Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men 0919123643, 9780919123649

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Under Saturn's Shadow THE WOUNDING AND HEALING OF MEN

JAMES HOLLIS Author of The Middle Passage: From Misery

to

Meaning

in Midlife

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2011

http://www.archive.org/details/undersaturnsshadOOholl

Under Saturn's Shadow

Marie-Louise von Franz, Honorary Patron

Studies in Jungian Psychology

by Jungian Analysts Daryl Sharp, General Editor

UNDER SATURN'S

SHADOW The Wounding and Healing of

James

Men

Hollis

For Dad, for brother Alan, for son Timothy, son Jonah, son-in-law Daniel

and for daughter Taryn

Canadian Cataloguing Hollis,

Publication Data

in

James, 1936-

Under Saturn's shadow:

the

wounding and healing of men

(Studies in Jungian psychology by Jungian analysts;

63)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-919123-64-3 1.

Fear.

2.

Psychoanalysis.

3.

Jung, C.G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961.

I.

Title.

II.

Series.

BF575.55.F2H65 1994

Copyright

©

152.4'6

1994 by James

C94-930192-2

Hollis.

All rights reserved.

INNER CITY BOOKS Box

1271, Station Q, Toronto, Canada Telephone (416) 927-0355 FAX (416) 924-1814

M4T

2P4

Honorary Patron: Marie-Louise von Franz. Publisher and General Editor: Daryl Sharp.

Senior Editor: Victoria Cowan.

INNER CITY BOOKS was

founded

in

1980

to

promote the

understanding and practical application of the work of C.G. Jung.

Cover: "They Offered

Him

the

10 1/2" X 13 1/2". Copyright

Printed and

bound

in

Crown of

©

Stars," collage,

1993 by Rick Jones.

Canada by

University of Toronto Press Incorporated

:

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Eight 1

7

Secrets

Men Carry Within

The Saturnian Legacy:

1

Tapes, Roles, Expectations

Woman

28

3 The Necessary Wounding: Rites of Passage

62

2 Dragon Dread: The Inner and Outer

4 Father Hunger 5

HeaUng

83

the Souls of

The Eight Secrets

Men

100

1 00

The Mother Complex I Father Task

What is Healings and Who Seven Steps Bibliography

Index

to

Healing

109

the Healer?

Ill

115

136

140

See final page for descriptions of other Inner City Books

12

Remember, you've come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself, only with yourself. Therefore, thank everyone

who

—

GuvdiiQff,

gives you the opportunity.

Meetings with Remarkable Men.

I

Introduction

This book derives from a talk given

at the

Philadelphia Jung Center

was long overdue.

had personally avoided

in April 1992.

That

the topic for a

decade even though men's suffering, aspirations and

talk

my women

healing had progressively occupied

Twelve years ago, the practice to four.

was nine I

believe this shift

and the reasons for

pists,

men's movement. At best

flux.

it is

analysands in

have also contributed

my

a ratio of six

to the rise

of the

much seemed

in

work of scholarship and emotional pop-psych phenomenon I found distasteful.

am very much concerned work

individuals. This

men

to

more men by

a massive

cleansing, at worst a I

see

replicated in the offices of other thera-

is it

I

time as a Jungian analyst.

avoided the topic because so

I

saw

I

of

ratio

to one. Currently

I

with the healing and transformation of

usually so intense, so deeply personal, that

is

often easy to forget the larger worid and the vast social problems

of which

But

it

men

we

are

became

all

a part

and through which we are

increasingly clear to

me

As women have

did overlap and present consistent motifs.

learned before us,

I

began

men is an inescapable

wounded.

all

that the stories of individual

to realize that the collective

experience of

part of their personal history as well.

and woof of private history and public mythology meld

The warp

into the for-

mation of individual character.

By now,

of course, there are

many

of the dilemma of modem men. In

ring.

I

fine

books on various aspects

book

I

consciously and gratefully.

part of the

a different

do not aim

to offer

them and express them

in

them, also,

draw upon I

to

men's scholarthem, integrate

terms that can be apprehended by many.

the clinical experience of

am grateful

are

distill

an original contribution

complex matters and

I

We

draw from them all

ship, but rather to take

Similarly,

shall

community and each of our voices has

at times, directly,

struggle toward

this

men

in therapy.

To

for permission to use their material.

The purpose of Under Saturn 's shadow,

then,

is

to offer a

synop-

8 Introduction

view of men's wounding and healing, and

tic

examine where

to

things stand in this last decade of the century.

But, even more, a sort of confession

many

this subject for

much the

in transition, but

because

into the

my own

avoided speaking out on

I

male gender. For many years

I

I

myself but because

the painter

In focusing

more

them

typical

is,

on men's

more

the

issues,

universal

it is

my

not

it

tude to those

I

be

women who

frightening than In the pages that to time, not

and representative.

a deep debt of grati-

have spoken out, not only

Their cri de coeur has helped

own wounding, and we The example of women struggling

intro-

becomes."^

pain within our sexist culture, but also to free

fully themselves.

bom

intention to minimize the

wounds of women. We of the male gender owe

own

stand in

Tony Berlant observed, "The more personal and

work of art

spective a

it

examples from time

think

I

that

it

I

simply took that accident and

from under the shadow.

shall cite autobiographical

to indulge

where

clear about

consequences for granted and believed

follow,

seemed so

too have suffered from living under

masculine nature. Fate had

liberating to try to step out

As

I

shadow of Saturn and am not always

relationship to

its

—

years, not only because the issues

men

to express their

men

to

be more

look more con-

sciously to their

are

all

better served as a re-

sult.

to free

themselves from the

shadows of the

men to do

collective gives courage

likewise. Unless

continue to

and makes

it

necessary for

men can emerge from darkness, we

wound women and each

other,

be a safe or healthy place. This work

we

shall

and the world can never do, then,

not only for

is

ourselves but also for those around us. In the

middle of the

last

century the Danish theologian Soren

Kierkegaard observed that one could not save one's age, only express the conviction that the public institutions inertial

ciety

1

it

was

perishing.^

and ideologies

momentum that one cannot hope

and

its

gender

Peter Clothier,

roles.

However, the

"Hammering Out Magic,"

^ The Journals of Kierkegaard,

p.

165.

The unconscious

that guide

in

our

lives,

to bring rapid first

requisite

Art News,

p.

forces,

have such

change

is

that

113.

to so-

men be-

Introduction

come conscious of

the fact that they are grievously

unconsciousness of their trauma causes them

women

themselves and

as well.

how men grow

equally

This, then,

is

bring individual that

a

book

men

must transpire

to hate

that

I

and fear each

growing

rage, to participate in a

invite the reader to see

here. For

women,

ability

journey has

fully.

may

many

It is

confess their

wound. in the

journey described

not

we

know

most

are

we do

likely to experience

know

not

down upon our own

to greater

meaning-

will not hurt us; in-

hurts us deeply and, like

then blindly pull the temple

To bring each of us

men in their lives. The mascumany perils. The rigors and tasks

to afflict the

not true that what

we do

to

useful in understanding that strange

passages,

identify are those

deed, what

men

of

in private,

growing conversation with each

him- or herself

may be

ambivalence which seems line

worked through

the description of the struggle with the mother

complex, for example,

we can

in order to

The imagos consciously and uncon-

other, will also help to heal the world's I

other.

awareness and to further the dialogue

for healing.

individual suffering, but the

and

how women

draws on the work of many

to greater

wound

oppress them, and almost

sciously governing our lives can only be

grief

wounded. The

to repeatedly

often puzzle over

men who

could not but grow to hate

9

Samson, we

heads.

consciousness of male transits and

torments, I am obliged to tell male secrets. I reveal them so that women might better understand. Some of these secrets may be new to men themselves, though I seriously doubt that a single male reader

of this book will disagree that they point to his

own

ing,

isolated

and the

The

title

women,

fear,

and frightened

we may

heart. If

at least

we may

end the

carried in

not end the

wound-

isolation.

of this book alludes to the fact that men, as well as

shadow of

labor always under the heavy

conscious,

wounds he has

some

inherited

ideologies,

some

from family and ethnic group, some part

of the fabric of a nation's history and

an oppressive weight on the soul.

its

Men

mythic

soil.

labor under

it,

This shadow

is

oppressed and

10 Introduction blighted in

The

nine.

spirit.

The experience of

definitions of

what

it

weighty shadow

this

means

to

be a

many of men's

better qualities

man

satur-

and

roles

shaming and devaluing

expectations, competition and animosity, the

of

—male —

is

and capacities

lead to the

all

men

crushing weight. This burden has always been there, but today

of courage are beginning to question the necessity of living under Saturn was the

Roman god

god of generativity, he helped create other hand he ries.

His

was associated with

eariier,

his children for

civilization;

a string of dark

Greek incarnation, Cronus, was

he feared their potential; legend

on the

and bloody

bom

sto-

of the male

tells

us he

was "the

devise shameful actions."^ His wife Gaia fashioned a sickle

and induced Cronus

bom fearsome

birth to Aphrodite,

Cronus struck and severed

to attack his father.

From

his father's phallus.

were

eariy

it.

the one hand, as a

Uranus and the female principle Ge or Gaia. Uranus hated

principle

first to

On Roman

of agriculture.

the drops of blood that

giants.

whose name means "bom of the

Cronus-Satum replaced

fell

on the earth

The sperm-flecked, fecundated sea gave his father

foam.'"^

and became a tyrant of equal

magnitude. Whenever he and his consort Rhea produced children, he ate them.

The only

child

who evaded

Zeus led a revolt against the father and a 2^us's triumph to the

rity

the

Cronus-Satum story

—violence

to the principle

As Jung once

noted,

the great capacity for its

civilizing forces

power complex and became

Thus

earth.

many

corruption in the

^ Crowell's

emerged, but he, too,

of eros, to generativity and to the

where power

empowerment

is,

love

pp.

is

is

not.^

Along with

gods dramatize,

that the

Classical Literature, p.

Edith Hamilton, Mythology,

prey

one of power, jealousy, insecu-

power complex. Power

Handbook of

fell

tyrannical.^ is

^ Ibid., p. 41. ^ His oppression of Prometheus and others

^

was Zeus. In tum, ten-year war ensued. With

this fate

we

see

in itself is neutral, but

109.

well

known. See,

for

instance,

75-78.

"Where love

reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power paramount, love is lacking." ("The Problem of the Attitude -Type," Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 7, par. 78) [CW refers to The Collected Works of C.G. Jung] is

CW

Introduction

without eros

it

is

to violent ends.

11

haunted by fear and compensatory ambition, driven

As Shakespeare

observed, "Uneasy hes the head that

wears a crown."'^

Most men through this

history have

grown up under

shadow of

the

Satumian legacy. They have suffered from the corruption of em-

fear, wounding themselves and others. Modmen may feel there are no alternatives, that Saturn's legacy is the em only game in town. I don't believe it is. Under Saturn 's Shadow is offered to the reader in order to identify some of the many ways in which this dark mythos has scarred our souls. My hope is that it might move each person to look within

powerment, driven by

and

to

seek greater personal freedom.

The Eight 1.

Men's

Secrets

lives are as

Men Carry

much governed by

Within

restrictive role ex-

pectations as are the lives of women. 2. 3.

Men's lives are essentially governed by fear. The power of the feminine is immense in

the psychic

economy of men. 4.

Men

collude in a conspiracy of silence

whose aim

is

to

suppress their emotional truth. 5.

Because men must leave Mother, and transcend the

mother complex, wounding 6.

Men's

lives are violent

is

necessary.

because their souls have been

violated. 7.

Every

man

carries a

deep longing for

his father

and for

his tribal Fathers. 8. If

men

are to heal, they

must

did not receive from without.

'^

Henry IV

part 2, scene 3, line 31.

activate within

what they

1

The Saturnian Legacy: Tapes, Roles, Expectations

"Man

is

bom free,

and everywhere he

is in

chains."

Thus began Jean

Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right, in 1762.

and

health,

We all are bom

and then

their parents

and

life

bearing the gerai of wholeness

free,

happens. Since children are dependent upon

their culture for the fulfillment

are quickly estranged

from

that natural being.

of basic needs, they

We are all

socialized to

serve and maintain the collective, family stmctures and social institutions that

have a

life

of their

own but require

the repeated sacrifice of

the individual to sustain them. In the texture of our bones, in the fabric of our nerves, in the cor-

ridors of

the

a

memory, we

carry that precious child

young James Agee, did not

summer night, and wonder at

ing the large questions before

lie

the mystery of it?

Who

still.

of us, like

out on the grass, under the stars of

"We

it all,

are talking

evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that successfully disguised to myself as a child. "^

As

the child intuit-

now I

of

summer

lived there so

the big folk

came

out after dinner, adjusted the bell spray of the sprinkler, rocked on the creaking

porch swing, the child

we were

drifted off into reverie

until,

Sleep, soft smiling, draws

me

unto her: and those receive me,

who

one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me

quietly treat me, as will not, oh, will

who

I

am.^

Agee's remembrance of things past each of us

^A 9

Death

Ibid.,

p.

—

the

wonder of being on

in the Family,

p.

11.

15.

12

is

this

replicated in the lives of

spinning earth, the vague

The Saturnian Legacy 13 angst-laden mists that hover about the path into the future and

joy of

life

coursing through our veins.

heaviness, the

body ache,

bone? What happened in

and

in the

work.

to

lives

but

to that child, afraid

gossamer dreams

He

still,

did

it

Why the

go?

and

the soul fatigue, the ennui of brain

moments of spontaneity,

still

And where

in "a lonely

that slip

of

full

itself?

the

still

He

lives

impulse of delight,"!^

from awareness as we head off

but very deep within, and he

is

weary and

heavily laden with the Saturnian shadow.

me

Let ther

with a personal example. Once in awhile

illustrate

would laugh, or make

came

a joke, or even whistle.

when he

to realize that

however, even then,

I

Even

good

his

when he

as a child

whistled

it

was not joy time but dark

efforts notwithstanding,

to the Great

I

knew

lost his

The

which he responded then and

for the rest of his

Later,

day

at

when

I

time. All

business in agricultural equipment due

'29.

interests

began

things were difficult.

west even before the crash of

own

I

his formal education in the eighth grade

Depression and the failure of the farms that

to sacrifice his

I

recognized an heroic impulse on his part. To

My father had had to end because his father had

fa-

whistled things were very dark indeed;

invoke the clich6, he was whistling in the dark. After awhile to realize that

my

and work

clear

message life,

to

hit the

Mid-

my father,

was

that

to

he had

to support his people.

entered the picture as the elder child, he worked

all

Allis-Chalmers on the assembly line building tractors and

earth-moving equipment, and on nights and weekends he drove a

was

truck and shoveled coal into people's homes. In later years he

promoted, line,

ironically, to the position

with the power to

had screwed up. In

He could analyze For

fifty

tell

his years there

the problems

years he

of "analyst" on the assembly

college-educated engineers where they

he had learned the whole system.

and became a trouble-shooter.

showed up every Friday with

paid, or almost paid, the bills outstanding.

as

my

best friend Kent sometimes did, but

10 W.B. Yeats,

lected

"An

Poems of

Irish

W.B.

I

We

paycheck

knew even

Airman Foresees His Death,"

Yeats.

his

that

never went hungry,

line

then that

11,

in

my

The Col-

14 The Saturnian Legacy father worried that

we would. And I

my

also received

message from him, clearly and irrevocably,

first

man meant to

be a

that to

Saturnian

work always, any work which supported those for whom one was responsible. It meant that personal satisfaction was set aside before fidelity to that enormous responsibility. Years later, work.

It

when I

meant

woman

a

"Here

said,

to

asked

one

lies

this injunction that

and

to

me what I wanted inscribed on my tombstone, who could be counted upon." So powerful was

my

father,

be memorialized for

Years

later,

and

later

was prepared

I,

when I wrote

a note to

my

so well because

on

father

he responded across the gulf between us:

know you boys

to die for

it,

it.

"I

am

his birthday card,

sorry

didn't get to

I

was always working." He was

I

taking on the blame for us growing and developing apart, even as

honored him for

thought

ill

it

meant

to

knew:

I

to us.

I

knew he was

worrying on our behalf, and

of him for his work. But

him. Even then

what

and service

his fidelity

us, suffering for us,

it

also

I

knew

that

I

it

I

serving

never once

did not serve

was

did not serve him, but apparently that

be a man.

During these same formative years Worid War Two was unfolding.

I

saw

the big folk gathered anxiously around the radio to hear of

battles raging in

ones

who were

ball-turret

Europe and the South in

Pacific,

and

on loved

to think

such strange places as Tulagi, Mindanao and

of a B-17

tail

gunner. (All of them did

come

the

back; the

twenty-four year old returned from the Philippines with his hair tally

white and the

The black-out

tail

gunner with a piece of flak

curtains, tearful

obvious anxiety, contributed to ful transpiring,

something

in

good-byes

overheard them whispering atrocity family

who

national

in his leg.)

in train stations, the

my sense of something large and

which we were stories,

to-

all

caught up.

I

awalso

such as the one about the

received a postcard from their son delivered by the Inter-

Red Cross. Under

the

stamp was

written,

"They cut

my

tongue out." Whether such stories were always true or not, the adults

around

me believed they were. That was enough for me. my second irrefutable message about

This constituted

man.

I

firmly believed that

my

fate,

apart from being an

being a

economic

The Saturnian Legacy

was

animal,

place and

grow up and become

to

kill

or be killed, or

awake

nights imagining

Just as

all

my

of the big people

come home

tortured

war times shudders

tainty.

As

a child in the

some

to

foreign

and maimed.

I

lay

fated appointment with such horrors.

who

lived through the Great Depression

were irrevocably scarred and apprehensive, calls

go

a soldier, to

15

anyone who

so, too,

Midwest

I

was

as far

re-

and the uncer-

in recollecting the horror

from the slaughtered

cities as

one could imagine, but the combat zones were everywhere

and we

all

were

afraid.

had not even heard of such places as

I

Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen then, but when adult

I

them with

visited

was something

to

my

children.

was not

It

worry about and as a

man I was

I

was an

paranoia; there

all

expected to be

re-

sponsive and responsible. Such were the heaviest of the tapes of

"W's" one might

Saturn, then, the three

men

All

incidents

will recall similar experiences.

where he

Each

war and worry.

will

be able to

something larger than

called to

felt

comprehend. Pulled ineluctably ately

say: work,

relate

his capacity to

into the maelstrom, the child desper-

hopes for information, for modeling, for leadership, for

struction, for help in

in-

coping with that which will shortly confront

and perhaps overwhelm him.

If

one

is

undertake such

to

the

trials,

youth desperately hopes that "they" will take him aside and teach him

what he needs I

recall

to

know.

once glimpsing such mysteries as

survive as a man.

My

I

felt

I

hand and without expression of any kind pulled that

perhaps the big folk did not feel pain as

rather suspected he

had been taught

desperately needed. Perhaps

day "they" would take guessed that

it

needed

father caught a fishhook in the

me

it

it

out.

that mysterious

me how

aside and teach

called puberty,

I

to

his

surmised

I

folk did, but

little

was not too much

might occur when one went

knowing about something

we

in order to

palm of

courage

hope to

that

I

so

some

be a man.

to high school.

I

I

Without

could see that the folks in

high school had bigger bodies than we, that they seemed on the adult side of the great gulf. But, to feel to this day, "they"

means

to

be a

my

surprise,

never took

me

and a disappointment

aside and told

man or how to conduct myself as an adult.

me what

I it

The Saturnian Legacy

16

Today, of course,

know what

did not

I

know means

it

that "they," the tribal elders of

be a

to

man

either.

They

our time,

were

similarly

and could hardly pass on the mysteries and liberating

uninitiated

knowledge they themselves lacked. In

my own

halting fashion,

1

had tumbled

to the necessity

of

of passage from childhood to manhood. Not only are such

about transition from the dependencies of infancy to the

rites rites

self-suffi-

ciency of adulthood, but equally about the transmission of such val-

ues as the quality and character of citizenship, and those attitudes and beliefs that connect a person to his gods, to his society self.

"It

Yet such

rites

and

to

him-

of passage withered and passed away long ago.

has often been said," notes Mircea Eliade, "that one of the charac-

teristics rites

of the

modem world is

the disappearance of any meaningful

of initiation."^^ Even the phrase

"rite

of initiation" or

may not be understood in our time. Ante is a movement in and toward depth.

"rite

of

passage"

Rites are not invented;

they are found, discovered, experienced, and they rise out of

The purpose of

archetypal encounter with depth.

which the

enacts

rite

is

to lead into or

back toward

some aa

the symbolic

that experience of

depth. Obviously rites repeated can lose their capacity to point be-

yond themselves

into that depth,

and they then become empty and

Yet our need for the depth encounter persists. In "The

sterile.

bolic Life,"

Jung speaks of how important

it is

Sym-

for a tribe of Pueblo

Indians to see their rituals as instrumental in helping the sun to

rise.

That gives peace, when people feel that they are living the symbolic that they are actors in the divine drama.

life,

meaning it.

A

one

to

human

life;

career, producing of children, are

thing, that

your

life is

Without meaningful to the soul

—

life

sential, for all

^^ Rites

everything else

rites

is

That gives the only

banal and you can dismiss

all

maya compared with

that

meaningful.^^

we sustain

the

most grievous of wounds

without depth. The idea oi passage

is

similarly es-

passages imply something ending, a death of sorts,

and Symbols of

12 The Symbolic Life,

Initiation,

CW

p.

ix.

18, par. 630.

The Saturnian Legacy

and something beginning, a birth of principle of hfe transit if

we

is

change, and

Only death

we have many

the

is static;

deaths and rebirths to

are to lead meaningful lives. ^^ Initiation implies entry

something new, something mysterious.

into

Given the our culture,

fact that rites it

rites offered.

now

of passage have largely disappeared from

behooves men For what

to reflect as individuals

on what those

not available through our culture

is

we

are

obliged to find for ourselves. Despite the variety of cultures,

and specific

local content, the archetypal stages of

sage were remarkably similar. tuited the ity,

sorts.

1

It

seems

rites

of pas-

our predecessors had

in-

importance of such separations and evolutions of personal-

and they collectively grasped

sary.

that

such

The

were neces-

that these processes

and decisiveness of such

duration, intensity

rites

were

direct proportion to the difficulty of truly leaving childhood

growing up. As few

in

grow

up,

it

may

profit us to reflect awhile

on the stages of initiatory experience. Again, what is left

and

our culture have managed, psychologically

speaking, to separate, to

by our culture

in

to us to

do as

individuals.

is

We

not provided us

cannot avoid the

task through ignorance, for otherwise the developmental process,

becoming a man, remains undone.

Those patterns of passage may be summarized While the content of each stage varied according

in six stages.

to local

custom, the

stages themselves were explicit or implied in the various cultural patterns.

The

first

stage of passage

from the parents

was never night,

in order to

separation, physical separation

begin the psychological separation. This

a matter of choice for the boy. Often, in the middle of the

he would be "kidnapped" from his parents by the gods or the

demons, the older men of the faces.

was

tribe

who wore masks

or painted their

These masks moved them from the familiar realm of neighbors

or uncles to the status of gods or archetypal forces.

The abruptness,

even violence, of the separation, was a reminder

that

no youth would

voluntarily relinquish the comforts of the hearth.

Its

warmth, protec-

^^ See

my

book, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife.

