This page makes the connection between the virtual Midlevel in organizations and Jungian psychology with emphasis on the insight of two close friends—James Hillman with his insight into the senex-puer archetype, and Joseph Campbell with his insight into the power of myth.
Among Campbell’s counsel was to “Follow your bliss.” His interviews with Bill Moyers during the last two summers of his life were nothing short of inspirational. As for Hillman’s insight, with sacrifice so basic to change in organizations, the father-son archetype of enterprise in the psyche polarizes without an intervention. The father (staid senex) at one pole splits off from his son (pliable puer) at the other.⁸ This generational divide leads senex to immolation and puer to sacrifice.
We find this split dramatized in myth where inventive Daedalus built a labyrinth at the request of Minos, the King of Crete. For reasons that will become clear, the king throws Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in the labyrinth—symbolic of the mass organizational confusion and disarray brought on by the split between father and son.
Minos was one of three sons of Europa and Zeus, Zeus having transformed himself into a hansom white bull for Europa to ride off into Crete. King Asterion in marrying the later abandoned Europa, adopted Minos and his two brothers—all three direct descendants of Zeus. Upon the death of Asterion, Minos prayed to Poseidon to sanctify him as the new king, rather than one of his brothers. To that end, Poseidon had a sacred white bull wash ashore for Minos to sacrifice to sanctify his kingship. Minos in his hubris substituted a bull from his own herd for the sacrifice and kept the sacred white bull for himself. That so infuriated Poseidon that he had Minos’ queen—Pasiphae, a hot-blooded daughter of the sun god Helios—to become infatuated with the sacred white bull. To that end, she asked Daedalus to build a wooded cow for her to position herself inside so the white bull might sexually satisfy her. Their intercourse led to the Minotaur’s birth (the half sacred bull, half mortal man—the “bull of Minos”).
Having built the labyrinth to contain the erratic Minotaur, Daedalus knew the labyrinth, inside and out, and so he and his son escaped on wax wings that Daedalus had fashioned. Not able to handle his new-found freedom, despite his father’s admonition not to, Icarus soared too close to the sun, his wax melted, and he fell to his death into the sea. That left Daedalus to complete his son’s sacrifice by burying him.
With Daedalus being the great inventor in Greek myth, Icarus paid the sacrificial price in midflight for his father’s unbridled ingenuity, as glorified and sexualized in Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly“. Given this in-flight calamity, two horrific examples from NASA come to mind. On January 28, 1986 an O-ring seal failed on the Space Shuttle Challenger’s solid rocket booster. The O-ring wasn’t designed to withstand the 28 degree temperature specific to the O-ring that fateful day. But pushed by Mission Control to stick to NASA’s flight schedule (in true staid senex, sacrificial fashion) 73 seconds after liftoff, the Shuttle exploded killing all seven astronauts on board. Nineteen years earlier to the day, two astronauts were asphyxiated in a preflight test. A fire had broken out in their command module fueled by the pure oxygen environment and combustible materials erroneously designed into the module (in true staid senex, sacrificial fashion).
So given the import, how do senex and puer reconcile? Unification comes as we meet with the Midlevel group in the transition to a trained task group. In that transition, the members go from a collection of individuals polarized in their organizational thinking between negative senex and negative puer to senex-puer unified into a positive and capable archetype of enterprise. James Hillman referred to this union as “the union of sames”.⁹
Furthering this unity in myth, Theseus (from thesmos for institution) sailed from Athens to Knossos on the island of Crete, posing as one of 7 lads with 7 maidens made slaves. During each of the 7 leap months in the 19 years on the Jewish and Greek calendars in between Great Years (eerily the same 19 years minus the leap months in between the two NASA disasters) 7 lads were sacrificed to the Minotaur, held captive in Daedalus’ labyrinth.¹⁰ These tributes of lads and maidens were in retribution for Athenians having killed King Minos’ son, Androgeus, for having won the Panathenaic Games in Athens.
Instead of being sacrificed, Theseus slayed the sleeping Minotaur and with the group exited the labyrinth by following a thread he had tie to the door (the ball of thread having been given by Daedalus through the king’s daughter, Ariadne). Then he and the smitten princess along with the group set sail for Athens, Minos’ ships in hot pursuit. Along the way, Theseus abandoned the princess on an island (to avoid becoming King Minos’ son-in-law). Once back in Athens, he ascended his father’s thrown and with the group brought democracy, prosperity and security to Athens, just as the intervention at the Midlevel brings these same benefits to organizations.
Remember the sacred white bull? He went mad rampaging through the countryside near Athens, as entropy does sowing disorder and chaos throughout organizations, unchecked by a Midlevel group. It carries the spiritual connotation of “what you sow, you shall reap.” Or to use a secular expression, “what goes around, comes around.” So in the end, the sacred white bull got sacrificed, as Poseidon prescribed, the son of Poseidon, King Theseus, capturing and killing the rampaging bull. And you might say it was a double sacrifice, Theseus also having slain the Minotaur, the sacred bull’s love child with a daughter of Helios. So what exactly did these dual sacrifices sanctify—entropy or Theseus’ Midlevel intervention? Well, both. But following Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the organizational quantum state (Quantum Basics) not both entropy and an intervention at the same time. Poseidon as the archetypal god of the sea, earthquakes, storms and horses leaves that choice in the hands of each and every generation and organization.
As Theseus did with the group in the labyrinth, given the choice to have us intervene, we indulge the quantum state as our distant ancestors did to rise from a prey species to predator. To survive as prey, we were born and bred to tap into the quantum state for the common good. Without it, employees find themselves trapped in a corporate labyrinth with their bosses just as bewildered and confused as they are and as the Minotaur was.¹¹ But diving into this “rabbit hole”, as this statement does, only accelerates the disassembly of organizations with entropy then the choice by default.
This disassembly perverts the 20-year cycle of institutional creation¹¹ in the organizational quantum condition—a condition with endless potential that only diverse groups can grasp. As Jim Nantz commented during Super Bowl LVIII (2/11/2024) “You know, they say a generation is 20 years” such as the 19 year (1946-1964) period for the birthyears of baby boomers. This 20-year span comes even closer to the period between Great Years of 19 years on the Jewish and Greek calendars with 7 leap months added.¹⁰ So, this quantum state is specific to each and every generation and culture with senex-puer (father-son) the archetype of time.¹¹ That makes a fully trained task group the Midlevel gateway to the vast potential in this quantum state, as in myth where time is fluid and not needlessly chronological.