Is Trump A High Chair Tyrant?
A conversation with John Lee in response to the recent No Kings Day protest
When the No Kings Day protests happened across the world a couple weeks ago, I immediately felt compelled to respond in defense of the King archetype. In parts of the world that operate within a constitutional monarchy (such as my home country of Canada) the alternate titles “No Tyrants” or “No Dictators” provided an important distinction that “No Kings” doesn’t. We’ve lived for so long under the rule of men that fail to embody the qualities of the King archetype in its generative, ordering fullness that we’ve almost completely lost our feeling for the positive aspects that it holds.
So, while I totally appreciate the sentiment behind the protests, I wanted to contribute something to the conversation that would encourage a deeper exploration of the King archetype as it relates to men in general. One of my big motivations when I created the Four Initiations coaching program a few years ago was that I felt called to help other men reconnect to the life-enriching masculine potentials that these archetypes represent.
We all know too well what it’s like to live under the rule of domineering, self-centered men — whether in the home, office or White House — but a call for “No Kings” risks throwing the sacred bathwater out with King Baby. What we really need are more good kings functioning in our families, communities, corporations and government. The call I’d love to hear would be something like, “The Tyrant King is dead! Long live the real kings!”
In the hopes of bringing a more nuanced understanding of the King archetype and perhaps even redeeming it, I reached out to my old friend and spiritual uncle John Lee, a therapist, author and men’s work pioneer to have a conversation. Rather than wait and publish it on my public feed (which is currently a couple months behind my Patreon feed), I wanted to release it early on the occasion of July 4th, when I suspect a certain King Baby will be throwing himself a big self-serving party. I also thought it would be good to include some excerpts from Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s seminal book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Thirty plus years after its initial publication, it’s still the best book on masculine psychology and forms the basis for my men’s coaching program (which you can check out here.)
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Excerpts from King, Warrior, Magician, Lover
The King Archetype
Historically, kings have always been sacred. As mortal men, however, they have been relatively unimportant. It is the kingship, or the King energy itself, that has been important.
We all know the famous cry when a king dies and another is waiting to ascend the throne, “The king is dead; long live the king!” The mortal man who incarnates the King energy or bears it for a while in the service of his fellow human beings, in the service of the realm (of whatever dimensions), in the service of the cosmos, is almost an interchangeable part, a human vehicle for bringing this ordering and generative archetype into the world and into the lives of human beings.
It is the mortal king’s duty not only to receive and take to his people this right order of the universe and cast it in societal form but, even more fundamentally, to embody it in his own person, to live it in his own life. The mortal king’s first responsibility is to live according to Ma’at, or Dharma, or the Tao. If he does, the mythology goes, everything in the kingdom—that is, the creation, the world—will also go according to the Right Order. The kingdom will flourish. If the king does not live “in the Tao” then nothing will go right for his people, or for the kingdom as a whole. The realm will languish, the Center, which the king represents, will not hold, and the kingdom will be ripe for rebellion.
The Good King
What can we say are the characteristics of the good King? Based on ancient myths and legends, what are the qualities of this mature masculine energy?
The King archetype in its fullness possesses the qualities of order, of reasonable and rational patterning, of integration and integrity in the masculine psyche. It stabilizes chaotic emotion and out-of-control behaviors. It gives stability and centeredness. It brings calm. And in its “fertilizing” and centeredness, it mediates vitality, life-force, and joy. It brings maintenance and balance. It defends our own sense of inner order, our own integrity of being and of purpose, our own central calmness about who we are, and our essential unassailability and certainty in our masculine identity. It looks upon the world with a firm but kindly eye. It sees others in all their weakness and in all their talent and worth. It honors them and promotes them. It guides them and nurtures them toward their own fullness of being. It is not envious, because it is secure, as the King, in its own worth. It rewards and encourages creativity in us and in others.
This is the energy that expresses itself through you when you are able to keep your cool when everybody else in the meeting is losing theirs. This is the voice of calm and reassurance, the encouraging word in a time of chaos and struggle. This is the clear decision, after careful deliberation, that cuts through the mess in the family, at work, in the nation, in the world. This is the energy that seeks peace and stability, orderly growth and nurturing for all people—and not only for all people, but for the environment, the natural world. The King cares for the whole realm and is the steward of nature as well as of human society.
This is the energy, manifested in ancient myths, of the “shepherd of his people” and “the gardener” and husbandman of the plants and animals in the kingdom. This is the voice that affirms, clearly and calmly and with authority, the human rights of all. This is the energy that minimizes punishment and maximizes praise. This is the voice from the Center, the Primeval Hill within every man.