The Saturnian Legacy

18

and nourishment create an enormous gravitational

tion

main by the

hearth, literally or figuratively,

is

to

To

pull.

re-

remain a child and

to

forswear one's potential as an adult. Accordingly, the second stage of the passage was death. The boy

would be literal

be

some

buried, passed through a dark tunnel, plunged into

or symbolic darkness. While the experience would of course

terrifying,

what the youth was undergoing was the symbolic death

He was experientially suffering the loss of home again." It was the loss of innocence,

of childhood dependency. the hearth.

"You

can't go

the loss of the Edenic connectedness of childhood. In "dying," the child

"wakes

to the

farm forever fled from the childless land," as

Dylan Thomas expressed If

there

is

death, then,

it.^"^

must follow. So, the

life

third stage

ceremony oi rebirth. Sometimes a name change accompanied birth, reinforcing the

Roman

its

return to

Catholic confirmation and Jewish bar

and bat mitzvahs are survivors of these historic

The

a

emergence of a new being. (Christian baptism

obviously symbolizes such a death-rebirth motif through the umbilical waters.

was

this re-

rites.)

fourth stage of initiation typically involved the teachings, im-

parting such knowledge as the youth

would

require in order to func-

tion as

an adult. The teachings were of three different kinds. Practical

skills,

such as hunting, fishing, defense and herding were

for the nascent

privileges

man was

and

similarly transmitted.

mysteries, so that the tual

to help sustain

and protect

responsibilities of adulthood

And,

lastly, there

critical,

his society.

was an

introduction to the

young person might have some sense of

grounding and participation in the transcendent realm.

our gods?" "What sort of society, laws, ethics,

bestow?" Locating the person

in a

The

and citizenship were

spiri-

"Who

are

spirit gifts,

did they

mythic context bestowed

identity,

gave a sense of the greater framework

in

which he

participated,

and

deepened the soul of the youth.

The

fifth

stage might be characterized as the ordeal.

the practices might vary, but the

14

"Fern

Hill," in

Collected Poems,

boy was required

p.

180.

The content of

to suffer a separa-

The Saturnian Legacy tion

from the comforts and protections of the hearth.

more about cruelty

was

this later,

in fact a

modems

but what strikes us

much

will say

I

19

as gratuitous

wise perception that such suffering quickened

comes from

consciousness. Consciousness only

some form of suffering

—

suffering; without

physical, emotional, spiritual

—we

are con-

tent to rest easy in the old dispensation, the old comforts, the old de-

pendencies.

The second reason

for such suffering, frankly,

help inure the boy to the actual rigors of

soon enough. While seeming barbarous cumcision and

ritual scarification

life

to us,

was

to

he would experience

such practices as

cir-

not only signaled the sacrifice of

the comforts of the flesh

and childhood dependencies, but were also

a sign of election into the

company of initiated

adults.

Perhaps most significantly, the ordeal usually involved some form of isolation, a retreat to a sacred space away from the community.

The

essential part of being

an adult means not only that one can no

longer turn backward to the protection of others, but that one must learn to

he

is

draw upon inner resources. No one knows he has them

obliged to use them.

The

natural world

dark and

is

until

of

full

strange animals and demons, and the confrontation with one's fear a

moment of decisive

to a central truth, that

the journey alone within, or

months tion to

we

significance. Ritual isolation

no matter how

and must learn

to

tribal

depend on

his wits, his

we

life,

Often the

are

on

name

initiate

spent

Dream, a communica-

alone, waiting perhaps for the Great to his true

an introduction

draw strength and solace from

will not achieve adulthood.

from the gods as

is

our social

is

or proper vocation.

He

learned

courage and his weapons, or he perished.

Upon

returriy

the last stage, the

These

rituals

of passage were elaborate, wisely so, for they were

boy was an

extensive in direct relationship to the

namely the enormous

pull

adult.

power of

toward dependency

the

and powerful emotional experiences are required ertial gravity.

No one

in his right

mother complex,

in all

to

mind would

of

us.

Elaborate

overcome

hence lethargy, fear and dependency dominate, or threaten lives

of us

boys than

all.

In traditional cultures the rites

for girls, for girls

were expected

this in-

willingly separate, to, the

were more elaborate

for

to leave their personal

.

20 The Saturnian Legacy mothers but

back

circle

to the hearth. ^^

Again, the

rites

of separation

were decisive and powerful for boys, not only because of the power of the mother complex but because boys were expected to separate

from the natural world, the

of

life

an

instinct, for

artificial,

man-made

world of culture.

Economics, for example, paychecks, stock options

man's

Food

life

these are concepts

depends and upon which much of

in the

mouth or hunger

checks or bonuses are tual

—

a wholly artificial construct.

is

back

settle

sary, then, to bridge the

powerful as his

the traditional rites of passage

was neces-

huge gulf between childhood and adulthood,

instinctual life

self-sufficiency of

at least as

instinc-

into unconsciousness.

The elaborateness of between boyish

wampum,

To separate a child from the

world requires a numinous construct

urge to

upon which much of his soul is projected.

are instinctual experiences;

artificial.

Money,

manhood.

and dependency and the independent If

boy experi-

the rites worked, the

enced an existential change; he died as one being and became another. But, as tential

feel like a

all

know, such

man?" chances

threatening.

define

we

rites

today are missing, such exis-

transformation driven underground.

what

He it

will

means

to

we

ask a man, '*Do you

are he will consider the question silly or

know

sured up to any of his

If

his roles, but

he will neither be able to

be a man, nor will he

own

he has mea-

likely feel

partial definitions. In short, the

wise

el-

ders are gone, lost to death, depression, alcoholism or corporate

boardrooms and golden parachutes. The bridge from childhood

manhood is washed out. As men have no meaningful wise elders to transmit what sarily

had

sentially

lies

to take their clues

of passage available to them, no

on the other

from

side, they

have neces-

societal role expectations

and

es-

hollow role models. All the while, the pain and confusion to

the soul is

^^

rites

to

pushed inward, or acted out

Today the gender expectations

for girls

have exploded and

women

Thus they too need

from

are in-

of passage into adulthood. See, for instance, Sylvia Brinton Perera, Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women. creasingly

free

to

pursue

violently, or distanced

differentiated

lives.

rites

The Saturnian Legacy 21

wisdom and

consciousness. Accordingly, the gap between

ence has been

women

true for

Hence that

as well,

seldom feed the

soul.

the first of the great secrets to be openly

men 's

lives

lives are

as

of women. And

experi-

by outer images, images which, as has been

filled in

much governed by

the corollary

acknowledged

role expectations as are the

do not support,

that those roles

is

is

confirm or resonate to the needs of men's souls. It is

growing awareness of

the

role expectations is

called the

this terrible

and the needs of the soul

discrepancy between

that has

given

men's movement. While no representative

body has emerged (such as

rise to

what

institution or

the National Organization for

Women),

nor has there evolved a clear socio-political agenda, the scattered

men's groups and growing body of awareness that something

movement It's

is

succinctly

is

literature attest to the stirring

terribly

wrong. The need for such a

summarized by John Lee:

an emotional movement, a releasing of the pain and poison

have been holding

in their collective

power oriented

any way, but powerful

in

younger than women. Don't Don't rock the boat. Don't bill

I

in that

it

men not

It is

men and

frees

Die

feel.

Don't grieve. Don't get angry.

talk.

trust other

men. Don't put passion before

paying. Follow the crowd, not your bliss."^^

concur entirely with these sentiments. However, the shadow of

power

inevitably creeps

into

something wild and very deep;

join a group,

would

criticize

those

risk

men have still,

rightly felt a longing

the average

meeting out

feel ridiculous

drum, and will seldom

When

any group, any movement.

overly socialized and domesticated, for

stomachs for centuries.

from the tyranny of the old paradigm of "Don't

their spirits

of

man

will never

in the forest to beat a

being vulnerable with other men.

who have gone into

the forest

I

do not

and wept and raged and

beat the drum, for they have frequently found something needed for their souls.

At the same time such

term relevance as bra burning

women ^^ At

My

activity

now

may have

as

much

long-

occupies in the long march of

toward dignity and equal opportunity. Bra burning was an

Father's Wedding, p. xviii.

The Saturnian Legacy

22

important emotional release, for a few at

more

energies are

working toward

We

are

still

and many

will

nostalgia,

at

to find a

up

even as

We

form of emotional release and a way

son

in

Santa Fe where he

and

living

is

We drove up into the Jemez Mountains, so out on us. We saw owls, deer and two very

artist.

on

When we

a rock.

we

got closer

realized

had legs and two predators were munching on a moose.

from

far

We

suspect that future generations will

impact on the course of history.

my

visited

snowed they would thaw.

I

to

—

little

that the road ran

were

in

man retreats with a sort of bemused we think of the communes of the sixties well in-

large black birds sitting that the rock

and

of wild

this era

struggling to be an far

such

an early stage of understanding men's experience

have

I

my mind

effectively spent in discussion, in court

tended, but having

Recently

but to

cultural change.

share their pain with others. But

look back on

least,

and we joked

civilization

also find the bodies of

that if

two Anglos

returned to the Santa Fe plaza with the

it

suddenly

in the spring

warm

feeling of

having had a primal adventure.

my

Crossing the street

me

and introduced about what

I

son saw a leader of the local men's group

to him.

knew,

Immediately the

who I knew,

if I

man began

quizzing

had drummed, and so on.

I

me felt

myself pulled, involuntarily, into a competitive mood. Then, quite nicely,

he invited

me

to attend a

name-changing ceremony for two

men reaching their fiftieth birthday

the next day.

When

I

said

had

I

to

out of Albuquerque to Atlantic City at 7:30 the next morning, he

fly

said, "I'll

throw a

fast

one

at

you now.

Why

do you spend so

little

time with your son?" I

began

classic I

to say that

I

had

to get

male defense (and also

had finished, saying, "This

"Oh, okay," the

My son and consciousness

I

man

said,

reflected

this

man

for

it;

reality), is

to

but

work

my

to

pay the

bills,

a

son interceded before

his third visit to see

me

this year."

and we parted.

on the encounter and noted how, for

all

the

professed to have, he had negatively charged

me up to feel competitive and I to shame me as a father. He was operating,

the meeting with male issues. fell

back

then he sought

He

set

The Saturnian Legacy 23 I

believe, without conscious malice,

and

may

I

indeed be guilty of

compulsive working and be less than the perfect us

into the trap long prepared for

fell

pose of the men's movement

men against each other, In this duel at high

change

that lasted

fired at

to reinforce these old

reflexes.

not the pur-

complexes,

to set

noon on the plaza fired

in

Santa Fe, no six-guns

and wounds suffered

in

an ex-

as far as memory. A "movement" had, in welcoming me, his complex was triggered and he set

240 seconds but reached back

me up, me in ways

me. Sizing

that stir old passions, old competitive

Then, subtly the shadow problem of power insinuated

and he sought

aimed

is

it

a leader of the

about questioning

self,

men. Surely

as he unwittingly had.

were drawn, but shots were

man who was

both of

father, but

to set

to

him one

shame me

me one down. Imbued

up,

it-

as an absent father. His question as he surely

was

with the precepts of the men's movement, the search for release from

such games, he nonetheless triggered them.

The exchange between us might seem innocuous, and perhaps

make

too

much of

it,

but

I

I

think a slow motion replay allows us to

see the role played by the unconscious, the complexes activated and the reflexive behaviors that is

tie

men

to no- win positions.

an emotionally charged cluster of energy

may

have the power

to temporarily take

Thus, the situation activated the

—

itself

when

We may

or

activated they

over the conscious personality.

two men meeting, sizing each other up

complexes and, against our conscious

out historically -charged roles. this

in the psyche.

not be aware of such psychic charges, but

A complex

On

we played men play out

intent,

the collective level,

competitive and shaming exchange daily, whether in academic or

corporate turf wars or on the high seas and battlefields. In sizing each other up, as

the

power complex

men do when

inevitably surfaces.

part of our psyche with

they meet, the

The shadow

shadow of

represents that

which we may be uncomfortable, or

disdain,

or that threatens ego intentions, but serves as a split-off part of the soul nonetheless.

of integrating

it,

Working with the shadow represents

for

ers or leak out in

what

is

the only

way

not integrated will be projected onto oth-

dangerous behavior. While the encounter of two

24 The Saturnian Legacy

men on the

of Santa Fe

streets

is

hardly an epic confrontation,

problem of power with

constellates the archetypal

all its

still it

attendant

and defenses.

fears

This leads us to the second male secret, that men's lives are essentially

governed by fear

Because men cannot undo what

influences them.

But the healing of a man

shamed by

feeling

women

his fear.

acknowledge

to

in his life is to risk feeling

So

how much

will require that

fear

he cease

have always admired the freedom of

I

their fears, to share

the support of others. For a

have assem-

fragile strength they

bled, they can scarcely admit to themselves or others

man

to so

them, and thereby reap

acknowledge the place of

unmanly and

to

fear

expect shaming by others.

his isolation deepens.

But

Even your women

this secret is out, fellows.

are

on

to you,

indeed they always have been. While researching this book, across an article in the nal:

"Men's Secret

March 1992

Fears:

What

found us out. In essence the fundamental ical

fears, the fear

or psychological

worries

The

I

Home Jour-

Never Tell You." So they have

article correctly identifies

(Notice the latent expression of the twin

is

the Saturnian

shadow

at its

most

—

competition, winners-losers, productivity as the measure

their family.

the fifth phase of the initiatory

trial,

men who doubt

expressed by

How many

films,

their ability to

to

Cape Fear, have

caveman

in us,

defender of the hearth? Indeed,

more

afraid of illness, incapacity

than of death. face of

—

When I have said as much to it

invariably

afraid of the

trial,

men have nodded any of

its

—on

the log-

more frightening than

their heads. Yes, they are

of failing the ordeal, than of death

tence, powerlessness in

many men

and impotence

an audience

absurd, for what could be

rites, is

defend themselves and

from Straw Dogs

confide that they are

stirred this

death?

men's two

of not measuring up and the fear of phys-

measuring up

of manhood. The fear of

ical

came

discovered in childhood, work and war).

fear of not

obvious

trial.

issue of, yes. Ladies

He'll

I

forms,

is

itself.

more

Impo-

worse than annihilation.

Work, war and worry.

Governed as he

is

by

fear,

unable to admit

this to

himself

lest his

The Saturnian Legacy 25 hold on things

unable to share with his comrades

slip,

shamed, a man compensates. The

man who

big house, or big position with a big

some degree over others

for

may

how

plex

No

animal

is

was

ened. Perhaps Freud ual,

that

great American

late

"Thems what

it,

thinks they

the complex; beneath the

is

more dangerous than one

right

when he

said that

or Adler in giving primacy to power, for

all

when

that

is,

com-

fright-

is

things were sex-

eros

is

injured

it

gambit of power.

resorts to the

The power complex drives

surely compensating to

Upscale lunches and power

empowerment. As

Beneath displays of power

lies fear.

title, is

feels.

philosopher Pearl Bailey expressed ain't."

boasts of his big car, or

serve an edifice complex, but they are pathetic sub-

for genuine

stitutes

small he

he be

lest

is

men.

the central force in the lives of

them and wounds them. Out of

their rage they

wound

It

others,

and out of their sorrow and shame they grow more and more distant

from each

bihtating

The

other.

and

repetitive

The cost of this mutual wounding is enormous, Whatever is unconscious is internalized in de-

cyclic.

ways or projected onto

cost of these

governed by

two

others and acted out destructively.

is

men's

secrets, that

role expectations as

ruled by fear,

men and

first

women's, and

that

the pathology of our society.

American men

women. They

are four times

be substance abusers and also four times more

rage,

lives.

male sadness, male

The men's movement is

die,

on the av-

more

likely to

likely to take their

plumb

is

a

welcome response I

Aaron

male

to this suffering,

would not demean But

I

the desire of

believe that ultimately

change comes through the individual. Sharing has is

the depth of

space where they might gather together to share

initiatory, life-deepening experiences.

sonal change

jail.^'^

isolation.

both obvious and hidden.

men to create a safe

^^ See

are secretly

They are eleven times more likely to spend time in

these statistics do not even begin to

which

men

rather easy to discern in the sufferings of individual

erage, eight years before

own And

much

lives are as

primary.

Kipnis, Knights without Armor,

pp.

16ff.

its

place, but per-

26 The Saturnian Legacy Marxists have rightly critiqued the capitalist social structure most of us have grown up serving. Karl Marx, in itarian

who saw

my

view, was a

and subsequently ours, and ex-

the evils of his day,

pressed not only his rage but his vision of the alternative

however, his vision

less society. Sadly,

the

pogroms and

human-

is

—

the class-

repudiated by the gulags,

the thousand reminders that

whosoever ignores the

worth and weight of the individual will only create a new tyranny. In

Marx

seeking to improve the material status of man, at the same time

devalued his spiritual status and thus created an edifice that would ultimately collapse.

As we were told two thousand

we do

years ago,

not live by bread alone. Therefore, although valuing social action, tions

end by serving

their

own

men's movement,

three are gathered, there too

Accordingly, this book

women who

is

is

know

that all institu-

survival and not the cause for

they were founded. Similarly, although intentions of the

I

I

I

also

which

value the necessity and the

know

that

wherever two or

shadow of power.

the

written for individual

men and

for the

stand in relationship to them. Join groups, share with

other men, but

it is

in the

man must be bom.

modem

only through the capacity to discem what

It is

forces course within

smithy of the private soul that the

him

that will

determine a man's retum, or not,

to the organization, to the marriage, to the society at large, as part

of

the solution.

Jungian analyst James Hillman has recently criticized the long struggle for consciousness in an iconoclastic book. We've

Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and His point

is

valid, but

cacious than the

I

the

World

Is Getting

believe that group action can be no

sum of individual

Had

Worse.

more

consciousness brought to

a

it.

effi-

Men

of good will have created bureaucratic monsters and institutions to torture others,

spreading a terrible darkness. In his 1937 lectures at

made an indelible point: shadow consciously, for

Yale Jung

of the

such a

and

if

man knows

that

he only learns

whatever

to deal

thing real for the world.

He

the

is

new man must bear the burden

wrong in the world is in himself, own shadow he has done some-

with his

has succeeded in shouldering at least an

The Sa turnian Legacy 2 7 infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social

problems of our

day. These problems are mostly so difficult because they are poi-

soned by mutual projections.

How

can anyone see straight when he

does not even see himself and the darkness he unconsciously carries with him into

all his

dealings? ^^

Thus, in the following pages,

I

invite individual

those forces that contend within them.

ourselves society

is

is

What we do

men

projected onto our surroundings, and so the

the aggregate of

what

is

unconscious

to reflect

on

not understand in

in

sum

each of

of our us. In

show how we are all personally affected by the same issues. The more fully we understand how we relate inwardly to the feminine, the more able are we to disentangle the skein of relationship with an actual woman. In understanding the necessary wounding of our sensibilities, we can sharing the dreams and dilemmas of individual men,

suffer the world's monstrous pathologies without

I

become monsters

ourselves. In acknowledging our deep hunger for the tribal fathers,

we can more us

The

roles

all.

We

nearly parent ourselves.

and expectations, the shadow of Saturn,

can continue to blame "them"

invented and institutionalized

change.

We can

all

of

rest heavily

on

—those who mysteriously —but then nothing

will

this

no longer wait for something

to

change "out

there,"

we must change ourselves. AH we men often have trouble internalizing our

even with a men's movement afoot;

change

starts within,

experience.

So

but

the task

is difficult,

but

it is

far preferable to living

forever under Saturn's shadow.

18 "Psychology and Religion," Psychology

and

Religion,

CW

11, par.

140.

2

Dragon Dread: The Inner and Outer Woman

The Greeks thought of Eros

as a god, oldest

the gods, at the beginning of

all

and yet youngest of

all

things and ever-renewing, ever-

emergent. Eros driven underground becomes rage, and great violence ensues. Eros differentiated builds cathedrals and writes

phonies.

We

have too narrowly confined the work of

the bounds of sexuality. Surely he

by forces deeper than

is

this

present there, but

we

sym-

god within are

moved

more mysterious than

sex, longer than love,

the beloved.

One

of the best places to discern what Blake called "the lineaments

of desire"i9

is in

the poet.

And

perhaps no

modem poet

has taken us

deeper than Rainer Maria Rilke. In his third "Duino Elegy" Rilke tracks the dark presences that course within to the

men, contrasting songs

beloved with "that hidden guilty river-god of the blood":

How he devoted himself— Loved what was this

Loved.

.

inner in him, the wilderness of within,

whose mute topple

jungle inside him, upon

his heart stood, light-green.

Loved. Left

it,

leapt

beyond his own roots into enormous origin, where his little birth was already outlived. Loving, he had his descent into an older blood, into ravines, where what was dreadful lay, still fat with the fathers.

And everything terrible

knew

Yes, what

him, blinked, appeared informed.

was

horrible smiled.

.

Seldom

How should

he not love

He

it,

since

it

smiled

before you, for even then, as

dissolved in the water that

^^

.

have you smiled so tenderly, mother.

"A Question Answered,"

in

at

him.

loved

you carried him,

makes what

is

it

it

was

sprouting

light.

The Norton Anthology of Poetry,

28

p.

508.

Dragon Dread 29 See,

we don't

mounts

love, as flowers do, out of a

where we

single year; into

immemorial sap

love,

our arms.^^

The man sees

the beloved, but can her visage alone so deeply stir?

Behind her stands

mother who made harmless "the nightly

his caring

frightening room." Yet even she serves to front for, mediate, the

deeper presence of "the torrents of ancestry." derness of within," the "jungle inside."

"where what was dreadful

lay,"

He

Down

senses "the wil-

there,

he knows,

something waits and smiles

at

This primal encounter lives eternally in the soul of man, fear

and tenderness.

The beloved

the veins. is

not

only

its

When we stirs

still

him. full

of

love, then, timeless juices rise through

and activates

all this

fear

and

desire, but

carrier.

Rilke intuitively grasped

what Jung has described,

that life

is

en-

acted on three levels simultaneously: consciousness, the personal un-

conscious and the archetypal or collective unconscious.

much

consciousness

is

so hard

won and

because

But the ego, the center of consciousness, an immense ocean.

when we

vest

haps, that peating:

We

all

know

it

is

constitutes the

known.

a thin wafer floating on

this, intuitively

and

experientially,

sleep or are stormed by uncontrollable complexes. But

seldom give

sufficient

what we do not know

will not hurt us. This is

what we do not know, controls

Beneath ego consciousness

member them but

they

lies

is

is

the personal unconscious, the

is

birth.

We may

Of

all

how large the original how long its influence,

the experiences of

is

sum

not re-

the realm of the personal

a function of

most important we ever have

re-

an emotionally charged experience,

load, as in the case of a trauma, or

case of a relationship.

worth

us.

remember us. This

complexes. Again, a complex

power of which

we

weight to what courses within, thinking, per-

of those things that have transpired since our

the

We

significance in our status as conscious beings, perhaps because

life,

affective

as in the

normally the

of our mother. Certainly other expe-

riences and relationships have an influence, but typically the experi-

^ Duino

Elegies,

p.

47.

30 Dragon Dread ence of the mother

psychologically determinative.

is

The personal mother is

the source

from which we emerge, having

shared her blood, floated in her amniotic seas and resonated to her

Even after some way every

we

neurological network.

separation,

reconnection. In

act of life thereafter is eros seeking

reflexively long for

reconnection through other objects of desire, through sublimation, or

even through projection onto the cosmos

from Latin

gion,

religare,

(hence the word

itself

reli-

"to bind back to or reconnect with").

