is the two-poled shadow: each archetype fails in two opposite directions, an active and a passive one. The King’s shadow is the Tyrant or the Weakling, the Warrior’s the Sadist or the Masochist, the Magician’s the Manipulator or the denying Innocent, the Lover’s the Addicted or the Impotent Lover, and maturity is the balance between the poles. Moore, a Jungian analyst, developed the scheme in lectures for the men’s movement of the 1980s, and the sequels beginning with The King Within (1992) treat each archetype at book length. The provenance point is that the names sound Jungian but the quaternity and its shadow system are Moore’s, dated 1990. No study has tested it.

Sources

• Moore, R., & Gillette, D. (1990). King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 978-0-06-250597-2.
• Moore, R., & Gillette, D. (1992). The King Within: Accessing the King in the Male Psyche. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-09591-8. On the bipolar shadow, the Tyrant and the Weakling.