Though most of us have experienced some of this energy of the mature masculine in our lives—perhaps within ourselves in moments when we felt very well integrated, calm, and centered, and from time to time from our father, a kindly uncle or grandfather, a co-worker, a boss, a teacher, a minister—most of us also have to confess that overall we have experienced very little of the King energy in its fullness. We may have felt it in bits and pieces, but the sad fact is that this positive energy is disastrously lacking in the lives of most men. Mostly what we have experienced is what we are calling the Shadow King.
As in the case of all of the archetypes, the King displays an active-passive bipolar shadow structure. We call the active pole of the Shadow King the Tyrant and the passive pole the Weakling.
[The authors distinguish between “boy psychology” and “man psychology” and in it’s immature active form, the Shadow King is called “The High Chair Tyrant.” It is this form of the archetype that I feel best represents Donald Trump.]
The High Chair Tyrant
The High Chair Tyrant is epitomized by the image of Little Lord Fauntleroy sitting in his high chair, banging his spoon on the tray, and screaming for his mother to feed him, kiss him, and attend him. Like a dark version of the Christ child, he is the center of the universe; others exist to meet his all-powerful needs and desires.
But when the food comes, it often does not meet his specifications: it’s not good enough; it’s not the right kind; it’s too hot or too cold, too sweet or too sour. So he spits it on the floor or throws it across the room. If he becomes sufficiently self-righteous, no food, no matter how hungry he is, will be adequate. And if his mother picks him up after “failing” him so completely, he will scream and twist and reject her advances, because they were not offered at exactly the right moment. The High Chair Tyrant hurts himself with his grandiosity—the limitlessness of his demands—because he rejects the very things that he needs for life: food and love.
Characteristics of the High Chair Tyrant include arrogance (what the Greeks called hubris, or overweening pride), childishness (in the negative sense), and irresponsibility, even to himself as a mortal infant who has to meet his biological and psychological needs. All of this is what psychologists call inflation or pathological narcissism. The High Chair Tyrant needs to learn that he is not the center of the universe and that the universe does not exist to fulfill his every need, or, better put, his limitless needs, his pretensions to godhood. It will nurture him, but not in his form as God.
The High Chair Tyrant, through the Shadow King, may continue to be a ruling archetypal influence in adulthood. We all know the story of the promising leader, the CEO, or the presidential candidate, who starts to rise to great prominence and then shoots himself in the foot. He sabotages his success, and crashes to the earth. The ancient Greeks said that hubris is always followed by nemesis.
The gods always bring down those mortals who get too arrogant, demanding, or inflated. Icarus, for instance, made wings of feathers and wax in order to fly like the birds (read “gods”) and then in his inflation, and against his father’s warning, flew too close to the sun. The sun melted the wax, the wings disintegrated, and he plummeted into the sea.
We are familiar with the saying “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” King Louis XVI of France lost his head because of his arrogance. Often as we men rise in the corporate structure, as we gain more and more authority and power, the risk of self-destruction also rises. The boss who wants only yes men, who doesn’t want to know what’s going on, the president who doesn’t want to hear his generals’ advice, the school principal who can’t tolerate criticism from his teachers—all are men possessed by the High Chair Tyrant riding for a fall.
The High Chair Tyrant who attacks his human host is the perfectionist; he expects the impossible of himself and berates himself (just as his mother did) when he can’t meet the demands of the infant within. The Tyrant pressures a man for more and better performance and is never satisfied with what he produces. The unfortunate man becomes the slave (as the mother was) of the grandiose two-year-old inside of him. He has to have more material things. He can’t make mistakes. And because he can’t possibly meet the demands of the inner Tyrant, he develops ulcers and gets sick. He can’t, in the end, stand up to the unrelenting pressure. We men often deal with the Tyrant by having a heart attack. We go on strike against him. Finally, the only way to escape the Little Lord is to die.
When the High Chair Tyrant cannot be brought under control, he will manifest in a Stalin, Caligula, or Hitler—all malignant sociopaths. We will become the CEO who would rather see the company fail than deal with our own grandiosity, our own identification with the demanding “god” within. We can be Little Hitlers, but we’re going to destroy our country in the process.
It has been said that the Divine Child wants just to be and to have all things flow toward him. He does not want to do. The artist wants to be admired without having to lift a finger. The CEO wants to sit in his office, enjoying his leather chairs, his cigars, and his attractive secretaries, drawing his high salary, and enjoying his perks. But he does not want to do anything for the company. He imagines himself invulnerable and all-important. He often demeans and degrades others who are trying to accomplish something. He is in his high chair, and he is setting himself up to get the ax.