Moreover the personal mother

the protector, nourisher

is

and primary

mediator between the fragile child and the larger world. (As Rilke

She

noted, she mediates the darkness of the child's imaginal terrors.) is

the Primal Object standing over us, around us, and between us and

the world. Is

it

any wonder

that her significance

looms so large?

One's mother incarnates and models the archetype of fathers contribute their

chromosomal

heritage, the

life.

mother

is

Though

the place

of origin, locus of parturition and omphalos of our world. Such "torrents of ancestry" are entrusted to the fragile vessel of a single

person, a

woman, who phenomenologically communicates who,

tery of life itself and

and the

child,

embodies

life force.

by

the child

all

in the specific relationship

The mother's biochemistry

in utero, the treatment

human

and how we are

life

emerged from

—

her is

we

the

of

being.

How we

we

are related to those origins

comprehend ourselves and our place

in the cos-

Not

share most of our early, formative days and years with

more so

replicated

still

to

own

the primordial seas, so

are initially construed through the mother-child encounter.

only do

to

his mother, her affirmations or denials of his person-

emerged from umbilical waters.

mos

mys-

messages about our relationship

sorts of

hood, are primal messages to boys about their Just as

the

between mother

if

fathers are distant or not there at all

by teachers and other caretakers who

primarily female.

Hence

the

in

—but her

major influx of information

ceive about themselves, and what

life is

about,

role

our culture are

men

re-

comes from woman.

Whence derives the third great secret men carry, namely that the power of the feminine is immense in the psychic economy of men. As one's personal mother is the bearer of the archetype of life, so

Dragon Dread 31

we

experience both a collective and a uniquely personal message.

The mother complex, is in

us

all. It is

that

is,

the affectively charged idea of mother,

experienced as the longing for warmth, connection

When

and nurturance.

one's

experience of

initial

needs, or largely so, one feels that one belongs in

life,

place where one will be nurtured and protected.

Where

experience of the

feminine was

racinated, disconnected.

large.

One's

entire

is

that here is a

the primal

conditional or painful, one feels de-

Such an ontological wound

body, burdens the soul and

met these

life

is

felt

in the

frequently projected onto the world at

Weltanschauung can derive from

this largely

un-

conscious, phenomenological "reading" of the world.

An example comes thia

was bom

in

to

mind of a woman

Germany during

logical mother, a gifted

I

saw

analytically.

Her

the early days of the war.

and sensitive

artist,

Cynbio-

committed suicide when

the child was two. Her biological father served in the Wehrmacht and was captured in North Africa. When he returned from captivity he

did not feel up to parenting and turned his daughter over to his wife's sister;

he died a year

later in a cycling accident.

The stepmother had only never bonded with her.

As

reluctantly accepted her sister's child

a child,

Cynthia

stole chocolate

from stores even though her family was upper middle

and

and toys

class.

When

she reached puberty Cynthia became severely anorexic and spent her

adolescence in various clinics and hospitals. in her thirties.

threatening.

Her eating disorder

I

met her when she was

persisted but

was no longer

life

She was now bulimic, binging on chocolates and vomit-

ing perhaps twice a week. She taught foreign languages in her

home

where she could control her environment and had had only a few brief, transient

About

ten

romantic relationships.

months

into therapy Cynthia

entered her apartment, stolen the doll she the street. In the

napper.

dream she

felt

dreamt

would give

tasks: 1)

make

the doll

love with a

fled

had

down

extreme anxiety and pursued the kid-

When she caught up with

the witch she tried to

back, but the witch refused. Cynthia pleaded and that she

that a witch

was holding and

back fat

if

buy the

doll

the witch replied

Cynthia would perform three

man, 2) deliver a public

lecture at

32 Dragon Dread Ziirich University,

and 3) go back to Heidelberg and have a sit-down The dream ended with Cynthia sadly ac-

dinner with her stepmother.

knowledging

would

consciously, she

This dream

mother

is

felt

at the three levels

tected her,

at

common symbol

As

which had,

example of how we

The

simultaneously.

who might

all

experience the

loss of her personal

of the negative mother and

it is

levels.

became

that existential angst

that experience of

a defense against

triple task

life,

later bulimia,

against risk and

was a projection of

onto food.

imposed by the witch, who

is

experienced as such

because she incarnates the destructive experience of Cynthia's

she

frozen.

is

trau-

A witch is

figuratively, stolen Cynthia's inner child, her doll.

a result her life

would represent

too,

also have nourished and pro-

both the personal and archetypal

commitment. Her anorexia, and

The

beyond her powers. So,

and the experience of a most ambivalent surrogate,

matized Cynthia

life

the performance of such tasks

intimidated by the tasks.

a compelling

mother, the loss of a father

a

knew

while she

that,

free her captive doll, they lay

a symbolic liberation of those areas

She was not

to

make

love with a

seek to overcome her estrangement from her repository of the archetype of nature. She

was

in her life

life,

where

man literally, but own body, the local

fat

to deliver a lecture in

order to overcome the agoraphobic defense against contacts with others.

And

she was to meet with the metonymical representative of

her wounding, the stepmother, over, of

mmer-mater wound might be Such child

is

a

dream represents

bom whole,

all

places, a meal,

the effort of the psyche to heal

but then

where the

healed.

is

wounded by

life

events,

itself.

The

each wound

spUtting off some natural truth and producing a concomitant strategy for survival.

known suffers.

how

Such a

split

and attendant

more popularly

as neurosis, the split between soul and society that each of us

Again, while the dream

is

the three levels of being are

initial

reflex is

that of a

woman,

it

illustrates well

engaged and carry the

trace of the

encounters with the mother world.

At the conscious

level

Cynthia lived a

life

of self-protection. At the

level of the personal unconscious, her eating disorder

was

a

symboHc

Dragon Dread 33 expression of her ambivalence toward food, the projection of the

mother-wound onto matter (from Latin mater, mother). At the archetypal level Cynthia suffered estrangement

others because the

The

nated.

first

from the body and from

encounters with the Other had been contami-

strategically

assembled reflexes that constituted her per-

immense importance of

sonality testify to the

the primal encounter

with the Other, that the personal mother, for good or

mediates.

ill,

Sadly, but inevitably, that relationship with the primal Other

paradigmatic for the child, fered to define both self

primal Other

is

more

the child will feel trusting of the

becomes

who expands upon the datum fate has and world. When the encounter with

of-

the

consistent and nurturant than Cynthia's was,

more grounded

in his or her

own

and more

reality

world around. As Freud once observed, the child

who

has the mother's devotion will feel invincible.^i But, alas, the devoted blessing of the mother can be a curse as well.

Many women have sought

their sons.

This

is

to live out their unlived life

the source of so

women,

jokes. In fairness to such

many "My

their

through

son, the Doctor"

animus development

inner masculine principle having to do with assertiveness,

—

the

compe-

—

empowerment has often been blocked by cultural gender limitations. Hence they have tried to live out their empowerment vitency and

cariously through their sons. result

that

The psychic

inflation in

men

from having a devoted mother can even drive them

by themselves they might never have

Jung suggested unlived

life

that

attained.^^ is

the

of the parent. Thus, the undeveloped animus of the

the hulking defensive in

may

to heights

perhaps the greatest burden for a child

mother often drives men,

zooms

that

silently,

unconsciously, to achieve.

Even

end mouths "Hi, Ma!" when the portacam

on him on the

sideline.

There

is

nothing intrinsically wrong

man motivated by a strong mother presence. Yet we must how and to what extent he leads his own life if he is carrying the

with the ask

^^ Ernest Jones, The Life

and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. 1, p. 8. ^^ See Mercedes Maloney and Anne Maloney, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, a study that traces the role of the mother in the lives of many fa-

mous men.

34 Dragon Dread

men are

projections of his parent. If

very

make conscious

least,

to

be liberated, they must,

the values they serve.

Behind such blind ambitions men are driven

power of our her

mother complex. Often the

the

own

life,

at the

has not developed her

woman who own animus,

her son under her psychic dominance. Let

ways by

in darker

me

the

has not lived tries to

keep

mention two worst-

case but factual examples.

A former colleague on a college campus early fifties, took in his

As

never married but, in his

mother who had been

bom in the

Old World.

she grew older she grew increasingly senile and wandered the

campus on her own. On two occasions she locked her arms hallway doors and blocked the entrance.

done

she replied, "I

this,

Sammy." She had managed married for the

first

am

When

keeping the

asked

why

from

girls

in the

she had

my

poor

her project very well and her son only

time a few months after her death. So great was

the enthrallment of the

complex

that a brilliant scholar

could not free his psyche until he was freed by

and teacher

fate.

Another man, who was having considerable

difficulties in his

marriage, finally mustered the strength to ask his mother to butt out

work out his relationship with his wife without He showed me her reply on a small piece of paper:

and allow him terference.

to

in-

Dear Son,

You

never know how you have broken your mother's heart. Of men who could have been your father, you will only have

will

the ten

one mother. have

I

do not have long for

this earth,

love,

Some day ter

I

hope

that

I

can

belongs.

Your Mother

there will be a Mother's Hall of

It

Fame

hits all the buttons: guilt for ruining

tion, denigration is

but

my son back before I die.

in

which

this let-

her animus projec-

of the man's father and the implication that the son

responsible for her well-being. Rather than laugh at her overt

heavy-handedness, or rage

"How," he asked, "am

I

at the

to write

manipulation, the

back?"

He was

man

felt

crushed.

so completely under

her psychic influence that he could not see through her; he could only passively suffer. Moreover, he had been so stripped of his

own em-

Dragon Dread 35

powerment Her

note,

he could not hold his half of the marital relationship.

that

and

Again, as Jung noted, Similarly,

whose need

was not about love but about power. where power is, love is not.

their relationship,

I

for

mothering

is

so extensive that they

dissatisfied with their wives.

want

be mothers

to

men in therapy are doomed to be

have seen a considerable number of

to their

While

husbands,

it

clear that

is

it is

women do

also clear that

not

many men

seek in their wives the sort of unconditional acceptance and nourish-

ment associated with

men

positive mothers. Indeed,

I

have seen many

stuck in marriages that were dreadful for various reasons but

they were unable to countenance the idea of leaving. Departure held all

the terrors of the child leaving

in particular, is freighted

and nurturance. As so

boys find

little

home

women grow weary

it

unknown.

for the

Sexuality,

with the infantile need for bodily contact of taking care of

little

boys,

home and grow to show the way.

harder and harder to leave

since neither father nor the fathers are available

up,

When men feel the push-pull of the mother complex they are apt to confuse that power with the outer woman in their life. Just as they often regress in intimate relationships, ner,

and oppress women, as fear of their

women Fear

making a mother of

their part-

unconsciously demanding she be "the good breast," so they fear

is

is

own

if

by controlling them they might master the

undertow. The sorry history of men's treatment of

stark testimony to this.

One oppresses what one

responsible for the oppression of

ing, the latter

women and

most notably by young men insecure

chological reality.

The

there

in their

fears.

gay bash-

own

psy-

resistance President Clinton encountered in

proposing to end the ban on homosexuals

was not because

for

in the

American

military

were no homosexuals already serving bravely

and honorably, nor because regulations regarding sexual harassment

were not already

in place, but

because of the macho man's fear of his

own feminine side. Machoism

is

in direct proportion to

together of fearful tacit

men

is

man's

admission of the power of the feminine

tions of

macho

fear,

and the banding

the breeding ground of violence and the in their lives. Vast bas-

mentality remain in contemporary society, perhaps

36 Dragon Dread

none more regressive than the military. Possibly, in order to do the work of killing, a man has to override every principle of relatedness within him; he can

ill

afford to pay attention to doubt or to the eros

he knows what the Greeks

principle. In his frightened heart

clear long ago, that in the

But he

dite (Venus).

onto

Because

women

man

is

power because,

sadly, he has not

comfortable with his feminine

to feel

his fear is only partly conscious,

and gays, among others.

macho man remains all

end Ares (Mars) was no match for Aphro-

will fight her

yet learned that to be a side as well.

a

made

little

it is

unreasoning

In his

projected fear, the

boy just as much as the man who expects

women to mother him. Both of them have unwittingly succumbed power of

to the

mother experience and denied

the

that

same

large

power within themselves. Surely the greatest tragedy for ciple

is

that their fear alienates

ciple of relatedness, feeling

alienation their

from

men

in regard to the

them from

their

and connection

own

feminine prin-

anima, the prin-

to the life force.

from other men as

self obliges alienation

This

well. Often

only connection with each other comes through superficial talk

about outer events, such as sports and Recently

was

I

in a

A man swaggered in dumbest

my

thing,

politics.

neighborhood barbershop getting

and announced

wife just said

I

at the

my

hair cut.

top of his voice, "The

should go see a therapist!"

No

one responded. He thought no one had heard him so he repeated the sentence, but

still

no one answered.

In the past, perhaps, he

have evoked the anticipated Greek-chorus response that

was

the

further into

dumbest thing anyone ever heard. Apart from slouching

my

thinking what

I

chair,

I

concluded that the others were probably

was: "She's got a good idea there, buddy." In retro-

spect the scene, typical of thousands like but

I

As

it,

seems

rather amusing,

believe that beneath the man's attempt to find reassurance in a

male enclave crouched

^^

would

that, yes, surely

his deep-seated fear.^^

on a Super Bowl Sunday, I read in the newspamost common day of wife-battering. If the allegation is even partly true, it is shameful and illustrative of the fear men dump on women on this most macho of days. I

write these sentences

per that today

is

the single

Dragon Dread 37

Guy Comeau

Jungian analyst

from

own

their

points out that

men grow

bodies as well, for they associate their corporeal real-

with the early, primal contact with the mother.^^

ity

seldom held and hugged by

As

they were

their fathers, they correlate matter

with

men

visit

mother, and disconnect from their bodies. For this reason their physicians only

one reason

alienated

—

one quarter as often as do

why men die

earlier. Yes,

it

true that

is

women perhaps men feel obliged

to overrule their bodies frequently in physical or cerebral labor, but

they do so at their

but

we

peril. It is

easy enough to blame outer conditions,

collude in our self-alienation because of this deep ambiva-

lence toward the mother-materia that clothes our bones and sinews.

The

classical story of the archer Philoctetes is illustrative of the

dilemma of modem men. His

story

comes

to us

from Greek mythol-

ogy, in a play by Sophocles in 409 B.C.E. In return for his funereal service to the hero Heracles, Philoctetes

which shoots poisonous arrows to the plains

wound

of Troy Philoctetes

is

that never is

bitten

given the fabulous

bow

miss their mark. En route

by a serpent. The resulting

will not heal. Finally his shipmates can

no longer stand the

odor of the suppurating bite and his cries of anguish, so they aban-

don him on an

island for nearly ten years while the blood bath at

Troy continues. After a prophecy that they could not take the fabled city

without the help of the wounded archer, the Greeks send an

emissary to tetes

woo him back

to their ranks. Feeling betrayed, Philoc-

spurns their entreaties.

his pain

and

collective

loneliness,

He wishes

amid

and wait for death. The chorus, representing

wisdom, urges him

gagement over

to retreat into his cave,

to reconsider

selfish exile, but

and choose heroic en-

he persists in his refusal. Finally he

experiences a vision of Heracles urging him to return to the fray.

does

so, slays Paris,

and

is

instrumental in the

fall

He

of the citadel.

Sophocles' play has often been interpreted as dramatizing the conflict

between the individual and the demands of

go deeper if we recognize to feel betrayed

^ Absent

Fathers,

by

his

that,

society.

But we

while Philoctetes certainly had reason

comrades, his response was essentially narcis-

Lost Sons,

p.

23.

38 Dragon Dread

A narcissistic

sislic.

damaged

wound

occurs

when

gestahonly. Such a person for instance,

less

is

is

"wound-identified." Philoctetes' war,

own progressive

come

terms with his society and

terms with his liness,

its

demands, he must come

life,

repair

not in retreating from

In myth,

discern what

that courses within us

that

fashions,

it

which he

It

is

timeless in our

is

summons

hum-

to a great

drama

and fashioned, world

Mythic motifs show us how the ancients

his-

intuitively discerned

no accident

that the parents of

depth psychology, Freud and Jung, turned frequently to

to learn

and describe the movement of those invisible energies

shape history through the acts of individuals.

The serpent serpent

was

Mother, for the earth.

cycle of it

even as

dilemmas of humankind.

modem

into

the shock of recognition,

bled by our small part or ennobled by the

myth

come only by engag-

The cave

it.

his own mother complex, the place of comfortwarm and wet with pity and solicitude. religious tradition and cultural patterns we see the

movement of archetypal forces. We human condition. We are stunned by

the

the projection of

is

is in fact

ing darkness,

tory.

to

rage and the enormous desire to retreat into lone-

heroic in himself. His healing will

is

ing fully in

would

own

versus regressive impulses. Before he can

pain and self-pity. His vision of Heracles

which

that

is

with the Trojans or his Greek comrades than

with his to

one's core sense of self

and, as a result, one tends to view the world through that

associated with the mysteries of nature, with the Great its

As

life

The

motif, for example, reveals a rich ambivalence.

whole length was

such, the serpent

and death.

invited regression;

secrets of healing

On

in contact

embodied

with that primal source,

the mysteries of the great

the one hand, as a denizen of the depths,

on the

other,

it

sheds

its

own

skin,

knows

and renewal. At the sanctuary of Asclepius

at

the

Epi-

warm baths, symbolic of womb, and waited upon dreams or the bite of ser-

daurus the pilgrim in search of heahng took regression to the

pents from the lower world. Such visitations helped bring body and soul back into relationship with the Great Mother. Accordingly, the serpent's bite

is

analogous to the dual aspect of the mother, that

archetypal force which gives both gives

life

and seeks

to take

it

back.

Dragon Dread 39

A

man's

life teeters

on

edge between regression and

that fine

progression, between annihilation and individuation. the cessation of the psychic stress

whole impetus of his potential,

which begins

his genetic inheritance

is

He

yearns for

at birth,

while the

toward the realization of

both as an individual and as a part of his culture.

D. H. Lawrence captured the resulting tension well in a tled

poem

ti-

"Snake. "2^ While visiting a well in Sicily, the speaker in the

poem encounters

a serpent sunning

itself.

He

is

fascinated by the en-

counter with the Other, but:

The voice of my education

said to me He must be killed .... And voices in me said, If you were a man

You would

him now, and

take a stick and break

He wrestles with

finish

his admiration of the natural being,

voices implore: "If you were not afraid, you would

and admiration vie ately,

in his soul.

begins to slide back

earth."

The poet

who was

is filled

down

Then

snake

with a sense of horror

his impulsiveness:

self-judgment

to

off.

and yet those

kill

him!" Fear

the serpent, slowly, dehber-

into "the dark

"deliberately going into the blackness."

flings a log at the

him

door of the secret at the idea

At

that

of one

moment he

break the tension. Immediately he regrets

"How paltry, how

vulgar,

what a mean

act!" His

harsh:

is

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate:

A pettiness. Thus

the ambivalence of

men toward

the underworld.

both fascinated and frightened. Back there they sense, but also annihilation.

So they

lie

origins

They

are

and healing,

fling the logs

of fear and

the chance for rapprochement passes.

When plains,

I

was

a child

persuaded

me

my

grandfather,

that his navel

^^ In Norton Anthology of Poetry,

pp.

who once

rode the western

was where an Indian arrow had

952-954.

40 Dragon Dread once pierced him. While puzzled that lieved

him wholeheartedly.

wound,

omphalos spun

the

track of disconnection we

tight

all

had a similar wound,

I

he was

Intuitively,

longed suffering.

It is

Such a wound

carry.

our

is

be-

I

the world's

from the solar plexus, the

dertake this exile from the source which ration, irrevocable

right.

and

trace

obliges one to un-

lives.

obliges sepa-

It

and omnipresent, as well as isolation and pro-

When men

either bury themselves in a

wound

feel the

that

cannot heal, they

woman's arms and ask

which she cannot provide, or they hide themselves

her for healing,

macho

in

pride

and enforced loneliness. In the story of Philoctetes, the chorus ex-

him

plains to his

life,

move

is

the universality of this

wound and

that

he

still

only overcome by the vision of Heracles urging his return to is

the encounter with the hero archetype.

The hero archetype

is

present in us

mobilize the energies which serve

all. It is

life,

the inherent capacity to

overthrown the demons of

to

despair and depression. Incarnating this archetype has

with outer

feats; rather

manifests

it

when one summons

may admire

selves. This is

continually prods us to

the beginnings of all peoples there

event

is

people has

all

do

womb. We

never worship a

make something of

our-

is

a

myth of

the primal act,

else stems. In the life of the individual,

the severing of the maternal connection. Similarly, each

its

my thos of a fall, loss of the

ceding consciousness. Perhaps logical,

to

an heroic task that awaits our response.

or genesis, from which this

we should

heroic accomphshments, but

The psyche

little

the energy to

confront fear, pain and the regressive attraction of the

At

live

but he wraps himself in pain and self-pity. This regressive

the battle. This

hero.

must

this racial

paradisical connection pre-

memory

is

only the neuro-

phylogenetic trace of the trauma of birth separation. But out

of this separation comes the experience of duality.

Thus begins the cess that

is

spiral

of consciousness, an ever-developing pro-

founded on the experience of subject and object, and oc-

casions the pain of ever-further distance from the primal connection.

The growth of conscious

culture, in the life of the tribe or of the

individual, brings the fruits of civilization but, as well, greater

greater estrangement

from the Great Mother.

and

Dragon Dread 41

Every day

we stand poised on

fering the world's

wound.

the razor's edge of consciously suf-

How great the temptation to hide in a cave

some comforting arms. Each morning

or to sink into

gremlins of fear and lethargy return.

we

sallied forth yesterday; they are

It

the grinning

does not matter

back today and, not

nibble our toes, will gobble our souls

if

we

how

satisfied to

them. Thus,

let

boldly

we have

evolved elaborate ways to avoid the pain of further consciousness.

Many remain

infantile in their thoughts,

emotions and actions.

turn to the soporifics of drugs and alcohol. gies, fer

Still

Some

others turn to ideolo-

simple-minded -isms, religions or socio-political views

that of-

black and white answers to complex questions, thereby relieving

one of the struggle with the tension of opposites.

At the same

time, the

life

force surges within each culture and each

individual. This powerful eros seeks

hind.

its

connection ahead, not be-

requires the activation of the hero archetype within a society

It

and within individuals.

It

was

the task of the great religions

and

rites

men through the nexus of lethargy and progresmost men are left to find their own path. Society still

of passage to guide sion, but today,

depends on them prosper

if its

to undertake this challenge, for

men are

immature.

