Jamie Weiner - The Quest for Legitimacy: How Children of Prominent Families Discover Their Unique Place in the World

Jamie Weiner

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781119868279 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781119868293 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119868286 (ePub)

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I am literally and figuratively a junior in the land of a giant, James Elliott Hughes. During nearly 30 of my father's 50year practice of law, he was the head of one of the world's great international law firms; the chairman of the boards of two colleges, an independent secondary school, and a primary school; and a member of many public, private, and charitable boards.

Me? I am simply James Elliott Hughes Jr. Think John Davidson Rockefeller and his son, who was always known as Junior. Think being called Mr. Hughes Junior in his father's law firm and by his father's circle. As I reached adulthood, it often made me think of the great king Edward I, followed by Edward II (junior) deposed and killed because of incompetence. Ouch!

I doubt that Jamie realized when he asked me to write this foreword that he was hitting me in the gut. He likely didn't know that I had lived my life in the shadow of this giant whose constant question was, Have you considered? and the emotions that the question churned up when I had to acknowledge that I hadn't!

My father had a rigorous Victorian standard, which he always met and I frequently didn't. I hasten to say that I loved my father and he loved me. But I often struggled with how to meet his standard. Before me was a model of intellectual respect and rigor, and even more how to be a man. I once asked for his definition of a man. He said, Someone who takes absolute responsibility for his actions! Quaking, I asked with hope: Anything else? NO! he responded. Wow. No excuses, no room for error. And no wonder that I felt the shadow of such an imposing giant.

So I am one of the people Jamie is writing to and describing in his wonderful gift to people like me and to our families. We live in the land of giants some who might remind their offspring of Oxymandias, others who overwhelm us with an embarrassment of generosity, supplying everything. Often, the constant question is, Why aren't you like me?

Jamie explores the roles of individuating (think Maslow, Erikson, Johnson think Parsifal and Psyche think Telemachus and Odysseus King Philip II and Alexander Henry III and his daughter Elizabeth), differentiating (think Bowen, Hillman, Hollis), and integrating (think Jung) all in the face of giants. Yes, consciously or unconsciously, we walk in the footsteps of these giants astride the planet.

History and literature are full of our stories. What is perhaps amazing in this time of awareness of the unconscious, and of the many efforts to enable conscious parenting and the gifts of modern psychology and social anthropology, is that when it comes to facing our giants, NOTHING has changed.

Some years ago, Susan Massenzio, Keith Whitaker, and I wrote a book called The Voice of the Rising Generation Family Wealth and Wisdom. We sought to bring to life the issue of why it is so hard for rising generation members of families with significant financial and intellectual resources to make the journey to successful adulthood. We posited that the giants Jamie imagines, when their lives are done, leave behind them energy so strong that it is like a black hole, centripetally pulling all the members of the rising generations of their families into its vortex a structure of continuing energy so strong that it disenables any possibility of their successfully individuating, differentiating, and integrating toward becoming and then being who they are meant to be. It's the stunted growth of Junior's journey to self and the freedom of self it enables, a process that interrupts and disallows the normal cycle of the rites of passage through the various stages of one's life that the vast majority of humans pass through successfully as they fully and consciously become themselves, whom they were meant to be (think Erikson, Maslow, van Gennep, Hollis, ZalmanSchachter).

Jamie offers great stories of HOW others surmounted the issue of living in the land of a giant and not only survived but thrived! Each discovers who he or she is, often with the help of a guide, as Athena was for Telemachus, Aristotle for Alexander, Lord Burghley for Elizabeth, Thomas More for Henry III, and Lord Melbourne was for Victoria.

Yes, there is a great hope in history and literature for juniors to have wonderful, fully individuated lives, and Jamie offers you stories and superb advice to imagine how.

James Elliott Hughes, Jr.

Author of Family Wealth; Keeping It in the Family; Family: The Compact Among Generations; and coauthor of The Cycle of the Gift; The Voice of the Rising Generation; Family Trusts; and Complete Family Wealth, second edition.

Envision being an adventurer, going deep under the surface to explore the unique world of children born into prominent families and discovering that each of them was hungry to share their experience. (I began that adventure five years ago.) Zoom, at that point a relatively new technology, opened global boundaries. Suddenly, Indonesia was as close as Costa Rica. This gave me and my team of researchers access to rising gen who were eager to answer the question, What is it like growing up in the land of giants?