Sometimes, knowing he cannot return project that yearning onto the cosmos.

was much given eternity."

who

One

to this

senses

no society can

The

womb,

culture of

a

man

for instance, the

will

Romanticism

Sehnsucht fur Ewigkeity or "yearning in,

it

to the

for

myth of Empedocles,

flung himself into the crater of Etna, and the paintings of Kas-

par David Friedrich, notably The Wanderer Above the Mists. Thanatos, the

longing for extinction,

is

poised always against eros, the

life

force. Historically, mystics

have sought to describe the indescrib-

able, consistently reporting

two

ence

is

essentially ineffable

But, far

more

often,

characteristics: the mystical experi-

and involves a merging with the

men

All.

seek their reconnection to the cosmic,

As mentioned earlier, the femman on three levels. He encounters it in the

primal source through a relationship. inine

is

experienced by a

presence of an outer

woman

feminine side of the other man.

and

in

gay relationships through the

He meets

it

in his relationship to his

42 Dragon Dread

own anima. And

he encounters

it

in his relationship to the archetypal

world, his relationship to nature, to his instinctual center and to the life

force in general.

man is largely at the mercy of what he does not know about himself. And the extent to which he is in the dark is the degree to which his own inner woman is projected onto another In

any relationship a

person. Since projection

is

by

definition a

dynamic whereby uncon-

scious contents are experienced as outer, a

love with, or fearing, his

own

We recall that normally the

man

is

"Duino Elegy," quoted

poet, Stephen

Dunn,

personal mother

at the

how

recalls

falling in

unconscious material. is

the primary media-

tor of our experience of the feminine. Rilke plays third

always

on

this truth in his

beginning of this chapter. Another

his mother, at his request, revealed

her breast to him. Gently, modestly and lovingly she assuaged his curiosity

and

his fears,

me / to

permits

love

and

that experience, writes

women

Dunn,

"I think

easily. "^^

For other men, the early mediation by the mother was less gentle, less reassuring.

that all of the

whom was

The authors who coined

the term "serial killers" note

dozens of mass murderers they studied (only one of

female) had disturbed childhoods. Always their crimes

were sexually motivated, whether a sexual

act

was attempted or

Their fear and rage were mostly directed against they

felt

women, with whom

incapable of forming bonds of warmth. Richard Speck

typical example.

When he could

not.

is

a

not sustain an erection while raping

the Chicago nurses, he killed them.^'^

Recently an analysand reported that a co-worker had tried to run her over with a car. a

room

at their place

He

also had physically barred her

of employment he considered his

When

they had dated and cuddled.

uncommon. Many men

^ "The

Routine Things ^^ Robert Ressier and

81.

and then

are full of rage against

Around

territory.

Once

she sought to deepen the relation-

ship, his behavior turned increasingly rude

not

from entering

the House," in

women, and

Not Dancing,

Tom Schactman, Whoever

violent. This is

p.

often

40.

Fights Monsters,

pp. 79-

Dragon Dread 43 they act

it

out. Their rage is in

and quite easy

But many times the rage

enough

some

cases the product of child abuse

to identify etiologically in terms of cause

is

of the child

When

violated.

is

not

of course the accumulation

of anger, the epiphenomenal emotion that occurs territory

effect.

much mother and

because of too

is

father as a balance. Their rage

and

when

peatedly breached, either by abuse or by too

much

the psychic

boundary

this fragile

re-

is

interference in the

ego suffers permanent damage and

child's development, the nascent

may become sociopathic. The sociopath cannot form

a caring relationship with others.

A

man's experience of the primal relationship may have been so painful that

he expects

relationships can only be painful.

all

Thus

his life is a

dreary cycle of fearing domination by others and seeking to exploit

them

instead.

Many

woman

a

has set out to change such a

found herself the victim of abuse. As his personality

from

it

off the Other. Sadly, that historic pain

constant buffer between himself and others.

accomplishments, he

ternal

man and

a protection

he cannot bear to turn within and suffer that pain,

his pain,

thereby lifting

is

is

No

becomes

the

matter what his ex-

man. He

a terribly frightened

is

so

frightened that he cannot bear to look at his pain and can only see the

Other as the source or continuance of it. It is

not

blamed

my

later),

intention here to

but

it

is

blame mothers (nor

will fathers

be

necessary to acknowledge that the affectively

charged imago of the feminine

is

considerably influenced by the ex-

perience of the personal mother and by the early experience of the nurturant environment. It is

mode

essentially a

particular kind of

women and by

The anima

is

an archetypal energy

in all

men.

of experiencing and relating, rather than a

knowledge. Influenced by relationships with outer

the culture (which

Madonna

is

in

vogue, for instance,

the Virgin of Chartres or the virgin of erotica), a man's incarnation of the inner feminine

is

force that courses within him, shifting I

moods.

shall

wife,

how he stands in relation to the life and how much he is at the mercy of its

a function of

never forget the

walked

in, sat

man who, dragged

down, noticed a box of

into therapy

tissues

and

said,

by

his

with a

44 Dragon Dread

woman

smirk, "I see you had a correct, but

I

said.

I

countered: if

was

"Men can weep

too,"

"But they don't have too," he

I

and

here last hour." Factually, he

did not want to concede his point.

"Many men carry

they don't

let

out

it

replied, "they

say, "You're a fool, like them."

When had

afraid of, he said only that he felt he

who had

cause she was the one

it

He smirked again,

will kill them."

it

can work

out."

a mountain of rage and a lake of tears,

to

problems.

as

if to

asked him what he was

I

keep

his wife in line be-

As one might

predict, his

"therapy" did not continue.

Generally speaking, a boy can suffer "too muchness" and "too

As

tleness."

Joseph's

of the

illustrations

latter,

I

think of two men.

When

revolved around a single, and signal, event.

life

lit-

He stood in the home and watched her get in a car with a strange man and drive away forever. He never saw her again. His father refused he was eight his mother announced she was leaving.

door of their

to discuss her

and continued

his alcoholic retreats

Joseph grew up feeling abandoned. Never

leam

from

his pain.

he did

facile in school,

when he came to me he was the manager He came to therapy on his own third therapist he had visited. He had taken

support himself and

to

of a small manufacturing business. volition; in fact,

I

was

his wife to a therapist

When

that

whom he

seemed

the

two years

earlier "to get her straightened out."

to fail, they jointly visited a

Joseph believed that

was obsessed with

him and

his wife loved

the idea that she

their

While the

therapist

communicate (and

riage),

is

partly at the

two

was having casual

and indiscriminate, whenever the opportunity

to

second therapist

insisted hypnotize his wife "to get at the truth."

Although

children, he

affairs,

quick

arose.

mercy of what the

certainly affairs are not

client

unknown

chooses

within mar-

Joseph's examples of his wife's adultery cast considerable

doubt on

their probability.

niversaries they rented a

casinos.

For example, on one of their wedding an-

room

in a hotel in

one of the Atlantic City

While he was taking a shower room service

was convinced

that his wife

knew

the waiter

aison during those few minutes. His proof picious." Similar

arrived.

Joseph

and had had a quick

was

that she

li-

"looked sus-

examples were forthcoming, each possible but

re-

Dragon Dread 45 quiring a stretch of the imagination. At his request,

I

interviewed his

wife in private. She confirmed her commitment to the marriage and

wondered why he was always so suspicious

The power of the scious,

invisible, of the ineluctable

clearly seen in Joseph's

is

energy of the uncon-

He had

dilemma.

seen Her, his

mother's, disappearing back, and from that single traumatic event

had concluded

that

he could not count on Her.

The psyche often functions analogously, here before." Rationally, the current situation

saying, "I have been

may have

with what happened in the past, but the linkage

is

who

Joseph's wife became that feminine, intimate Other well-being in her hands.

As she was

nothing to do

there emotionally.

held his

capable of loving him, so in his

mind she was capable of infidehty, of taking off with another man mother had. His mother complex embroidered the

just as his

reaching the anticipated, dreaded conclusion that this

facts,

woman,

too,

would leave him. Joseph's psychic

"She who his wife,

what devil

is

left

—and

life

was organized around

will again."

However

charged imago of

grossly unfair this

was

to

he could not help but replay the fantasy, in accord with

known

psychoanalytically as "reaction formation." Better the

you have known than the ambiguity and tension of the un-

known. Memory replayed the same

—

in spite

its

autonomy over the

donment asserted reality.

that

that

sad, terrifying scenario

—aban-

of the overt presence of his wife. The complex rational

mind and constructed

its

own

So great was Joseph's wound, and the defenses around

he quit therapy

when he could

it,

not receive confirmation of his

wife's betrayal.

Another man, Charles, suffered the

loss of his father

when he was

young. His mother went into a depression lasting years, leaving Charles feeling doubly abandoned. His later relations with adult

women not

^

followed the pattern of iht puer aeternus, the

grown out of his mother need.^^ He would

See, for instance, Marie-Louise

man who

has

women,

put

idealize

von Franz, Puer Aeternus:

A

cal Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, Sharp, The Secret Raven: Conflict and Transformation.

Psychologi-

and Daryl

46 Dragon Dread

them on

and then, once they were committed

a pedestal,

tionship, he

would

pull

away and

to the rela-

Women who

protect himself.

ex-

perienced this understandably withdrew themselves in puzzlement

and sometimes anger. Charles seemed genuinely dumbfounded by their reaction, for

done nothing

to

In fact, his

he

felt

they should have understood and that he had

push them away.

mother was the one he wished had understood

his

childhood need for nourishment and consistency, even in the face of her own grief, and how he as a child was paying twice. Again, the wound was so deep to the child that the adult, as with Joseph, continued to see the fauh "out there," in rather than recognize the

was simply

his goal in therapy

found

to refine his choice of

women. He

ambivalence, rejection and abandonment was set up inside

himself and projected onto every

woman

he met.

Naturally, without a capacity for introspection, live in a

fantasy,

to relationships,

very difficult to acknowledge that the pattern of false ideal-

it

ization,

women in general. Accordingly,

psychodynamic he brought

one

is

doomed

to

world created by projection and, no surprise, find one's

and worst

fears, reflected back.

Ever and always, what

we

have not owned within will be projected without.

One parents

last

example may

who worked

They faced not only

Stephen grew up with immigrant

suffice.

"make it" in America. new culture, but the difficulties of

very hard in their store to the rigors of a

making any business survive during

worked long hours beside

the thirties

and

forties.

Stephen

his parents but never felt nurtured

them. They were always up against the odds,

all

by

of them, and he

was, as children have often been historically, part of the family survival

network without

In his adult life

never

felt satisfied.

and every

woman

his

own

needs being addressed.

Stephen married and remarried and had His

wound was

similarly that of

abandonment,

he became close to was expected to

tragic deficit of his childhood.

Of one

most enjoyed was cuddling with

affairs, but

make up

mistress, he said that

her, lying

the

what he

on her abdomen. When

she wanted sex he was afraid of her demands. The scene he depicts is

actually that of

Madonna and

child, safe

and warm,

far

from the

Dragon Dread 47 tough

and hard times of the

streets

past.

Stephen was forever angry with the trolled

them through money and

women

threats,

and

he con-

in his hfe;

they were using

felt

him. Again, the very deep pattern was that She was not there for him. His narcissistic void was of such magnitude that no

could

fill it,

even the most co-dependent mothering Other he could

Thus Stephen's

find.

woman

life

was

characterized by sadness, for he

was

the chronically undernourished child desperately seeking a partner

who would

offer the

cosmic nurturance of the Great Mother. Mean-

while he became a bully,

full

of rage and demanding compliance.

Again, the same sad cycle plays

make

itself out.

his partner the nurturant Other, that

magnitude of

ways he

own need and

his

testifies to the

Whether

is,

the

tries to

the mother, or fears the

defends himself against her, in

all

power of the mother complex. Jung alluded

In describing the pervasive influence of the anima,

the novel

man

to

She by H. Rider Haggard, wherein the hero encounters

"She who must be obeyed." Television viewers can see a comic take

on

PBS series "Rumpole of the Bailey," where the crusty Leo McKem, after besting the Queen's finest before the

this in the

old actor bar,

shudders

when he

hears the stentorian "Rumpole!" of his wife

and dejectedly mutters, "She

who must be

Again, recall that the anima tern

which mediates man's

force.

The encounter with

is

an archetype, that

summarizes the

is,

relationship to instinct

the personal

conditions a man's relationship to his child's experience

obeyed." a psychic pat-

and

to the life

mother inevitably colors and

own

anima, but too often the

dominates the man's psychology. Loren Pederson

task:

One of a man's

greatest developmental tasks

is

to

achieve a healthy

separation from the bond with his personal mother.

He must

also de-

velop an awareness of the importance of the image of the archetypal

mother .... Unlike the daughter, the son lacks a primary identifica tion with his mother, especially as he begins to psychologically

emerge from her. In adult life, remnants of the original attachment/ separation problem are conveyed by a man's internal anima image.^^ 2^ Dark Hearts: The Unconscious Forces That Shape

Men 's

Lives,

p.

74.

48 Dragon Dread

The man who the the

fantasizes that his wife

cavorting with another,

is

man who acts out his ambivalence toward his intimate partner, man who rages at his inadequately nourishing wife, the man who

telephones his wife from every truck stop or airport, controls the

bankbook and claims

who

his wife

incompetent with finances, the

has an incessant roving eye,

gays, the

man who

have not yet

left

When we remember

women down and attacks own expense all

puts

home. They are attached

of touch with their

rience, out

who

own

still

to the

that patriarchy

contrary to widespread opinion, are

is

a cultural contrivance, an

obliged to

most

is still

is

realize

that

men,

the dependent sex.

most ambushed by

Whenever a man is when he feels he must be a

in denial.

be a good boy, or conversely

bad boy, or a wild man, he

we

more often

the rugged individualist,

his inner feminine, for he is

mother-son expe-

soul.

invention to compensate for powerlessness,

The Marlboro Man,

—

please his partner at his

tries to

man

compensating for the power of the

mother complex. I

do not say

dent; that

how

is

it is

a

man's

fault that

merely human. What

is

he

is

so vulnerable, so depen-

his responsibility is to recognize

deeply any child needs positive mothering and

pattern of that need sets his psychic

operate beneath the surface.

He may

life in

how much

the

motion and continues

to

pretend to adult empowerment,

hold the reins of government or the purse, but the lines of stress reach deep

down

into his relationship with his mother.

grasp and accept this

fact,

and then take responsibihty for

Men must it,

or they

will continue to play out infantile patterns forever.

The following diagram, adapted from Jung's explanation of what is

going on psychologically

countertransference, in

shows

in therapy, in

terms of transference and

the variety of exchanges that take place

any heterosexual relationship.^^

^^ For a

my Middle Passage, pp. 46The Survival Papers: Anatomy of a Midlife Crisis, pp. "cross-cousin 70ff. (For Jung's original description and diagrams of the marriage," see "The Psychology of the Transference," The Practice of Psyfuller

discussion of these dynamics, see

47, and Daryl Sharp,

chotherapy,

CW

16,

pars. 422ff.)

Dragon Dread 49

animus

anima

Although the relationship may play level,

each person

scious, suggested

love happens

is

by the

when

out on the conscious

itself

informed by the contents of his or her uncon-

The experience of

vertical axes.

the Other lines up,

if

with one's inner image of the beloved. The Other seldom

measure up

so one regularly

to this expectation,

man's relationship tionship to his

own

to the

falling in

only for the time being,

falls

if

ever can

out of love. The

beloved can never be better than his

anima, because what

is

unconscious

him

in

rela-

will

be contaminating his relationship with the Other, just as the Other

him

projecting onto

While the anima has archetypal that experience is essentially

other females in the boy's

roots, recall that the

life

and by the images available at his

styles himself as the perfect

favor, be

Her good

that

men

search for Her in other

is

so dependent.

husband because of

tousness toward his wife, yet inside he

To the extent

in his sur-

wife for not mothering

him, though consciously he does not think he

win Her

mediation of

by way of the personal mother, then by

rounding culture. Thus Stephen rages

George

still is

They overlook

soul's flight, in the

women,

in art

And

his solici-

seeking to serve Her,

child.

are

unaware

women,

that the

flee Her,

anima

is

within, they

oppress Her, ask Her to be

work or

Beatrice in their underworld, anesthetize Her pain through drugs.

is

in turn.

the presence of

company of

and music and

Her

in their

dreams,

in their

other men, in camaraderie with

sport,

and

in their fantasies

and

tran-

50 Dragon Dread madness. The

sient

man who

fundamental, that

ship

is

self,

about

life

it

influences everything he feels about him-

and about others,

of course, that of which he

Even

denies that the mother-child relation-

profound ignorance. And,

lives in

ignorant will be projected onto others.

is

his deepest sexuality is fueled

by

with Her, connected again, however transiently, he

Most men consider

No

tering.

even no

raise will

enough with a

to

the conditions of their

assuage the daily loss of soul.

he

that

is

it,

mercy of the world and

reassure triste,

a daily bat-

washroom, and

A man

understands,

fragile, tactile

he

bring

it,

is

is

large

connection

it

home,

only for

if

disconnected again,

adrift, at

battering.

its

the eyelids each morning, as he rose

sleep to face another day, one in

is

or the anima of another man, he places his soul's

awhile." Then, post coitum

Under

he

home. life

and no paycheck

selling his soul,

compensate. Thus, upon the

woman,

burden. "Take care of

the

is

working

perks, no car, no key to the executive

deep down,

When

this projection.

man

from the depths of

was back

reported feeling that he

high school playing football. The line was poised, and in that

moment, before of economic

the snap of the ball, before the

life,

shock and

collision

he fantasized always of sex. Another man, whose

mother had been absent-spirited and

rejecting,

charged his anima

He insisted his wife make love every day until, finally, she rebelled. He felt all the hurt and rejection again, and a vague sense of impending death. "Each time we make love," he said, "I feel I buy a day back from death. Each day we with addictive longing for Her.

don't,

I

feel death

has crept a

little

closer."

For both these men, sex served as reassurance and reconnection, rather than as an experience of

communication and intimacy.

symbolically, their religion. For the former

man

was,

the battering contin-

ued; the constant fantasy of sex with anyone along the a pallid palhative to the soul's scars. For the

It

way

served as

latter, his ability to

see

that

he was actually making his wife into a surrogate mother helped

him

pull

more

back the projection. His sexuality grew

relaxed, less performance oriented,

less

compulsive,

and the tenderness of

their

relationship returned. His realized that his unconscious angst had

Dragon Dread 51

When

such urgency that he had driven his wife away. his inner child's distress

tionship regained

man

Unless a the

its

and

his

compulsive urge

to

he could

own

merge, the

rela-

normal proportions.

can acknowledge his dependency, which

dependency of the child within, he

is

to say

will either flounder in

an un-

healthy relationship with a mother-surrogate or be angry that his

Most men would be

partner does not measure up to his demands.

ashamed but

to

admit that they seek

their

mother through

their partner,

they cannot separate their childhood relationship with the

if

mother from

be replaying an

their current relationship, they will

old,

regressive script.

Jung has written quite eloquently of

drama

that courses

adult being, he

this large,

indeed mythic,

through a man's soul. To become a conscious,

must struggle mightily with

his

mother complex,

rec-

ognizing the battle as an internal one. Otherwise he will certainly project

it

outward onto women, either succumbing

or seeking to dominate them

mother complex. In

—

deepest longing

to their direction

to the

power of

the

and

his

either case he realizes his deepest fear

annihilation in the mother.

The dread and yearning ful,

—both testimonies

for annihilation, writes Jung,

a power-

is

personified "spirit of regression":

[It]

threatens us with bondage to the mother and with dissolution and

extinction in the unconscious. For the hero, fear task,

because only boldness can deliver from

not taken, the meaning of future

is

condemned

life is

somehow

is

fear.

a challenge and a

And

violated,

if

the risk

is

and the whole

to a hopeless staleness, to a drab grey

lit

only

by will-o'-the-wisps.^i

One cannot overemphasize the power of this dreadful longing for the womb; sustaining the consciousness to counter it is immensely painful.

Adulthood, existential responsibility for one's survival and

growth,

is

a

Promethean prize wrested from the depths.

separate themselves from mother, from

women, from

their

ima, and think they are safe. Think again. Jung continues:

^^ Symbols of Transformation,

CW

5, par.

551.

Men may own

an-

52 Dragon Dread

Always he imagines his worst enemy in front of him, yet he carries the enemy within himself a deadly longing for the abyss, a longing to drown in his own source, to be sucked down to the realm of the [i.e., the archetypal depths]. If he is to live, he must Mothers.

—

.

.

fight

.

and sacrifice

heights.

.

.

.

Life

childhood and his childish

young person should sacrifice his dependence on the physical parents, lest he that the

remain caught body and soul

in the

bonds of unconscious incest.^^

Thus we see why our ancestors had such powerful sage.

They knew

own

his longing for the past in order to rise to his

demands

all

power of

too well the regressive

rites

of pas-

the psyche, the

longing for the safety and satiety of the Mother. The unconscious

in-

cest of Oedipus, the longing for peace of Philoctetes, the fascination

of Faust for the realm of the Mothers

would blame on women, but life's

—

all

such seductions

their true origin lies in

men's

men

fear of

pain and the lure of annihilation.

There

is

way

a

out of the labyrinth.

Some men do

escape the un-

conscious bonds to the Mother. They are liberated, not from Her, but

from

their

But only

submission to their

their daily

own

longing for rest and sanctuary.

courage and vigilance, their work on themselves,

keeps them from slipping back.

Two examples

of

men

involved in such work

may

help.

One man,

Lawrence, was raised by a narcissistically needy mother. His father served her, his sister served her, and Lawrence served her. left

home he

also served,

married a little

woman

with a congenital illness

suspecting that in choosing this

When

he

whom

he

person he was

maintaining his bondage to his mother. At midlife he developed a first-class depression.

He

left his

wife, and, riddled with guilt, en-

tered therapy. After nearly a year of writhing in the coils of remorse

and indecisiveness over having relinquished

his rescuing role,

he had

the following dream.

A woman is standing on a balcony looking at me. There

is

a yellow

sports car there. I

jump

a boat.

^2

Ibid.,

I

in the car

and drive away. Then

I

come

to a lake

and board

see a Greek temple under the water. There are trout there to

par.

553.

Dragon Dread 53

Then

eat as well.

with a bird in

its

I

arrive at the other shore.

mouth.

of the snake and save the bird.

snake becomes a fish and

brooded over him

sudden decision

all

his

is

a snake there

have been

Then

bitten.

the severed

it.

dream images Lawrence thought

life.

to leave her

was

that the

whose presence had The yellow sports car embodied the

the balcony

drive of self-determination.

symbol

I

can eat

I

In his associations to the

woman standing on

There

grab a knife and quickly cut off the head

I

his mother,

domination, to feel the

When he crosses

full

force and

the water, a ubiquitous

for the unconscious, he senses the great riches to be

there: ancient

wisdom embodied on the other

in the fish. Yet,

the archetypal

in the temple,

side,

mother awaits. The

having

found

and food for the soul personal mother,

left the

of

bird, suggestive

spirit

and

tran-

from our old friend the serpent.

scendent purpose,

is still in peril

Again the

masculine decisiveness, the phallic empowerment

will, the

symbolized by the knife, permits him to divide his the regressive serpent-complex.^^

stayed lodged in the mother

The

regressive serpent

Another man,

imago of

his

is

The energy

spirit's flight

that

then available for the journey of

becomes

from

might well have life.

a potentially nourishing fish.

in his late fifties, carried

mother as intervening and

an oppressive introjected

critical.

For decades he had

projected her enervating presence onto his employer, his intimates

and the world her,

in general.

As

a child his only defense

through fantasy and education.

away from her courtesy of

When

was

to

avoid

he was seventeen he flew

the United States Air Force.

He avoided

confrontation with others and lived an essentially isolated life-style.

After I

some time

take a

in therapy

little giri

for a voyage.

changes.

I

am

down

But

I

he dreamt:

to the

dock

to get

on the Queen Elizabeth 2 Then the scene

can't find the ship this time.

led into this wonderful house

by a

beautiful, helpful

woman. This is the house of my dreams. White adobe with a spacious living room with a wonderful glass vista. On a glass coffee table there

is

a beautiful crystal vase with greens.

^^ For a book-length discussion of this theme see Robert L. Gardner, The to Consciousness.

Rainbow Serpent: Bridge

54 Dragon Dread This

man had had many dreams

of ocean voyages or

of his desire to

tures, all representative

air

depar-

avoid his mother's

flee, to

presence. Here he takes an immature anima figure to the mother ship (the complex).

Then

But he can't find

a helpful, adult

no

there's

it;

anima guides him

possibility of flight.

to a beautiful house, reminis-

cent of Beatrice guiding Dante out of the underworld. the Frank

potential being, his soul's Taliesin.

as a

Holy

He

associated

Lloyd Wright-inspired adobe house with the place of

He saw

his

the beautiful crystal vase

of soul-enhancing psychic contents. The

Grail, a container

vase held rich greens, pointing to the life-giving side of the Great

Mother. It is

to

tempting

to

make

betoken a psychic

nated by others.

The

too

much

of such a dream, but

shift.

Since childhood, this

figure

whose

had instead intruded into

did

it

man had

felt

seem domi-

protection he had lacked as a child

wound-

his fragile psychic life, grievously

ing his eros, resulting in a destructive, devouring mother complex.

His gradual understanding of the power of the mother, reflected in

many

life

experiences, allowed

Her onto other people and ing sense of his

to

withdraw the projection of

situations. In so doing,

make choices and had endowed him.

power

with which nature

him

to

No man can be himself until

he has confronted the mother experi-

ence he internalized and carries into

through the courage to confront independent and free of anger.

he has not yet grown up; he

he gained a grow-

to live out the energies

all

subsequent encounters. Only

this potential

If

he

still

abyss can he become

blames mother or women,

seeks the protection, or avoids the

still

domination, of mother.

While

my desire herein is

not to blame but to describe in order to

understand, the parents necessarily play a very large role in the bur-

den the child

What

will carry.

Jung lays

it

out directly:

usually has the strongest psychic effect

which the parents (and ancestors age-old psychological

too, for

phenomenon of

on the

the

life

we are dealing here with

the

original sin)

child

is

have not

lived.

This statement would be rather too perfunctory and superficial did not add

by way of

qualification: that part of their lives

if

we

which

Dragon Dread 55 might have been lived had not certain somewhat threadbare excuses prevented the parents from doing so. To put of

life

which they have always shirked

.

.

.

it

bluntly,

[that]

it is

that part

sows the most

vir-

ulent germs. ^^

Our ancestors

intuited this fact:

conscious and integrated,

Jung notes Atreus

is

after the

what

not suffered, rendered

is

As

rolled over into the next generation.

is

above remarks, "The curse of the House of

no empty phrase."^^ Moreover, he adds, "Nature has no

"^^ use for the plea that one 'did not know.'

Thus, especially, the vagaries of the mother's personality, her level of consciousness, the character of her

own wounding and

at-

tendant strategies, form the psychic inheritance of the child. She

and with

whom

he must

come

about

life

son

married and living with another

is

mining

A

role (to

which

cosmos,

all

the

she

Even when her

may

mother-in-law jokes

Where had been connected

needs met,

gravity and a

now

the child

is

growing consciousness of

human who becomes

ile

many

to terms.

woman

play a deter-

attest).

datum of human experience derives from

crucial

birth separation.^'^

The

is

from which he draws so many messages about himself and

that

a

the original

to the heartbeat

of the

thrust alone into a worid of radical relocation.

The

frag-

mother bears a heavy archetypal weight.

child's experience of the personal

experience of the feminine, that

is,

mother creates the internalized

the

mother complex. The phe-

nomenological experience of the personal mother also conditions and colors the experience of life ral forces, that is,

itself,

is

child

on

its

mother, or mother sur-

is

unavoidable and ripples throughout the

^^ "Introduction to Wickes's 'Analyse der BCinderseele,'

of Personality,

CW

3^

Ibid.,

par.

88.

^

Ibid.,

par.

91.

^^ The phylogenetic lost

the natu-

obvious. The vulnerability of the child occasions a primal

separation anxiety that

all

all

the archetypal mother.

The absolute dependence of the rogate,

of the encounter with

"

life

The Development

17, par. 87.

memory of

peoples have their paradisical state.

tribal

this separation

account of a

may account

"fall,"

the

for the fact that

collective

memory

of a

56 Dragon Dread of the individual. Freud was right in asserting the primacy of eros,

merge or reconnect,

the urge to

disconnection. All his

for the initial experience of life

then, a

life,

man

is

of

seeks reconnection. Since he

cannot go backward to Her, he must seek Her, or her symbolic substitute,

out there in relationship with individuals or institutions, in

ideologies or in the sky-parent, God. In addition to the

trauma of

birth,

mother and child plays an immense

the specific relationship of

role in a

man's personal psychol-

He is most likely to suffer one or both of two He will experience too much of her or not enough.

ogy.

kinds of wounds. In the

the mother's needs, her unaddressed psychology, her

unlived

life,

will inevitably

be imposed on the

child.

former case

wounds, her

Her "too-much-

ness" will flood his fragile boundaries and create in him a sense of powerlessness. This overwhelment will be carried into adult projected onto

women

and events

in general,

and

life,

his powerlessness

will haunt him.

Similariy, a

meet

his

man may

experience the inability of his mother to

needs and suffer a sense of abandonment. Inevitably,

were better

this

would

diminishes one's inner sense of worth ("If

I

ceive what

in a general insecurity as

I

need and deserve"), resulting

well as an addictive, angst-fueled search for Her. self is greatly affected

by these wounds

I

A man's

re-

sense of

—overwhelment or aban-

donment or both.

As

the child experiences the conditionality of his world, mediated

by the mother encounter, so he suffers separation anxiety. This generalized anxiety, existential in scope lates into a

number of unspecific

and

local in experience,

modu-

fears about himself, about others

and about the feminine. These sundry fears are carried

in the

bones

and repeatedly projected onto others. The Indo-Germanic root angh ("to constrict") gives rise to the English

and anger. Perceived untarily

and repeatedly occasion

instinctually, intuitively, at betrayal

In

and sorrow

an essay

titled

words

angst, anxiety, angina

threats to the well-being of the this

knows what

at the loss

organism invol-

range of emotions. The child is

needed and

feels

both anger

of the necessary nurturant Other.

"Mourning and Melancholy," Freud noted

that

Dragon Dread 57 the overt loss of the Other, in death for example, produces grief.

When

the Other

but the object

not there for us emotionally, the loss

is

is still

suffered

is

present. This cognitive dissonance produces

sadness, or melancholy, driven inward but suffered throughout

one's the

most exquisite expressions of longing

The mood of the

poetry.

spiritual,

gave

mantic

rise to the

in

music, in

"Sometimes

I

art

and

minnesingers in the Middle Ages, the

Movement and

in lyric

Feel Like a Mother-

by everyone. Such a "longing

less Child," is intuitively felt

nity"

some of

This silent suffering, this pathos, has produced

life.

for eterlater

Ro-

cowboy

the great preponderance of mournful

songs. Out there, somewhere, She waits.

For most This anger

men is

four possible less,

the dual

essentially

ways

in

wounding

creates anger as well as grief.

unconscious, undifferentiated. There are

which

it

might be processed. Feeling power-

one may become depressed. Depression has been variously de-

fined as "anger turned inward" and "learned helplessness."

may

internalize that anger in the body,

Or one

which may then combine with

other physical circumstances to lead to illnesses such as gastric disorders, migraines, heart disease or cancer. Often the anger will leak

What the man

boy could not express with

out from the repression.

the

mother

as general irritability. This

will surface in

is

the

called

"referred" or "displaced" anger and waits only for the slightest

provocation to erupt in an objectively unwarranted rush of emotion (the

prime indication of an activated complex).

Alternatively, a

man may

act out his anger in self-destructive be-

havior or violence toward others. Rape

is

widely

known

to

be a

crime not of lust but of violence, of referred anger. Violence toward

women,

in particular, is a function

of the intensity of injury to a

man's mother complex. Since the character and depth of the complex is

essentially unconscious, a

in

some Even

man

can only attack what comes to him

outer guise. as an adult, every meeting with the outer feminine will be

charged with his fear of

this

deep inner drama. Naturally, a man

wounding and

will transfer

loss to his outer environment,

even as

his

psyche carries those experiences within, as complexes. Intuiting the

58 Dragon Dread

awesome power of such

and experiencing

internalized history,

potential reenactment in the present, the old fear resurfaces.

power of

driven by his childhood experience of the

between the sexes

Hence

a sad litany of

is

is

the feminine. In

self-defense he will try to dominate or placate the outer Other. the history of relationship

its

He

men

seeking to dominate and control because of their fear of the feminine within themselves. control

As

Whenever and wherever we see men seeking

women, we

a therapist

I

have witnessed

this fear

operating in the one-sided

power balance of many marriages. Seeing trolling

son,

fair play,

ground of resistance.

to give in, to relinquish his

man adamantly

the

family finances and decision making,

common sense and

tional

to

are seeing fear's ugly work.

have appealed

I

only to run up against

In his heart of hearts he

power, but he

is

con-

to rea-

some

might

irra-

truly like

dominated by fear of the

consequences. Fear's ugly work created the patriarchy and, as Blake noted, "blights with plague the marriage hearse."^^

On

the other hand, and just as often, a

seek ways to please and placate.

own

sacrificing his

He

man

tries to

controlled by fear

well-being in the process.

double urge to get his

own way and still

may

keep Her happy, often

Or he indulges

the

avoid confrontation through

passive-aggressive behaviors that seek control and revenge.

One man became mother and

came

a very successful dentist, largely to please his

to replace his

weak

father in her affections.

a profligate spendthrift and finally

ruptcy.

Even he was dumbfounded by

But he be-

drove himself into bank-

the apparent contradiction

between earning nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year and being penniless. "I

It

became a

came

as a great revelation one day

dentist for her, but

the oppressive

power of

I

screwed

^

up

for

blurted out,

me." Feeling

he sought his

He succeeded

only in his

ruination.

For another man, his

all

his mother's ambitions,

revenge in a passive-aggressive revolt.

own

it

when he

mother

fell

"London,"

in

when

on him.

his father died the full brunt of caring for

When

she

made

unreasonable, unceasing de-

Norton Anthology of Poetry.

Dragon Dread 59

mands on him, demands

that repeatedly

and violated

sulted his wife

invaded his marriage,

his privacy, the

man

his wife, charging her with insensitivity to his

—and

greatest need

stifled his

own

rage.

mother

He came

and children complained about

his wife

his

in-

turned his anger on in

her hour of

because

to therapy

sudden outbursts of

anger. These discharges of emotion were seemingly in excess of the

and were, of course, tapping

situations

rage he had carried his whole

life.

into the reservoir of fear

and

To direct his anger toward

his

mother, whose narcissistic needs respected no boundaries, seemed to

him

futile.

him

led

wife,

The

collision of fear

to rationalize her

whom

he

left

it is

fair to

conscious of the effects of his mother com-

and anger

own expense,

or projected at the expense of

becomes conscious of

the lattice- work of history he

be internalized

carries within,

man had

home.

man becomes

others. Until he

say that

for his anguish onto his wife. Psychologically,

plex, he will suffer troubled relationships. His anguish will

mother

behavior and express anger toward his

throughout their marriage, and

blame

redirected the

Until a

his

with the power of his mother complex the

in not dealing

he had never

toward

felt

coerced him to deal with the issue. His wife had

felt

rightly felt a rival

and rage he

at his

he has not grown up. All the neediness of the inner

child remains active in the present, as well as his fear of the mother's

power

to

overwhelm or abandon him. This

is

why

so

many men

seek to control their partner, for they feel the Other, as before,

powerful

still.

And

fied either, so they

is all-

yet their deep, infantile need has not been satis-

seek to

make

their partner into

mother.

Most women do not consciously wish to be their mate's mother but wind up playing out the scenario anyway. It is not hard to see

why

adult intimate relationships are often troubled, given the primacy

of the mother encounter. All our unassimilated need, fear and rage are acted out in intimate relationships.

the

more contaminated they

tionship that the

The

closer these relationships,

are with the detritus of the primal rela-

boy cum man

carries.

Given individual psychological

histories,

and the consequent

intertwining complexities of projection between people,

it

is

a

60 Dragon Dread

wonder

that

any relationship can work

woman becomes mother to

the

man,

the psychological liberation of the

it

at all.

Sometimes, when a

may "work,"

but at the cost of

man from his mother complex

(not

by the woman). Sexual intimacy

is

especially freighted with this archaic burden, because having sex

is

mention the

to

for

many men

fetters retained

the primal reconnection, the closest they ever feel to

the positive mother.

The ghost of

the

mother may

whore complex, where

the

man

assert itself in the so-called virgin-

can only be enthusiastically sexual

with the "dark" side of the feminine, while he assigns his wife the role of

an unapproachable Madonna.

traffic is

the is

Some men

suddenly too intense. Their eros

is

sucked

mother complex; they become asexual with

projected outward in fantasies about other

affairs.

are active sexually

become pregnant, or mothers, and then

until their partners

The romantic Other,

whom

for

their inner

down and

into

their wives, their eros

women

or acted out in

one once yearned,

now

is

"domesticated," contaminated with unconscious mother material. The sexual infantiUty evidenced in men's magazines and beauty pageants is

a

symptom of the need

concrete play; he

to place eros

on a

pedestal, for the

world of

women demands too much. The playboy is literally a boy at can never be a man until he has wrested his eros from the

powerful mother-world within.

Most complex

tragically, feel the

men whose

same need,

eros

is still

bound up

feminine, the anima. To be separated from one's ble wound. One

woman

dialysis machine."

The

said of her husband, "I

child of a cold

had distanced himself from

anima

to

in the

mother

fear and rage toward their own, inner

that

go? Well, no surprise,

and

own

am

soul

is

a terri-

his emotional

critical family, the

man

world of pain. But where was his

it

was displaced onto

his wife.

When

he feh angry, and that was unacceptable to him, he provoked her to anger and then stood back, judgmentally,

When at

he drove her from their bedroom he

at

what he had wrought.

felt

righteous indignation

her abandonment. His emotions, which were in fact precious to

him, were just too painfully charged for him to process himself. His wife's metaphor of emotional dialysis

was not

inexact.

Dragon Dread 61

An even worse case was to

man who, when his wife would say "Charles, we have to talk," would re-

the

him, perhaps once a year,

ply, "If you're like

going

to start that again,

I'm leaving." This sounds

something out of a New Yorker cartoon, but

man

pression of the

quantum of

the prospect of

opening up a dialogue with

The the

it

it

carried

was

it

does

to a

is

thus,

is

not

often horren-

man's relationship with himself. What

unconscious does not go away, ever;

it

is

in

his wife.

does to outer relationships, though that

dous, but what

a factual ex-

and experienced

unexamined mother complex,

greatest cost of the

damage

fear this

active in the soul.

is

Such

self-estrangement erodes the quality of life and poisons relationships.

For a

man

nalized

to heal

he must

first

take account of the unresolved, inter-

mother-child experience, examine

wounds, both personal and

cultural,

the

character

of

his

and, finally, understand the

place of the father in this emotional constellation.

3

The Necessary Wounding: Rites of Passage

While passing through the Shenandoah Valley I

my

wife and

we saw

batteries

recently,

heard the sound of gunfire. Then, surrealistically,

of cannon firing and lines of blue and gray arrayed opposite each

We

other.

New

had happened on an anniversary recreation of the Battle of

Market, where the young cadets of the Virginia Mihtary

tute in

nearby Lexington had rushed into battle in

classroom strategies becoming

As we watched

all

was no surgeon's

happens in real battle, no family ever,

no

felt

I

someone

tent at the rear,

Wilfrid

noble purpose,

Owen,

—

the

no

strangely ambivalent,

else's suffering. pile of

who would have

identified (having fallen, hopefully, facing the its

of 1864

I

knew

severed limbs, as its

heart torn for-

of paper pinned to the back so that one could be

strips

war had

May

and, for many, final.

real,

the exchange of gunfire

rather like an obscene tourist at

there

too

Insti-

I

enemy). Though

shortly before he led his platoon to die a

the armistice in 1918, in

My friend,

that

could not help but recall the lines of

week

before

which he counsels:

you would not

tell

with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old

Lie:

Dulce

et

decorum est

Pro patria mori.^^

And

the bitter lines

by Siegfried Sassoon:

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by. Sneak home and pray you'll never know The

hell

^^ "Dulce et

1989,

^

p.

where youth and laughter go.'*^

Decorum

Est,"

in

Simon

Fuller,

20.

"Suicide in the Irenches,"

ibid.,

p.

21.

62

ed.,

The Poetry of War,

1914-

The Necessary Wounding I

M-16 and Drang

He saw one

names

He just

just for the hell of

He saw

it.

took him nearly a year to

It

like Pleiku

and the

la

of his buddies cut a peasant in half with

on a necklace. Then, twenty-four hours Angeles.

as a nineteen year old

highlands of Vietnam. Carrying an

in the central

a radio, he visited places with

Valley.

machine gun

his

who

also thought of Gerald, an analysand

had found himself

63

VC ears

friends with

after Pleiku,

he was

visit his folks in

could not go back to the old places and people.

Los

in

north Jersey.

And

I

thought

of Hemingway's remark that after the Great War, such terms as

honor and duty had become obscenities and the only sacred words

were the names of towns, I

had

to

hills

and

rivers

wonder why any of us were

ket, Virginia. Certainly

I

where men had

I

hegemony were more important than

slavery,

I

many men who took

more

Mar-

who

died

imagine issues of commerce and

regional

suspect

New

did not object to honoring those

almost 130 years ago. Although

they were even

died.

there, that day, at

afraid not to.

the noble desire to

because

to that field did so

They were

end

there because they

sought the so-called red badge of courage and were more afraid of

Homer asked why he

cowardice and disgrace than showering canisters of shrapnel.

knew

this. In

the Iliad,

when

the Trojan hero Hector

fought with such valor, he replies that he

shamed by Thus

is

his

is

more

is

afraid of being

comrades than of being pierced by Greek

fear the piper that plays the tune to

lances.

which men dance, and

march off to war, unconsciously.

When,

as a child during the

pointment on some foreign

soil,

war I

years,

read

all I

I

discerned a future ap-

could about war so that

might ready myself. As a graduate student during Vietnam a deferment and a high lottery number; felt

I

had

failed

some

great

test,

though

about the war, nor any desire to

who

went, and also those

who

I

visit

received

had no conscious

Da Nang.

I

Modern

I

also felt

Verse in English,

I

illusions

respected those I

respected con-

words of Karl Shapiro: "Yours

we came home to.'"^^ But

^^ "Conscientious Objector," in

I

relieved but ashamed.

stayed and protested.

scientious objectors, recalling the the conscience

was

I

I

is

shame and won-

p.

574.

The Necessary Wounding

64

dered

how I might have measured

afraid, but

the test

wondered

I

and not

my

let

if,

up.

I

knew

of

in the face

was no shame

it

terror,

could have passed

I

buddies down. Though

I

be

to

my

have had

share

of Tet Offensives since, in confronting the inner demons through the analytic descent into the underworld,

My

point here

Rather

is

it

wonder.

not to debate matters of war or foreign policy.

is

make

to

still

I

clear the

Satumian burden once again. While

itself, make enormous demands wounded by such a summons. Having

every civilization must, to preserve

on

its

citizens,

examined

each

wounding

is

previous chapter the enormous influence of the

in the

mother complex

man

in a

man's

life,

we must now examine how male

both necessary and, sometimes, appalling.

is

During the question and response session to a

Jung Society, a man stood up and

middle-aged now. wife told

A

after a talk

said, as best

few years ago, when

I

was

me she didn't love me any more and was

devastated.

I

wanted

to die.

Now

I

I

had given

I

recall: "I

thirty-eight,

leaving me.

realize she did

me

me to deal with my anger, my me to deal with myself."

While he did not use the word anima^ wife had forced him to deal with his inner

it

was

life

was

a favor.

drove her away. She forced

abandonment. She forced

I

am my

clear that the

I

fear of

man's

because she would no

longer accept his projections onto her. His wounding was painfully obvious, but his courage, his willingness to the

more impressive. His comments bespoke

aphorism: "What does not destroy us So,

then,

wounds

the

that

One of my

prompt us first

himself,

may make

to

grow

was

us stronger."^^

double-edged sword of wounding.

that crush the soul, distort

and those

work on

the truth of Nietzsche's

There are

and misdirect the energy of

life,

up.

analysands in Zurich was a middle-aged

man who

had never had a relationship with a woman. He experienced sexual arousal only

when he

fantasized a

could kiss a woman's foot.

woman beating a child

He had

or

when he

never met his father and his

mother had been the leader of a religious commune. Her assaults on

42 "Xwilight of the Gods,"

in

The Portable Nietzsche,

p.

467.

The Necessary Wounding his eros

had

wounds, destroying

inflicted terrible

65

on

his fragile hold

masculinity.

On

the other hand, there are "necessary"

quicken consciousness, obliging us to

new

tion into

move

wound

there often lies a person's genius. "^^

ambivalent nature of wounding obliges that crush

that

As Jung The

catalysts to the next stage of growth.

life,

noted, behind one's

tween those

wounds, those

out of the old dispensa-

and those

us, then, to differentiate be-

that enliven.

Again,

we

are trying to

understand with some objectivity what our ancestors often grasped intuitively.

Wounding has always been

a crucial dimension of

initiation to adulthood, to sacred societies

male

and even sometimes

to

profession.

Thus another male

secret:

because men must leave Mother, and

transcend the mother complex, wounding I

have before

George

painter

the Mississippi

often the

first

their leaders,

One

me

the

A

is

necessary.

the nineteenth-century

Catlin. Trained as a lawyer, the

young

American

Catlin crossed

and visited some thirty-eight separate Indian nations,

white they had seen.

He

left

behind

scenes of the hunt and everyday

looks with horror

rites.

work of

at his

skewer was driven

paintings of the

many

paintings of

and

their rituals.

life,

Mandan Sioux

initiatory

into the pectoral muscles of the

initiate

and he was raised by rope from those hooks toward the ceiling of the ceremonial lodge. his breast, until

He was swung

when he recovered he placed be severed as a further

The sive

around, hanging from the hooks in

he fainted. Then he was lowered to the ground and a finger

on a buffalo

skull, the digit to

sacrifice."^"^

history of civilization

is full

of less dramatic but no less deci-

examples of initiation. What are the messages conveyed by such

apparent cruelty? First, as

The boy

Joseph Campbell notes: is

being carried across the difficult threshold, from the

sphere of dependency on the mothers to that of participation in the

"^^ "^^

"The Gifted Child," The Development of Personality, CW 17, par. 244. Harold McCracken, George Catlin and the Old Frontier, pp.l06ff.

66

The Necessary Wounding

means of a decisive physical transmeans of a series of intense psychological experiences, reawakening but at the same time nature of the fathers, not only by

formation of his

own body

reorganizing

the primary imprints and fantasies of the infantile

all

... but also by

unconscious.^^

Whether

be circumcision, sub-incision,

the act of ritual mutilation

knocking out a tooth or clipping off an ear or ficed

is

what

material (m^rer-mother) security and dependency.

wrench the boy from liance

finger,

his oedipal

on the known, the

is sacri-

The

elders

dependence and cut off the easy

re-

protective, the secure, all aspects of the

mother world.

However

painful such ordeals, they

for the younger.

They moved from

were

acts of love

by the elder

gratuitous acts of violence

on

were

at-

helpless victims to the realm of the religious, since they

tended by the

rites

of male community, song, dance and the use of

the "bull-roarer" to induce a trance-like state,

Those swinging by

ordinary.

their pectorals

the Sioux lodges were, through ecstatic experience.

tence in the here tory, the history

Such

rites

That

is,

and now

one transcending the

from the ridge poles of

ceremony and

pain,

vouchsafed an

they were translated from childhood exis-

into the transcendent realm of sacred his-

of their gods, their people and male mysteries.

were

far

more elaborate

for

boys than for

girls.

As

Mircea Eliade explains, For boys, initiation represents an introduction to a world that

immediate

—

the world of spirit and culture. For girls,

not

of revelations concerning the secret

trary, initiation involves a series

meaning of a phenomenon

is

on the con-

that

is

apparently natural

—

the visible

sign of their sexual maturity."^^

Thus

for girls, initiation into adult society

their

mother's world, biologically and phenomenologically experi-

meant simply

replicating

enced with the onset of menstruation. But for boys, the advent of puberty signaled the

move from dependent childhood

^^ The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology,

^ Rites

and Symbols of

Initiation,

p.

47.

p.

99.

to the

demand-

The Necessary Wounding

67

ing adult role of keeper and preserver of the symbolic values of the

These values included honoring the directives of the gods,

tribe.

membership

in the collective,

The move from from body and

and keeping watch on the ramparts.

the creature comforts of the hearth to the frontier,

instinct to

symbolic service, from childhood

to adult-

hood, requires the crossing of a huge psychological divide. The

wounding

bestowed with

then, are inflicted ritually,

rites,

help both the youth and the society he must sustain.

with

ters pain,

message

the

immediacy, he learns

all its

that

he can't go

sion, crosses that divide is

men

for

no

rites,

today

home

again.

is

So most of us

macho compensation,

monly, to suffering our shame and indecision

Given the of passage

similarity of structure,

among disparate and

would have thought

it

their

in the rites

geographically separate cultures, one

it

is,

would seem

that

such cere-

welled up from archetypal

Most mythic motifs and transcendent

visions originate in the

of the individual or of the small group. These images

arise to support

and

direct the flow of libido, to channel

ergy in meaningful ways. So, then,

own

most com-

ceremonies ordained by some central

monies originated spontaneously, that

life

or,

swag-

in isolation.

sequence and motive

conmiittee. Barring that impossibility,

our

difficult

are left to our private dependencies, to

gering about in embarrassing

psychic

How

help across that great abyss. There are

very few wise elders, and minimal modeling of mature male

initiates.

roots.

of his flesh

granted an ecstatic vi-

and enters the adult world.

who have no

As he encoun-

in the rigors

He

eros, to

we might

human

en-

expect that the work of

depths, our unconscious processes, might also incarnate

passages, for in each man's psyche course the

same energies

that

animated our ancestors.

manhood may be seen in the dream of twentyNorman. Norman recalled only one good time in his

Such a summons eight-year-old life.

lege,

to

That was when, having abused drugs and dropped out of colhe

moved

a bakery.

in

with an uncle and worked side by side with him

But the gravitational

lack of confidence to bring

in

pull of his family colluded with his

him back

to live

with his parents. For

several years he drifted in and out of psychiatric treatment, though he

The Necessary Wounding

68

had no significant pathological developmental, that

is,

problems were rather

features. His

problems of maturation and separation. His

mother was psychologically invasive,

his father absent

on business

most of the time and extremely passive even when present.

When Norman came to me I suggested he move out of the home

to at least

cal separation.

launch the

first

step of the initiation process

—physi-

His mother phoned me, upset, and said, "But you're

not thinking like a mother." "No, like his therapist." (I

that

parental

Ma'am,"

might have said "like a

would have made sense

I

replied,

"I'm thinking but

tribal elder,"

I

doubt

to her.)

Norman continued to vacillate between a dependency that frequently drove him home or to telephone his mother, and a rageful enervation that followed each contact with her. One While

in analysis

might say that his soul was up for grabs.

blame

his

or his passive father,

would be

It

would be easy enough

to

unconscious mother, for she certainly baited traps for him,

to

who

provided no model of

initiation.

But

undermine Norman's personal responsibility and

that

task: to

hold the tension between his desire to become an adult and his fear of

independence. This tremendous struggle,

this daily vacillation,

was

dramatized in a very powerful three-part dream: I

am

at a drive-in

and

to the car

movie with male

friends.

get out to investigate.

I

Something has happened

Someone

hits

me

very hard in

the mouth. I

am

with

my

mother looking

My

her sympathy.

show I

tooth

in the mirror together.

falls out. It

can't be saved.

She expresses I go over and

the tooth to Keith Byars.'^'^

find Mrs. X.

I

say to her, "I

am

not a

little

me

boy. Treat

like a

man."

The dream says

it all.

It

shows Norman stuck

land of extended adolescence."^^

^^ Keith Byars gles,

^^

Norman's

Many

was

setting

in the

announces

highly-regarded running back for the

no-man's-

his situation

Philadelphia

Ea-

favorite football team, at the time of the dream.

as between and twenty-eight, given the absence of rites of passage adulthood. Norman was clearly pushing even these liberal limits. in

the helping professions currently define adolescence

the ages of twelve to

a

The

The Necessary Wounding in life.

he

is

The movie

drama where

theater suggests a projected interior

working with the mascuhne presence; however, there

is

a prob-

When

he makes a wounded. Before he began therapy Norman knew noth-

lem with the

move he

69

is

car, his

psychic process or mobility.

ing of male rites of passage, but his psyche, at the archetypal level,

knows, for

it

participates in the primal developmental process.

know

did not consciously

that ritual

wounding, sometimes

He

in fact the

knocking out of a tooth, was symbolic of sacrificing dependence on the mother. rate, his

While Norman's mother made

own

difficult for

him

lethargy stymied his growth as well. In the

seeks her sympathy, her commiseration time his split psyche is to

it

moves

to

—"poor baby." At

show "Keith Byars"

to sepa-

dream he the

the tooth,

same

which

say that in his personal and collective culture, his psyche fas-

tened on this athlete as a personification of male energy that might help combat the chthonic pull of the underworld.

Norman's

father

is

not present in the mirroring, but the football

player represents a male energy for which he longs and

whose

mation he needs. Ambivalence dominates, however, for part

of the dream

whom Norman

Norman

seeks the support of Mrs.

believed to be

X

affir-

in the third

neighbor

(a

more understanding and supportive

than his mother). Thus the dream does not represent a breakthrough.

At the end Norman

is still

This regressive force arises

soliciting

is

found

an older woman's approval.

in all

men, but here the pathology

from the near complete absence of positive male energy

Norman's

history.

When

such energy

is

present

it

counterbalance the regressive pull of the mother complex.

why Norman

considered the brief shoulder-to-shoulder

uncle as the best time of his

was overcome by failure

of nerve.

life.

in

helps model and

One

stint

sees

with his

Yet even that glimpse of maturity

the powerful energies of the

complex and

his

own

"^^

^^ In Grimm's "Iron Hans" fairy tale, the key to the wild man lies under the mother's pillow. The youth cannot ask her for the key, for she will not give it must be stolen in order it. She wishes him to remain by her side. And so to unlock the energies of adulthood. (See below, pp. 92-94, for further consideration of "Iron Hans.")

The Necessary Wounding

70

absence of

In the

Norman's to

grow

plight

up,

is

know

rites

help

somewhat

to

their identity.

less

and

less

today.

They

tribal elders,

are expected

An

older male therapist

may

provide support and encouragement, but weekly

enough and,

in

any case, lack the numinosity of

Norman,

traditional initiation rites.^^

spend

many men

to

themselves, serve and maintain the tribal culture,

and be comfortable with

sessions are hardly

of passage, in the absence of

common

did eventually

for instance,

time with his parents, slowly growing less domi-

He now

nated by them and his parental complexes.

lives separately

and supports himself. But psychologically he has remained, essenthe uninitiated,

tially,

wounded male

Norman's missing tooth of creature comforts and a

This sacrifice

is

summons

is

symbolic of the sacrifice

to the rigors

of the journey.

a most powerful mythological motif, an archetypal

which requires

pattern

characteristic of our time.

dream

in the

that

something be given up for something

to

be gained. Childhood dependency must be relinquished for adult

The longing

self-possession and creativity.

for a trouble-free exis-

tence must be put aside in favor of the mature meeting of responsibil-

Such changes constitute not only the quickening of conscious-

ity.

summoned

ness but a form of election. All are

up

to the task. Initiatory

come

—

the

wounding

to

mourns

also intuits the existence of a it is

grow

up; not

are

all

an adumbration of things

wounding ways of the world. When

kindergarten he not only

natural as

is

to

the child goes off to

the loss of the protective hearth, he

more

to fear that world,

difficult

he

own adulthood. When I was an adolescent, and

is

and dangerous world. As

obliged to enter

it

if

he

is to

claim his

football in high school

a fingernail torn off.

and college.

As

I

against parental advice,

On

I

played

the first day of practice

had

I

stood on the sideline and commiserated

with myself, a senior tackle came over and said, to the best of recollection, "If

worse." ^^

As

ritual

only

I

you can't stand

felt at that

moment

and Such

talk.

rebirth, or

you won't stand the

a kind of

constructive and supportive

burial

that,

male

as therapy

my

gets

love, a friendly encour-

may

be,

swinging from the pectorals.

talk is necessary,

rest. It

and healing, but

it

it

does not involve

No

ecstatic

vision,

also takes longer.

The Necessary Wounding

He could easily have shamed me,

agement.

couragement. Even though I

deep drive

felt a

to play.

in

come

by the bigger guys.

abdominal pain from

I

When,

thumb,

felt

I

easily to mind.

Each Friday

that fear, but

at the

I

me

all

that

was

me

available to

by

would be doubled

I

afraid of being afraid

first year,

—

I

when we rite

my

broke

less.

knock heads with

to

My

lost.

of passage.

at the time,

I

afraid of

that dread

badge of courage, no

to sweat, collision and fear as a

parents could not understand, nor did

was

as en-

it

never missed a practice

my

was seeking male bonding

I

the guys, joke with them, cry together

drew

I

was more

end of

a symbolic victory, a red

Unconsciously,

was

I

overcompensated for

or a game. Like the Trojan Hector, than getting hurt.

often do to each

internalized

rather small for organized football,

entering the field of fear by choice.

over

men I

could not have expressed why.

motives

In retrospect, the

getting hurt

was

I

I

as

and

other, but his tone suggested helpfulness

71

was

psyche

What my

that football

in a mythically sterile time. In the

need for symbolic wounding, for association with male energy and camaraderie, and for a sulation of the

Just a

rite

of passage from childhood and the encap-

mother complex,

few years ago

football coach.

I

membered me and for the next play."

all

in

is

wrote

Maybe

You

early

to

life

me

my

had fought for the hurt,

somehow,

I

what

message

for

life,

but

it

after

of that message. I

set off to

I

way was

in the distance

My wife said how awful

replied that they

walk our dog.

field across the

We could see dim forms

privilege.

re-

you get up and get ready

had the boys out there on a holiday rather than with their families.

He

psyche dredged him up

Day my wife and

the faint cadence chant.

in Indianapolis.

since added, "That's

this is a simplistic

and the high school

shrouded with mist.

him

old college

Finding his ad-

thirty years.

get hurt and

a necessary one. Perhaps

recent Labor

was very

I

recounting his

those years to remind

One

football.

woke up having dreamt of my

I

learned from football.

surely

had was

had not seen him for

dress in the alumni journal,

we

all I

wanted

it

was

letting

to

be

It

still

and hear

that the coach

them be home

there, that they

did not add that they also wanted to be

in the daily collisions, that they

needed each other,

72

The Necessary Wounding

that

it

was about love somehow, and

fathers there in the mist.

would be able

make

to

inner dragons in

I

it

that they

did not add

all

clear. Indeed,

my own analysis did

I

were looking

that for

not until

I

did not believe

realize that

I

had never done field

of play

my thumb.

and break

On such

fields

the forgotten

what

rite

the youth

feel that

seeking, though he

is

He

of passage and the lost fathers.

Jung's terms, the symbolic people

I

had confronted the

I

anything wiser or more necessary than go out on a green

is

for their

life.

Meaning only comes

they are living the symbolic

in the divine drama. "^^

The youth

is

life,

knows is

it

not,

seeking, in

"when

to us

that they are actors

however cuUuraUy

seeking, in

attenuated a form, images that will attract his libido and channel

it

to

serve his development and his community. His need to individuate

is

profound and has an archetypal urgency. Without such images and rites

he

is

He

bereft.

will

spend

his time in depression, or take drugs

Like Norman, he will stay suspended as a child-man, macho overcompensation. He will believe that his masculinity is proved by bedding women, driving a high-powered car or making lots of money. Underneath he knows the truth, of course, to kill the pain.

or engage in

and he

is

desperately afraid of being found out; he believes himself

an impostor

in the

Those same

many

to

admit

salubrious

man's sense of has not at

it,

of green are experienced by

No man felt

No male felt

I

have ever met,

if

he

all

men

is

to stir

client

with

in

honest

a great deal of shaming as a man.

power of wounds

self.

The

growth can also damage a

whom

I

have ever worked

inadequate or shamed. Most had vivid

failure, like the

game, or when they

and

fields

has not

some time

memories of

fields

on

different forums.

enough

same

company of men.

trials

time they dropped the ball and lost the

failed to

make

the team. For boys, such green

their analogue, dusty playgrounds, are the arena for testing

and for shaming.

What man does not remember the slogans on walls? "No pain. No gain." "When the going gets

^1 See above, note 12.

the locker

room

tough, the tough

'

The Necessary Wounding get going."

tumble?

Who

73

does not remember childhood games of rough and

One man who had

reer always referred to

led a very distinguished, high-profile ca-

what he

called

"The Red Surrender." When

named Red had

he was around nine years old a bigger kid

down on

the playground and heaped dirt

laughed.

No

how

matter

on

held

him

his face while the others

great his achievements in the adult world,

"The Red Surrender" remained

his mythically defining

moment.

What man does not recall being called a "sissy," or, worse when I was a child, a "jelly"? These wounds are permanently lodged in a man's psyche and much of his adult life may be spent jousting with the armored ghosts of humiliations past.

Alas, he

shamed

may

further.

not speak of this shame, this humiliation, lest he be

And

this is the fourth great secret

collude in a conspiracy of silence whose aim

emotional

Every last

men

is to

truth.

man

will recall times

when, as a boy, as a youth, or even

week, he dared reveal himself and was shamed and

mask

learns to stuff that shame,

cover.

carry: they

suppress their

Along the way he

his pain, his protest.

in

isolated.

He

male bravado and cover, cover,

frequently degraded and unable to speak

is

The

it

play,

and

later film.

Glengarry Glen Ross,

dramatizes the humiliation of the sales force of a real-estate company, fully

grown men abusing

the other

their

cheek while trying

who

male colleagues

to beat

each other

and turn

suffer

at the selling

game:

to

the top salesman a Cadillac, to the second a paltry set of steak

knives, and the fourth

was

to

be unemployed. In such ways

is

shame

swallowed and isolation deepened. The shaming and the secrecy have gone on since childhood, so

own

degradation. This keeps

men become

accomplices

them from embracing

their own splintered selves. Men are often amazed by the willingness

in their

either their bro-

ken brothers or

pain.

Even

as a therapist

I

takes

Hopcke goes so

men a year in

women

to share their

have been impressed by women's capacity

to gain access to their inner truth

therapist Robert

of

and

articulate

it

to another.

Jungian

far as to say that in his experience

therapy to reach the point where

begin, in terms of being able to express

women

what they are

it

usually

really feel-

The Necessary Wounding

74

ing.^2

Men will

express their frustration or speak of a problem "out

there," but they are

world. Such

seldom able

to articulate the reality

the legacy of the

is

shaming and

of their inner

self-alienation they

have accrued since childhood.

Two examples will suffice. One is the man who came to see me at demand of his wife and condescendingly noted the pres-

the express

ence of a box of

tissues. ^3

They served

and

tears within himself,

to

remind him of the lake of

were quickly

his old defenses

and

Predictably, he lasted about three sessions in therapy, riage only

two months longer.

but upon reflection

wounded

that he

terribly isolated

for all the

had

felt

I

I

found myself quick

his

mar-

judge him,

His maleness was so

sorry for him.

to clothe himself in a

man. The innocuous box of

shame and

to

activated.

macho

cloak.

He was

a

tissue served as a spark

and fear he had suffered. As a consequence

risk

of his self-alienation he could hardly have a safe and trusting

rela-

tionship with his wife. Instead he sought to control her.

On another occasion, felt

while counseling a policeman and his wife,

I

how much he worried how he daily had to deal He was very much the battered,

genuine sympathy for his description of

about money. At the same time he described

scum of the wounded male of whom with "the

only to crush his

spirit,

earth." I

have been speaking. His wounds seemed

not free

him

for

new

consciousness. Several

times he had lashed out at his wife, hitting her once, and feared he

might do the same

up and came

would have

to his daughter.

straight at

hit

At one point

me to make a point;

me. The battered man, with

The willingness of women ated. In

spouse

my

means

far better than

he got

had moved he

to

speak his pain.

to risk their inner truth,

women are much women adjust to divorce

which men

less likely to feel alien-

that

experience,

if I

his battered inner child,

can only batter others because he cannot bear

generally lack,

in the session

think

I

do men. Perhaps they

cause they have learned along the

way

^^ Men's Dreams, Men's Healing, ^^ See above, pp. 43-44.

12.

p.

or the loss of a

feel less

abandoned be-

to establish a relationship with

The Necessary Wounding their

far

own

inner

network of

ive

more Hkely

a dark

more

Certainly they are

life.

have a support-

likely to

friends. After divorce or a partner's death, a to neglect his health

room with

and a

a bottle

and become depressed,

TV

dinner.

And

he

75

is

sitting in

more

is

man

likely to

rush out and find a replacement as soon as possible, just to avoid the loneliness.

Men's nian

up shortly

mortality rate shoots

after retirement, apparently

immune system is depressed. Perhaps also the wound, that a man is to be judged by his productivity,

because

their

sions a great lost of self-esteem. All his

work.

If

obliged to support, he would be a lazy

life

he has been told he

whom

he stopped working, or supporting those

bum,

who

left his

a wage-slave a

before being

shamed

Our culture longer have

to

his

he

is

Gauguin

make his mark in Fiji; but few can pull it man may be degraded, but he will accept that to

as nonproducing.

offers a delusory out: "At 65, or thereabouts,

work

is

became

family,

the patron saint of Switzerland; the French painter Paul

As

occa-

shamed and shunned. He would be

irresponsible. St. Niklaus,

abandoned wife and kids off.

Satur-

to

prove your worth.

you no

Now you can retire honor-

ably from the field and, without any preparation of your soul along the way, St.

you can play out your days

shuffleboard in Sun City or

at

Petersburg." Fueled by economic need, and even

fear of shameful inadequacy,

we

are

all,

in the

more by

the

haunting words of

Philip Larkin,

men whose

first

coronary

is

coming

Christmas

like

—who

drift,

loaded helplessly with commitments and obligations and necessary observances, into the darkening avenues of age and incapacity, deserted

by everything

What

the

that

modem man

once made

most

without the transformation.

He

life

sweet.

suffers from, then,

without the godly vision.

no one can define

it

He

except in the most

move from boyhood

to

the

wounding

suffers the Satumian burden of

definition that confines rather than liberates. in the soul

is

is

He

suffers the skewers

asked to be a

trivial

of terms.

manhood without any

role

rites

He

man when is

asked to

of passage, with

The Necessary Wounding

76

no wise elders

and

to receive

what such manhood might

instruct him,

and no positive sense of

His wounds are not transforma-

feel like.

they do not bring deepened consciousness; they do not lead

tive;

to a richer life.

They

him

senselessly, repeatedly, stun

him

numb-

into a

ing of the soul before the body has had the good sense to die.

Richard fronts

is

a lawyer in a large firm.

on himself. Richard with the image

him, that he

is

may

in terror

and thinks,

this

work do not

when an

have

"I'll

intruder enters. Richard

frozen

is

up and defend our house." He

to get

A year later he dreams of another intmder,

time moves toward his daughter's room. Richard gets up

with a baseball bat.

after the intruder

and protect

his role in life is to provide for afraid, inadequate, not fully a

he sees someone beating someone assailant chases him.

takes to

is

my

"We

else.

fight.

I

dazed, but he gets control of shoes.

No one

his family.

insistent. In

He

yells,

He

feels

in his care.

to a

another dream

kick him in the balls.

me

that

"Leave him alone." hit

I

him

and torments me. Then he

can help me." Again, Richard

defend himself and those

is

man. He confessed these thoughts

dreams were so

therapist only because the

and he

it

respect

Richard's understanding of these recurrent dream images

The

con-

and puts

not be pulling his weight. Similarly, he dreams that

shouts, "Get out of here!"

and goes

man

that a

his face

dream. His association

feels humiliated in the

the fear that his colleagues at

he and his wife are asleep

who

He dreams

Arnold Schwartzenegger, pulls the skin off

feels

unable

His tormentor steals his

shoes, his grounding, his standpoint.

in

Or consider Allen, an emergency room physician. He dreams he is a room with other youngish men. All of them are successfully

shooting arrows.

how

He

has to do this too, but no one will

or what to shoot

show him

Finally he does shoot his arrows, but he

at.

has no sense of whether they have hit the target or not. Then the

scene shifts and he tles

with one that

is

in a

swamp

crawling with alligators.

trymg

to pull

him under.

is

ages to escape and reach a

mud

flat

young men

wres-

man-

where he

ment. Apparently Allen's psyche longs for a that other

He

Full of terror, he will

rite

be safe for a mo-

of passage.

are already engaged, but there

is

He

sees

no elder

to

The Necessary Wounding instruct.

He does

not even

77

know what the target is or whether his As a consequence he is swamped,

halting efforts are rightly directed. a powerful

symbol of the undertow of the unconscious. Without the dreamer is in the death grip of the maternal mon-

helpful father, the

mother complex, which threatens

ster, his

mud

he clambers onto a

Notice that these two

flat,

he

is

men are

him under. Though

to pull

only temporarily safe.

fearful of tests of their

endow

in professions that culturally

them with considerable empowerment. Yet both manhood. They long

feel

unworthy and

for the help of others

over the great divide; they suffer wounds without illumination or transformation.

hood haunts

The absence of meaningful dreams, just as

their

Again, only by fidehty to the inner

dreams with

respect,

rites

of passage to man-

does those of so

it

life,

for instance

however unpleasant

by

many men.

treating their

the message, will they be

able to bring their secret fears to the light of consciousness.

As

a consequence of missing rites of passage,

masculinity. circle the

They

wagons, someone

destroy them. Or,

one

will

prove

it,

feel that

however

tightly they

will break through

life will shift

the context,

again and

And once you have

someone

else will

level,

man and even know how

is:

be a

change

"arrived," the rules will

be better than you. This protean, shape-

changing definition of masculinity obliges sona

to

and humiliate, even

but the rules shift constantly so you don't

game.

their

change the game, and

be proven incompetent. So the double bind

to play the

men doubt

have been able

men

to function at the per-

defining their reality primarily in terms of collective pa-

rameters such as salary, car, home, social status.

The

fragile

psyche of

Historically he has

man

has been brutalized and trivialized.

been conditioned

to procreate

and protect

brood, and to be defined by his productivity. All that says

little

his

or

nothing about his soul, his personhood, his uniqueness. In such a

world

men

are tragically

doomed; they cannot achieve

dom operate out of inner conviction, and game. Even when they win, they lose

Thus

modem men

cient myth, that of the

serenity, sel-

rarely get out of the killing

their soul.

recapitulate the timeless lineaments of an an-

wounded

Fisher King, Amfortas.

The

tale

of

78

The Necessary Wounding

Amfortas, whose name derives from French enfertez, "infirmity,"

many

has been told many,

times,

from various versions of the me-

dieval Grail legend to Robert Johnson's

modem

derstanding Male Psychology. The central point suffered a terrible testicles.

He

wound, variously described

is

that

a

It is

medieval symbol for container of soul. Though

Grail,

may have

Amfortas has

as to the thigh or the

wounded in his place of generativity, wound that will not heal unless he

has been

of his maleness.

account in He: Un-

a big car in the castle garage and walls

the seat find the

modem man

adomed with

the

trophies of corporate success, he intuits his emptiness, his pain, the

wound

that will not heal.

ated and the ramparts

However magnificent

on which he nervously

the castle he has cre-

strides,

he knows he

is

the lord of emptiness, his realm an emotional wasteland.

This recurrent mythic motif hovers in the background of TS. Ehot's great twentieth-century poem, "The Wasteland." London, the center of commerce and man-built stmctures, the center of the game, is

dubbed an Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many. I

had not thought death had undone so many.^"^

At msh hour Eliot sees not the enterprise of life but

Thus he into the

ironically quotes Dante's

Infemo

six centuries before ("I

undone so many").

If the

world

spiritual death.

shocked sentence as he walked had not thought death had

men have made and

serve does not

among the hosts of the dead As Joseph Campbell explained it.

serve them, then they are

land of the soul.

The Wasteland

...

is

any world in which

.

.

.

in the

waste-

force and not love, in-

doctrination, not education, authority, not experience, prevail in the

ordering of lives, and where myths and

rites

enforced and received are

consequently unrelated to the actual inward realizations, needs, and potentialities of those

upon whom they

are impressed.^^

^^ "The Wasteland," lines 60-63, in The Complete Poems and Plays, ^^ The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, p. 388.

p.

39.

The Necessary Wounding

79

When outer myth and inner truth conflict, one suffers a wound of Men surely suspect that attaining material success and

the soul.

power-laden status will not bring them inner peace, but they are afraid to get out of

town. So the

wound

new

festers without

know, the only game

As he watches

young man who,

a

dream he

a theater. To

is in

meeting and courting on the silver

his parents

the film he realizes they are

making

a terrible

mistake, a mistake from which he, of course, will one day result.

stands up and shouts that the film must be stopped.

by the usher who admonishes him

firmly,

even

You

other people aren't around!

if

"You

will

do what you should do, you can't carry on that out

Thus the youth,

at the

And just so do many men carry

that will

collision

life

you

will find

awaiting him as their child.

and rage

between outer images and inner

dilemma

for

men. The man

—

that the fa-

that

hammer

been. This collision,

felt in

truth creates

an im-

in the gray flannel suit, the or-

represent

all

conform, to distort the soul, even as that of

body and

enormous pressures

women

has so often

not also in the con-

spirit if

scious mind, leads to another male truth that

rather less than a se-

is

Men 's lives are violent because their souls have been violated.

Men's violence breaks out psychic contagions such as

any

you do not

shape him. Rejecting his

a secret sorrow

ganization man, the team player

in

like this,

if

into shape, are not in accord with the truth in their soul.

possible

cret:

can't act like this

be sorry

and cultural ethos, the images and expectations

The

to

He

accosted

is

onset of his chronological adulthood, sees

mythos

parents before his birth, he rejects the

them

He

soon enough."^^

the burden of the family

milial

in

vision, without healing.

twenty-first birthday,

amazement he sees

screen.

as far as they

is,

Delmore Schwartz describes

In a short story

on the morn of his his

what

man and one

mountain of

in

random

mob

its

murder and

rape,

and

action and wars. Dig deeply into

will quickly find not only that lake of tears but a

rage, layers of anger

slowly pushing

acts of

magma toward

accumulated since childhood,

the surface, there to erupt.

^^ "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,"

in

The World

Is

a Wedding.

80 The Necessary Wounding I

once

sat with a

man who had

taken over his father's plumbing

business when the elder's health declined. He worked sixty hours a week for forty years, protected his parents and allowed them to die in some modicum of material comfort. Then he protected his two sons

from the Satumian rack where,

Gerard Manley Hopkins's words,

in

smeared with

"All is seared with trade; bleared,

toil; /

and wears

man's smudge and shares man's smell."^^The sons, protected remained

at

home, dependent and demanding. At the

would erupt and scream

cation he

threaten. His rage to others,

was

at his

poor wife, storm and

the anger accumulated

given to Saturn.

And

from a

given

life lost,

obeyed sacrosanct

yet he had

thus,

slightest provo-

cultural

values: take care of your parents, provide for your family, pass

on a

He did everything he was supposed to do own life, and he was full of rage. Another man I knew had devoted his life to the making of international peace. He was a widely traveled negotiator, director of a re-

better life to your children.

except live his

spected think tank on conflict resolution.

he never raised his voice. At was. Then he told

me

first

that at least

I

I

never saw him angry and

was perplexed

at

where

the only person his fine sensibility

ground

anger

once a month he was wiped out by

migraines. His legitimate, honest anger turned inward.

One Monday morning at

his

would allow

—

He

attacked

himself.

rush hour, along with other commuters,

to a halt in the Philadelphia traffic

—

a gridlock

I

from which no

one would move very soon. At the intersection two men got out of expensive cars, and, clad

and shook to

their fists.

mention what lay

tapped and burst Similarly, football

pot, fight

in

screamed

at

each other life,

not

wait at their respective offices, had been

always on edge while attending Philadelphia Eagle

life is in

lots,

and

danger. So

each other or anyone I

ties,

forth.

am

passerby's

daughter and

and

suspect that their accumulated rage at

I

games. In the parking

cially, the

and

I

in suits

in their

counted sixteen fights

^^ "God's Grandeur," lines 6-7,

in

in the

in

cheaper seats espe-

many men,

fueled by

brew

way. At one game

my

our section of the stadium.

Norton Anthology of Poetry,

p.

855.

The Necessary Wounding 81

On another occasion my wife and I were threatened directly because we had allegedly parked our car too close to the van of some yahoos who had started their bread and wine before the game. Another time an elderly man who had dressed as a native American during an Eagles-Redskins game was beaten up inside and again later outside some reason he expressed no of Brotherly Love again. the stadium. For

What do

these examples illustrate? For the

week before jobs,

game

the

low pay,

little

stylized violence,

They

a

young

football fans the

Satumian round of boring and oppressive

expectation of change, a circus-like setting of

and the ministrations of booze

the venting of anger. to play out.

is

desire to visit the City

They

is

a witch's

are angry at the roles they

are angry at

mother complex. Each

—

angry

women at

because of

brew

for

seem doomed

their

unconscious

being a man, and, unconsciously,

acts out his rage

climbs the building, kicks the football, boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

.... Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope Tl-embles and shows the darkness beneath.

The

strutting

show-off is

These working-class lads

terrified.^^

will Hkely

remain trapped forever within

They will beat their women, drink to mask their pain, suspect each other, ever isolated and afraid. Their more educated or privileged brothers will be successful by societal

the Satumian wheel of fate.

parameters. But they too, in their leased limos, their Brooks Brothers suits, their

executive suites, will have succumbed to the infantility of

power, the only game they know. Since their rage truthfully lest they

is

monumental, and since they cannot speak

be shamed, most modem men

it

drift further into

tum their rage on themselves. They do work out until they drop. They must reach

isolation. Accordingly, they

drugs, drink too a place

much

where they

feel

or

no pain, where they can slow down. Many of

^^ Delmore Schwartz, "The Heavy Bear," to Poetry,

pp.

309-310.

in

Modern Poems: An

Introduction

82

The Necessary Wounding

them

are workaholics;

mands of

their

honorably

fall

know

that

anima.

into

work keeps them from confronting

Work

drains and fatigues

bed exhausted. You don't have

them to

till

the de-

they can

be a therapist

to

may somatize or become depression. much of popular psychology usefully, if

anger turned inward

Since stress

measurable,

is

management. Heart and blood pressure

superficially, teaches stress

and stomach and headache pathologies are the children of not a shorter

life

span also pathological?

Think of those pretty smart guys,

nifty beer

commercials, put together by some

showing men laboring together at logging camp or

high in a skyscraper. Then,

and they're off

stress. Is

to the local

"It's Miller

time by Bud's early Lite!"

watering hole, to "happy hour," where

with a blond or brunette anima they can afford to feel what was not felt that

What

day.

ported by male agencies.

coming

The

a

happy band of brothers

community

like Christmas."

secure, free

in the alcohol paradise

truth is that they too are

and sup-

envisioned by ad

men "whose

first

coronary

is

Their hearts have been under attack long be-

fore the cardiac arrests to is

—

—

which Philip Larkin's poem

alludes. Theirs

the loneliness of the long-distance runner.

The Satumian rack

Every

turns.

man

is

on

not quicken consciousness or bring wisdom.

it.

Their

wounds do

They merely cause pain

without meaning. The anesthetic of work, the numbing of narcotics,

—

all wounds wounds are barbarous, soul-less. men be wounded to help them break free

be they chemical or ideological, the terror of loneliness without transformation. Such Yes,

it is

necessary that

from the Mother. But growth. Today's tion troubles

man

it is

necessary also that those

suffers his

in isolation,

further

but his reac-

and damages those around him. He must begin by

knowledging the wounds he life, if

wounds

wounds

ever he

is

carries,

wounds

ac-

that leak daily into his

to heal himself or help his worid.

4

Father Hunger

All imagos are two-sided. If an image has a depth dimension

it

must

express the dual character of reality. Acknowledging and maintaining the tension of opposites

is

a fundamental Jungian tenet. One-sided-

ness begets distortion, perversion, neurosis. Thus, for example, the

archetype of the mother expresses the dual aspect of nature, that

which giveth and sents a

life

that

which taketh away. The Great Mother repre-

force that both begets and destroys, gestates and annihi-

As Dylan Thomas

lates.

so succinctly put

the green fuse drives the flower ...

energy

—no wonder he has

But father can also

my

is

So, too, the archetype of the father

is

it,

"The force

that

through

destroyer."^^

dual. Father gives

life,

light,

been associated with the sun.

historically

blast, wither, crush.

The

preliterate

mind, playing

with the image of the sun as center of energy, the vitalizing principle,

God

evolved

the Father

who

energizes and fecundates the feminine

worship of Earth Mother with

earth. Patriarchy replaced the

Sky

Father. (The halo associated with Christ

that of

a relic of the solar

is

aura of the Father even as the serpent associated with the maternal

spumed by

deities is

the emergent patriarchy in Genesis.)

experience of the father

is

support, the energizing of his

outer world.

psyche

is

own

modem

Through

empowerment

negative, the fragile

his

is

a set of potential-

by the affirmation and modeling of the

mother he may experience the world as a nur-

to enter the

From

world and

^^ "The Force That Through the p.

is

metaphor, the child's psyche

turing and protective environment.

Poetry,

resources and modeling in the

the experience of the father

a data base to be shaped

parents.

the

crushed.

To use a ities,

When

When

positive, the child experiences strength,

Green

1176.

83

father he

may

to fight for his life.

Fuse,"

in

Norton

receive the

Of course

Anthology

of

84 Father Hunger

mother can help empower him and father nurture him, but archety-

Mother

pally they play specific roles.

also activates the

which must be transformed and transcended

plex,

childlike

and dependent.

He must

ant of

he remain

leave the world of the mother and

mythology

enter that of the fathers. All

mother com-

lest

is

a playing out of

some

vari-

two great mythologems. The mythology of the Great Mother

the great circle, the death-rebirth motif, the Eternal Return.

mythology of the Sky Father cence

to experience,

is

from dark

the quest, the journey to light,

from home

is

The

from inno-

to the horizon.

Each mythic cycle must be served.

When the parental imagos

in the child are inadequately

the parents, he carries the deficit throughout his

life.

modeled by

He

longs for

something missing, even as he might carry a vitamin deficiency and

He unconsciously seeks the dormant energies of his psyche through others. He may impose the nurturant role on his wife, for example, and be angry when she does not mother him even though consciously he would not let her. Or he may relinquish his own private journey to serve another man's, unconsciously seeking the missing father imago. He may be full of rage for the failure of his father to father, or for the absence of cultural fathers, or he may carry crave a certain food.

a secret grief for his lost father. Just as

we

spent considerable time looking at the power of the

mother complex

knowledge

that

in a

man's

such power

life is

pletely activated father imago.

among

other things,

child. If

power

he

will

is

is

the personal father

must

be,

and

missing, literally or psychologically, the mother's

be unbalanced. Or

power

What

the third point in the triangle of parents

mother complex, the father familial

two chapters ago, so we must ac-

rendered even greater by the incom-

if,

unduly influenced by his

own

acts in a brutal, repressive fashion as the

broker, he similarly fails to

prochement with the feminine

that the child

model a healthy

rap-

needs to witness. The old

father-knows-best family model was too one-sided to be healthy.

Few of

us grew up seeing our parents as equal agents, democratic

forces balancing, supporting, In

Finding Our Fathers,

complementing each

other.

Sam Osherson cites a broad study

indicat-

Father Hunger 85 ing that only seventeen per cent of American tionship with their fathers. In

men had

most cases the

a positive rela-

was dead,

father

di-

vorced and missing, chemically impaired or emotionally absent.^^ this

amazing

tragic has

statistic is

happened

to

even close

one of the

something large and

to the truth,

critical

If

balances of nature. Indeed,

Robert Bly asserts that the father-son relationship

is

the

most dam-

aged of all relationships since the industrial revolution.^^

Thus

the seventh great secret that bedevils the

carries a deep longing for his father

When

when

a

where the jobs were, when father

fice.

was

in the fields, in

No more

craft,

Perhaps he had a few on the

no more the bonding of

way home. James Joyce

who, having been trashed by by a woman, walks

his friends, rejected

reason," beats his son.

on the only one over

The

in the

home

tells

the

scorned by

house and, "for no

degradation of his soul that day

whom he still has

Fathers so often return

his boss,

is

visited

power.^^

dispirited

and soul-worn. They can

hardly model a positive masculine imago for their sons feel the

to the

the shared

of the assembly line or the paper shuffling of the of-

story of a father

Satumian oppression so keenly. There

blaming

man

dragged himself home from a brutalizing

his dad. Father

in the heat

each

home and went

left

behind.

left

no more the transmission of one's

boy with

day

soul:

the family left the land and migrated to the

factory and the office, the son toil,

male

tribal fathers.

and sons stopped working together

fathers

the small trades, cities

and for his

his father, for his father could then

is

when in a

man

his father.

The

no point

blame

they

chain of cause and effect reaches back to the beginnings of industrial

and urban man. the chance for

scarcely

When the tribe was

man-to-man transmissions was

virtually lost.

We

can

go back to tribalism, although one feature of the men's

movement has been

to try to recapture a sense

chanting, and by bringing

^ Finding

absorbed into the larger society,

Our

^^ Iron John:

Fathers, p.

men

18.

A Book About Men.

^2 "Counterparts,"

in

of it by drumming and

together to share their stories.

pp.

19ff.

The Portable James Joyce, pp. 97-109.

86 Father Hunger Certainly the idea of activating a positive masculine

and male bonding experiences do further

propriate

most men

will never

many who

are, the effect

be exposed

to

their father

So

all

Literature

his loss.

it

They long

What

And tribal

or not, hunger for for his body, his

wisdom. of illustrations of the search that transpires within

is full

the youth for the activation of the masculine principle. is

ap-

But

be passed on to his son.

men, whether they know

and grieve over

strength, his

ple

last.

look to corporate boardrooms or the church for the

fathers today.

is

such opportunities, and, for

of the group experience does not

father cannot access in himself cannot

we cannot

imago

that goal.

A fine exam-

Franz Kafka's short story "The Judgment,"^^ where the per-

sonal father complex

is

extended to include his ambivalence toward

the patriarchs of his Judaic heritage

and even

to

Yahweh

—stem and

demanding, as well as absent and unavailable. In the story a father.

the

He

young man

suffers under the omniscient eye of his

has secretly been writing to a male friend in Russia. (For

Prague-bom Kafka, Russia,

at the

beginning of

would have represented something akin

to

this century,

our nineteenth-century

"wild west," a land of frontier adventure.) The friend

urging the

is

youth to join him. Obviously the youth longs for adventure and eager to accept the

summons

his father finds the

cache of

you

to die."

The son

to

joumey from home

letters.

He

to horizon.

jumps

to his death in the river.

This denouement shocks the reader. But Kafka, said stands in relationship to our age as

tradition,

city tive,

penned

in

whom

Dante did

an unparalleled writer of parables. Kafka's stories are secret self,

But

says to the son, "I sentence

dutifully treks through the city, crosses a

bridge, and, at story's end,

Auden

is

W.H.

to his,^"^ is

letters to his

an effort to escape an iron father and stultifying

though death seems the only escape from the grim, gray

of oppression.

By what power, what

authority,

even what mo-

can the father exercise such an effect over his son? Just as a

^^ In The Penal Colony, pp. 49-66.

^ The Dyer's Hand,

p.

159.

Father Hunger 87

glance at Medusa's face would turn

ogy, so

we have

in

men

negative father complex. This Satumian

over a son's

fall

mythol-

to stone in classical

"The Judgment" a portrayal of

the

shadow has

power of

the

the capacity to

and crush him. The son reaches out for a

spirit

positive masculine experience with his friend, but, for reasons not

explained, the father tumbles to his rival and shuts off his son's only

hope of escape. The complex, spirit, to

tamp

the fires of

life

power

then, has the

to cut off his

and plunge him into the obliterating

waters of the unconscious. So, instead of bringing his son

light,

the

father brings suffocating darkness.

Such negative mills."^^

They

burned

that

fathers built

what Blake

called the "dark, satanic

They

built arrogant theologies

also built Auschwitz.

men

at the stake

and crushed them on the wheel. They

have created an iron world without sons reach out for

life

light,

without soul.

Quite another example of the quest for the father Nathaniel Hawthorne's story,

"My

may be

streets are a

maze,

like the

where he goes he asks

Bostonians pull back from him. tion

is

brewing and

his

kinsman

own

kinsman and

He does is

seen in

a

not

is

know

much-hated

Boston, as-

he must

psyche. Every-

surprised to see that the

Revolu-

mob

howling

Only then does he

his

in their midst.

of

men

As He is

royalist official.

night falls his confidence and his consciousness diminish also.

swept up into a passing

A

whose winding

lost in the city

convolutions of his

for his

in

whom

hopes by his kinsman Major Molineaux,

Naive and innocent, he gets

find.

their

Kinsman, Major Molineaux."

youth named Robin sets off to find fame and fortune sisted he

When

they crush and destroy them.

Soon he

painted as savages. realize that

is

he has found

kinsman, tarred and feathered, no helping father but a broken old

man. Robin

is

and

he must make his

realizes

stunned

Hawthorne's story ure, a

mentor

complex

at finding the violence

own way

typifies a

of the

mob

for a father fig-

will help him over the bridge from empowered male world beyond. But,

^^ "And Did Those Feet,"

in

himself

in the world.

young man's need

who

to the

in

Norton Anthology of Poetry,

p.

his

mother

like

510.

most

88 Father Hunger

modem only a

which sive

men, Robin does not find the mentor he needs. He finds

wounded man thereafter he

shadow

Jugend was

projection that filled

fell

with youths

They responded

inner hero.

communal

like others,

and a darkness within himself

must carry consciously.

identification.

onto Hitler

who

to the

We might recall in the thirties.

a

is

The

mas-

Hitler

longed for the activation of their

summons

to ideals, sacrifice

The appeal of John Kennedy

idealism and heroic need

the

and

to youthful

more benign example. What Robin

found was that there were no helpful

abaissement

fathers, only the

du niveau mentale of the mob. In the end he

is

on

own.

his

A more positive outcome of the quest for a helpful male companion

is

seen

tagonist

is

in

Joseph Conrad's novella The Secret Sharer. The pro-

young captain taking on

a

China Sea. Nervous and insecure, he

his first tries to

command

in the

South

who back. He

befriend his crew

belittle him behind his knows only to be friend or tyrant, both extremes undermining his power to command. While walking the deck one night he sees a man

immediately smell his fear and

in the surf

and pulls him aboard. Instinctively he knows he must

harbor and protect this man. Later a ship pulls alongside, searching for a

man who

has acted boldly but murdered a shipmate.

captain, despite his duty to serve

The young

and support the law of the

sea,

cov-

I

ers for his mysterious visitor.

The man he young captain

fished from the sea lacks.

He

is

double. At story's end the

seems

in fact his

young

to

have

shadow,

all

his

the qualities the

Doppelganqer or

captain, having assimilated the

psychic influence of the fugitive, puts his ship through

some compli-

cated and perilous maneuvers in order to put the

man

safely ashore.

Out of these actions the crew comes

young

he has obviously grasped and thority necessary to exercise

What

the

shadow

What

potential.

at the

captain, for

the requisite moral au-

command.

young captain needed was not knowledge

ready learned that authority.

to respect the

now models

naval academy

—but

al-

inner strength, inner

the mysterious visitor represented

They shared

—he had

was

his

own

a secret, the secret that outer authority

must spring from inner authority. This secret sharing

is

the mentor-

Father Hunger 89

ing

all

thority,

men need. Since they are seldom able men must spend their lives deferring weight around

their outer

in

to feel their inner au-

throwing

to others or

compensation for

their sense

of inner

weakness. Unlike the Kafka story, where the negative father crushes

Hawthorne's where the mentor disappoints,

the child's spirit, or

Conrad's story

need something from

All sons

their father to

men have

mentoring.

illustrates positive

their fathers.

They

especially need

say he loves and accepts them as they are.^^ Too

many

distorted their individuation journey because their father

The sons

did not affirm them.

must adjust

naturally thought they

themselves, twist their nature, to win his approval. Often they win

approval by trying to

spend

their life

fulfill

the father's expectations.

ther's affirmation, they internalize this deficit as a

statement about themselves. ("If love. Since

I

Sometimes they

seeking that approval from others. Or, lacking the

do

not,

I

am

were worthy,

I

fa-

phenomenological

would have

I

his

unworthy.")

who for years had carried a deep sense of shame and low self-esteem. When his father was dying of emphysema the man asked, "Why were we not close to each I

recall

other?"

one man

The

in his late thirties

with perhaps forty-eight hours to

father,

"Do you remember when you were the toilet

on

and

I

had

to

ten

.

.

.

you dropped

spend the whole day getting

to recount similar incidents, all trivial.

alizing that his father's only gift

was

The son

to

it

left

Only

after this

a toy

out?"

down

He went

the hospital re-

demonstrate that he was

crazy. For almost four decades the son had thought he thy.

live, replied,

was unwor-

death-bed conversation did the son's wounded

self-image begin to heal.

Sons also need to

watch

to

show them how

to

back from adversity, nine, outer

and

inner.

be

their father in the worid.

in the world,

how

how

to

work,

They need him

how

to

bounce

to stand in right relationship to the femi-

They need

^^

the activation of their inherent mas-

As a therapist I have seldom witnessed more pain than that suffered by a man who never knew his father's love and approval. This wound is most keenly felt by gay men whose fathers, insecure in their own identity, re-

jected and

abandoned

their sons.

90 Father Hunger

by outer modeling and by

culinity both

boy not

to cry, not to

alienation.

—

is

to

one's

live

to

into the fray

Sons need

be afraid and, while

and

life

to

living his

life,

to

to

—

the necessary

be shown that

afraid, that

one

self-

how

emotions,

in his

to

woundit

is

per-

obliged to

is still

undertake one's journey.

have father

how

"out there," and

tell

them what they need

to

know

to live

with integrity. Sons need to see father

to live

struggling, being emotional, failing

When

up again, being human.

ting

be honest

what each son needs. He needs

human

fectly

only to further a life-long

sissy, is

up off the floor and back

get

ing

be a

Showing him how

direct affirmation. Telling a

and

falling, get-

the son does not see his father

honestly living his personal journey, then the son will have to find his

paradigms elsewhere,

ther's

or,

untaken journey. This

tion that the greatest

the parents. ^"7

worse, unconsciously live out the is

in

accordance with Jung's observa-

burden the child must bear

On this theme

fa-

the Rilke

poem

I

the unlived

is

life

of

quoted in The Middle

Passage merits repeating here: Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere

And And

his children say blessings

another man,

who

on him

in the East.

as if he

remains inside his

were dead.

own

house,

stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church which he forgot.^^

The church

to

which Rilke alludes emphasizes the sacred nature of

the journey. (As with Kafka, the

Prague-bom Rilke would see

the

"East" as the frontier.) In the one case the father takes his journey, albeit painfully so. In the other, the father stays

his children

Of course

must overcompensate

for

what he

left

home,

fearful,

and

undone.

the father's journey need not be a literal departure, but

each

man must

rity,

from

depart in

his silent

some way from

mother complex,

^^ See above, pp. 54-55. ^^ Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke,

p.

if

the collective,

he

49.

is

to

from secu-

become

himself.

Father Hunger 91

When

he does not, in whatever way, blaze his

dense

forest,

own

trail

through the

he becomes part of the psychic entanglement hindering

his son's journey.

A father may sence

may be

often

it

is

be physically present, but absent

literal

through death, divorce or dysfunction, but more

transmit what he also

may

most mothers

are,

tipped and the mother-

is

As

well intentioned as

they can hardly be expected to initiate their sons

something they are

Without a father

not.

him out of

to pull

mother complex, the son stays a boy, trapped either

macho suppression of

or compensatory

inability to

not have acquired. Dad's defection means

of the parent-child triangle

son dyad assumes a disproportionate weight.

into

and the

a symbolic absence through silence

that the balance

His ab-

in spirit.

confusion are then

liabilities

in

dependency

the feminine. His fear and

he must mask. The uninitiated male

hides his wound, his longing, his grief, a stranger to himself It is

this longing, this attraction

constellated in the

(looking

more

the

toward the

.

initiating male, that is

men's movement. Spokesmen such as Robert Bly

like

Moses than Charlton Heston), Michael Meade,

Sam Keen and James

Hillman, quite apart from what they

may

say,

symbolically evoke the wise elders. That Robert Ely's analysis of the fairy tale "Iron

become

the

John" (or "Iron Hans"

number one

seller

astonishing, especially since

cepts that are not

it

on the is

Grimm's

in

New

modem men's relationship to

list is

not easy to read and employs con-

common currency. But the

very fact that

motifs found such a ready response suggests for

would

original)

York Times book

it is

a

its

ancient

good paradigm

the primal masculine.

"Iron John" begins with hunters disappearing in the forest. Psychologically this

means

that

however competent

scious center of the personality,

Energy

is

wild ferric creature world.

As

creature

is

may seem

being robbed from conscious is

to be,

life.

the court, the con-

something

Upon

is

amiss.

investigation a

dredged up from a well, the deep, archetypal

consciousness

is

threatened by such obvious power, the

immediately caged. But the prince, the youth

who

repre-

sents the potential for growth in the kingdom, drops his golden

symbol of his psychic wholeness,

into the cage of Iron John.

ball,

92 Father Hunger Iron John

golden

ball.

tells

boy

the

But the key

must not ask

for the

to the cage

key since

his

dom; she does not want her son

The boy does

steal the

is

to

He

under his mother's pillow.

mother

will not give

become

a

man who

him

that free-

will leave her.

key and unlocks the cage. Iron John carries

him off and they undergo tures.

he frees him, he will return the

that if

a series of symbolic, transformative adven-

The mother's apprehensions were

accurate, for her son does

man. Of course

his actions are not hostile

leave her; he

toward

becomes

a

her, or the passive king, his father, but necessary initiatory

experiences. At the end of the story, the youth no longer needs Iron

John's assistance, for he has internalized that strength.

What that

it

is

so important about this story, as Bly rightly perceived,

boy must leave home psychologically help, for he

is

to

grow

also afraid of that archetypal

mother will cling is

is

provides a useful model of male initiation for our time. The

necessary to

him from

to her child to protect

become conscious.

up.

The

father

no

is

male empowerment. The the

wounding

that

Fortunately, the child has access

through the archetypal level to the masculine imago within. Like

most men today he must bypass

the personal father, overthrow the

seductive tyranny of his mother complex and seek the activation of his true nature at a

in

deeper

level.

It is

this

such myths and legends, as well as

in

men When the

process that speaks to

modem

movies.

youth does return to the court, after his wounding but subsequently victorious journey in the world, he

is

able to claim the princess as his

outer bride and also the anima within. Comfortable with the primal

masculine, he

is

able to accept the feminine.

Many women have

expressed their apprehension of the men's

movement and of the Iron John phenomenon that

such talk

is

a rationale for

men

in particular.

fear

to maintain, or regress to, the

caveman

attitudes that

the past.

But they are confusing, as many men have

task of

They

have been so oppressive, and often violent,

empowerment with

ered to be himself without

aggression.

shame

in

historically, the

The man who

or apology, without

empowmacho bluster feels

or overcompensation, has no need to be hostile and aggressive to-

ward

either

women

or other men.

Such a man has nothing more

to

Father Hunger 93 prove.

He

has been tested and proved worthy.

Women

also have criticized Bly and others for excluding

and for neglecting the father-daughter nexus. and perhaps

in

some women.^^ For now learn

The

latter

time will be addressed by men, as

seems

it

that

women

charge

it

is

true

has been by

men's most pressing task

what they can from each other about the masculine,

if

is to

and

may women need to learn about women from wise old women, when and wherever they may be found. Men and women may be more comfortable with each other wherever that

be learned. Similarly,

being

when they have become comfortable with themselves. One young man wrote of his experience after a men's I I

retreat:

am ancient red, orange and yellow. am animal man, your brother.

Through the pines and the palms I

learned

how

to see

The dimensions of wonder From the great chiefs of peace. There's a drumbeat in the forest

And flutes on the wind. I see men joining hands As brothers and friends. Go drumming my brothers

Any heartbeat you feel.'^^ Obviously the writer

Pan who,

felt

something

stir

deep within, the primal satyr

like Iron John, incarnates a lost

Another writer who has contributed

wounding of

modem men

is

masculine dimension.

to

our understanding of the

Jungian analyst Eugene Monick. In

Phallos: Sacred Image of the Masculine,

Monick

points out that the

disempowerment of the personal father causes a wound at the archetypal as well as the personal level. Unconscious men who suffer inner doubt, who feel helpless, have created the patriarchy, which oppresses other men, rapes

women and

despoils nature. Patriarchy,

^^ See, for instance, Linda Leonard, The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship and Marion Woodman's books. Addiction to Perfection, The Pregnant Virgin ^nd Leaving My Father's House. ^^ Timothy Mollis, "Song to Pan." Personal communication.

94 Father Hunger

which has held sway

West

in the

for

compensation for inner weakness.

some

three thousand years,

Men brandish

spears, rockets

is

a

and

when they lack a positive phallic identity. Walk tall and big stick; maybe no one will notice how little you feel. Mon-

skyscrapers carry a

ick's thesis

a timely reminder that phallos

is

with the penis

—

—not

to

be confused

an archetypal force from which derives male po-

is

tency and largeness of soul.

Phallos,

and Male Rage: The Phallic Wounds a sequel to Monick argues that men suffer castration because the world

wounds

their sense

In Castration

of personal identity. The signs of

this are over-

compensation and an inflated power complex (think of Donald

Trump naming

his casinos after His

and the meteoric

rise

Men

rage, often directed outward.

lest

I

the

same way. Monick

primary enemy of men

of business empires), and

also reveal their

his father could barely hold his

shame him

that a

fall

One analysand

through timidity and shame.

abused by

Sameness, Wall Street scandals,

and subsequent

is fear,

I

disempowerment

met who had been

head erect and look too, as

I

at

me,

have here, asserts

fear of the feminine

and fear of

being wounded by other men. Patriarchy, which substitutes power for love

and measures worth

divine but

its

own erections,

In King, Warrior,

in material terms,

is

worshipping not the

a compensation for this

fear."^!

Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes

of the Mature Masculine, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette recognize the emotional immaturity of the patriarchy

on the other seek tioning.

to

make conscious

on the one hand and

four archetypes of male func-

Each of these archetypes has a positive and negative

The king control, to

impotence,

represents a

make is

side.

man's executive function, the power

decisions.

The shadow

virulent power.

own

He may

side,

when

to take

the king feels his

seek control over others to

deficits.

His bluster and bravado, power

lunches and big cars, are actually

symptoms of powerlessness, but

compensate for he

is

his

too terrified to turn within and settle accounts. Thus the king

archetype must be consciously

^^ See

owned

or a

man

will

be even more

James Wyly, The Phallic Quest: Priapus and Masculine

Inflation.

Father Hunger 95 susceptible to the depredations of the Saturnian patriarchy.

The warrior

what he

fight for

The shadow history has

own

their

represents the imperative that a

man be

prepared to

desires, for his integrity, for a cause or for justice.

side of the warrior

been drenched

in

the destroyer.

is

blood by

men who,

How much

of our

unable to fight for

indeed having none, projected their rage onto

truths, or

others and slaughtered them. All wars are civil wars

—men

against

their brothers.

The magician power of men

is

the archetype of the shape-changer, the protean

move mountains, to adjust to changed conditions, to find a way to make things work. As Sophocles noted twenty-five hundred years ago, "How numberless are the world's wonders / And none more wonderful than man."'^^ ^e who tamed the salt-churned seas, who built roads across the mountains, who wrenched from the to

Symphony,

wonder-worker

in

side, though, is control, manipulation, sleight

of

recesses of his soul the Fifth nature. His

shadow

hand and charlatanry. He edge along which

cal

wonders and

The

all

treating the

lover, too,

is

is

not to be trusted.

men

the

He embodies

the ethi-

walk, the fine line between working

world as a

walks a fine

line

shell

game.

—between

eros, the force for in-

terconnection, and narcissism, the need for egoistic gratification.

Men's hatred

is

well documented. But, wonderfully, they also love.

They love from

afar

and write the Commedia; they love God and

write Ad majoram gloria Dei.

War and Peace. They flesh ill

and

love

They love

women

also

stitute in

to the late

but

and children and

their souls in brute labor to

brothers and clean and comfort

may

deform

man and

their fellow

write

sacrifice their

support them. They love their

them as they

die of

AIDS. But they

that eros to terrible ends. Lecturing at the Jung In-

Zurich in 1978, Paul Walder related an anecdote attributed

former Swiss ambassador to Berlin. At a state reception

in the

1930s, Hitler reportedly said, "I should have been an architect,

now

it's

too late."

Each of these archetypes constitutes an energy-filled image. All

^^ Antigone,

in

The Complete Greek Tragedies,

p.

170.

96 Father Hunger

men carry them

within; they long for their inner activation and outer

manifestation. Alas, the personal father can never activate the full

range of archetypal empowerment. Thus men, in their hunger for thering, suffer their deficits in the recesses of personal

fa-

shame or seek

surrogate fathers in the dubious models so widely available. Clearly, in order to activate true

deep

well,

maleness, the images must be drawn from the

down where

Iron John lives, and not from the neurotic,

overcompensated, self-ahenating precincts of patriarchy.

The deep drama of the search

for the father transpires daily in ev-

why

Jungian analysts monitor the dream

ery man's

world

is

One

life.

reason

in order to track

such inner dramas. Often one can measure

change by the evolution of certain images or themes through the unfolding

own

dream

seems

life. It

healing even

that the

psyche

when consciousness

working toward

not yet ready to assist.

is

dream and assimilating

listening to the

is

its

By

energies, consciousness

its

can grow and faciUtate the larger motives of the psyche.'^^ In the last chapter

room

physician.'^'^

he, the

I

wrote of the wounding of Allen, an emergency

Allen

now knows what

he once suspected, that

son of two physicians, became one himself primarily to win His parents always made love conditional and ap-

their approval.

proval dependent on "meeting the program." Three of his dreams, scattered over a

twenty-month period, reveal

his evolving relation-

ship to the Satumian father. In the first ther.

and urns. the

dream he

The room

is

in a

A young man gives

musket and

room

that

he knows belongs to his

filled

him an old

fires at the vases,

dream ends with him tive

is

dark and oppressive,

feeling "silly,

flintlock musket.

shattering

and

fa-

with large antique vases

He

takes

some of them. The

slightly afraid, like a destruc-

youngster." Here the psyche places Allen in the confines of the

father

complex where, indeed,

The room

is

filled

all feels

dark and oppressive to him.

with "old stuff," the debris of childhood.

A

'•^ See, for instance, James A. Hall, Jungian Dream Interpretation: A Handbook of Theory and Practice, and Donald Broadribb, The Dream Story. ^^ Above, pp. 76-77.

Father Hunger 97

younger part of him, perhaps the rebellious

child,

perhaps the

him with an old weapon, perhaps the agency He expresses his anger by destroying the containers.

nascent future, presents

of an old anger.

Afterward, he feels like an adolescent acting out, self-righteous but slightly embarrassed.

In a is

dream a few months

under

artillery fire.

Allen follows him to

An

later

old

Allen sees himself on an island that

man

is

A shell

listen.

of the war and

telling stories

hits a

huge

tree that topples

on

man and kills him. Allen knows this tree is called "the soldier tree." The old man had been overbearing and not liked, but he had inspired achievements. Allen feels he might like to die this way also. Then he is among some branches and feels cool rain on his face. Many of Allen's dreams employed metaphors of warfare. While the old

he had never been

in the military,

Allen experienced himself as being

constantly "under fire," and certainly the emergency

room of an

in-

war zone. His schedule was frequently

ner-city hospital is a kind of

four days on and three off, and he always experienced anxiety before returning.

By

which he com-

the second day back he had adjusted,

pared to having been on leave and then returning to the trenches. In this

dream Allen

flood of his

life.

He

whom he has things is

ambivalent.

is

surrounded by water, by the emotional

drawn

is

to learn.

to the old

man, a combat veteran from

But the man

is killed.

Allen's reaction

The old man was oppressive and overbearing

had also inspired others lence toward his father.

to achieve.

He wanted

—but he

This reflected Allen's ambiva-

to love his father,

needed

to love

knew he had always had to work to He was also aware that he had accomplished a thanks to his father's expectations. At the same time there win

him, but he

his father's

grudging approval. great deal is

a kind of futility in the dream.

nothing will avert his death as the old

man

fate,

He

feels

he

is

called to this combat,

and he only hopes he can die a

soldier's

did. The thought offers a degree of comfort and

peace as the rain soothes him.

The death of

the old

man

suggests a development in Allen's psy-

che of which he was not consciously aware the old senex values that had governed his

—perhaps

life.

He feels,

the death of

as

many

be-

98 Father Hunger

him have, doomed

fore

may

resigned calm

He

dream, Allen

summoned

has been

promised

somewhat

with his boots on, but the measure of

augur a positive psychic

in fact

In a third related

orders,

to die

is

once again

before the general and has saluted, heard his

compliance. But, during the exchange, he

his

inappropriately, even defiantly, shining his shoes.

am

leaves he salutes again but says to himself, "1

am going over the

home

drop by his parent's that

same morning,

know now who

wardly salutes. But

for a fourth of July party.

leave

behind.

it all

Often

his

is in

Now

the old

life,

one

man

what one became, even the good from the wounded

cian to

win

fine,

his parents' approval.

caring physician

was

the parental

still

We out-

Now

that

his diver-

changes are

much

of what one did in

will

life,

came from the wrong became a physi-

results,

parts. Allen, for instance,

for a child but not healthy for

sion. His task

he

moment, but sometime soon he

realizes that

places,

announces

the psyche

saluting for the

in therapy

The dream,

clear that his rebellion, first seen in the

is

it

gence grows greater. is

I

Allen had been planning to

shooting of the vases in the earlier dream, continues.

He

As he

not here for long.

repeats the familiar military metaphor.

the general

imminent.

is

hill."

Ironically, after his analytic session

from

shift.

in a military setting.

Such

a motive

is

understandable

an independent adult. Yet Allen was a

who may in fact belong in the medical profeswho he was apart from the weight of

to find out

complexes

—what was

valid and

what was suspect

in his

professional choice.

Allen's predicament

have had share old

is

less

that they

men

is

demanding

of their

analogous to that of fathers,

some no

all,

but what they

cannot go to their personal father, nor to any wise tribe, to

ask the necessary questions. The "inven-

tion" of psychoanalysis a century that could not

many men. Some may

father at

ago was

in

response to suffering

be alleviated by medicine, by theology or by patriar-

When men's

wounded they respond in ways terrible to themselves and others. They can only change themselves and their society when they become conscious of their wounds. chal fathers.

souls are

Father Hunger 99

The

father-son

seldom able prophets,

wound goes son

to help, the

pop

-isms of

stars,

very deep. With the personal father

is

driven to pseudo-fathers kinds.

all

Few sons can

of his grieving heart.

Or he

—

religious

suffers in the privacy

bless their fathers as e.e.

cum-

mings does: though

dull

were

all

we

taste as bright,

bitter all utterly things sweet,

maggoty minus and dumb death

all

bequeath and nothing quite so

all

we

inherit,

least as truth

— say though hate were why men breathe i

because love

my father lived his soul

the

is

Cummings

whole and more than alP^

is

able to bless his father for, in the elder's capacity to

live his life fully,

he modeled and activated that mascuhne potential

the son.

Such a son

no

of his own,

fault

tions.

Thus

That place stands; I

the sons

is

in his

am frankly

travel to another place to

some guru

own skewered and alienated life

wounded generabegin the healing.

some corporate

lives or

lived under the

structure

soul.

pessimistic about the chances of

ing or transforming a clearly, social

but another in a series of

must

not where

is

it is

is

in

very lucky. For most men, the father, through

most men

shadow of

for escap-

Saturn. Yet,

change comes about through the awakened conscious-

ness of individuals.

When enough

their culture, values that

cur. Accordingly,

it is

damage

reject the values offered

the soul, then social

the task of

men everywhere

them by

change

will oc-

to attain a degree

of consciousness that enables them to heal themselves.

And

that

is

the eighth secret

men know:

if

they are to heal, they

must activate within what they did not receive from without. That

^^

"my

etry,

p.

is

the subject of our last chapter.

father

1046.

moved through dooms of

love,"

in

Norton Anthology of Po-

5

Men

Healing the Souls of

Before addressing the issue of healing, a mystery far more profound

and elusive than wounding, terial to this point.

nian

men,

When

carry.

it

think

I

it is

shadow under which we

that daily injure

men

While

live, the roles,

have raised them with

I

and

appropriate to review our ma-

expectations and values

does seem useful to

recall the eight secrets

men

silent heart.

Sometimes

a

conscious of them since childhood, but often that

prompts them

The Eight 1)

in the

context of

acknowledged having such thoughts

friendship or therapy, each has in his frightened

it

hardly necessary to rehearse the Satur-

to surface out

man it is

has been acutely

our conversation

of inchoate emotional confusion.

Secrets

Men 's lives are

as

much governed by

restrictive role expectations

as are the lives of women. This assertion requires perhaps the least amplification, for the vast personal and social pathologies of our time are the cri de coeur of individual souls deformed by the procrustean roles established by patriarchal thinking.

As

Rilke observed, "We're not at home, not

reli-

ably, in the interpreted world."'^^

We

have inherited a world

in

which a man's prime value

fend his homeland and provide for his family. These

honorable

roles,

He may be

successful by the

deep down,

that along the

really believes that

the garage

'^^

Duino

still

p.

norms of

way he

own

soul's calling.

the world, but he

has lost his soul.

No

in the

sun

is

27.

100

the

be

He

sane

knows,

man

having an attractive wife, a powerful car

and a vacation

Elegies,

may

but they are roles at best and not the whole man.

does not have permission to seek and treasure his

day

de-

is to

sum and worth

of his

to-

in

life.

Healing the Souls of Men

But most

serve such superficial values because they

still

They

other.

101

know no

are then slaves to their work, servants of seductive but

evanescent values, and generally adrift in the world our fathers served and that ground them up.

Women have to

engage

narrow range of womanhood

rightly challenged the

endorsed by the culture they received. in a radical

images and voices

economic burden,

review of their lives and their relationship to the

that

would them

And

Men

direct them.

for example, but they

the conditions that enable

and with purpose.

men

equally necessary for

It is

to pull the

carry a large

still

must increasingly

fight for

money wagon with

dignity

they must increasingly be willing to risk

all to

save what remains of their soul. I

sometimes imagine an executive

Center in

New

York

—

do and people

chester, things to

at the

top of the World Trade

lord of his domain, a wife and kids in Westto see.

But as he watches a boat

heading out the Hudson, under the curving lines of the Verrazano

Narrows Bridge, filled the

He

his spirits sink.

has achieved

expectations of his culture, but he

As Joseph Campbell

expressed

For

he sought,

knows he

it

ful-

man.

a lost

is

one can spend one's whole

it,

climbing the ladder, only to realize that

wrong

all

life

had been placed against the

wall.'^'^

men

to

begin the process of healing they must

first risk

being

honest with themselves, allowing the feelings they think they can't afford.

They must admit they

are not

happy

have achieved. They must admit they do not

what they must do

The

emotional cat

first

of what they

know who

they are or

save themselves. They must overcome the fear

such thinking, the fear that they will have

that blocks lives if the

to

in spite

is let

to

change

their

out of the bag.

step toward healing

is

perhaps the hardest.

Men must

stop lying to themselves, and by extension each other, and they must

permit their unhappiness to become conscious. They must admit

perhaps for

from

all

this point

that,

the best intentions, their lives are wrong, and that

on

it is

^^ This Business of the

their responsibility to change.

Gods

.

.

.

,

p.

19.

102 2)

Healing the Souls of Men

Men 's

lives are

All lives are to

governed by fear.

some

men

extent governed by fear, but

are deeply

Women have the enormous cultural advantage of emotional honesty. Men are afraid of the power of the mother complex and so seek to please women or dominate them. Men are afraid of other men because they are cast into competiinvested in keeping

it

tive roles; the other

man

Men are afraid

at

arm's length.

perceived as an enemy, not a brother.

is

because they

know

and ultimately unknowable. They ship they set

upon

Women know

this also,

selves and to other lated,

the world

is

large

is

indeed.

fragile

of course, but they can admit

women;

and the

feel like children within

and crashing sea

the dark

and dangerous

it

to

them-

their lives are not then so lonely, so iso-

so fraught with self-blame.

Men

have the crazy notion

their task is

that they

ought not to be

afraid, that

to conquer nature and themselves. Surely,

men have

made great leaps into the darkness and returned with marvelous maps of Terra Incognita, but, withal, each man feels shamed by the fear that he is not a real man. His shame manifests as overcompensation when he shows off or bullies others,

done incredible

things,

or in silent avoidance of the real task to which

Again, the healing of a

man

life

begins the day he can begin to be

honest with himself, the day he can acknowledge is

driven by fear,

when he can

has called him.

beat back the

how much

shame

his life

that then threat-

ens to engulf him. Only then can he recover that center which has

been obscured by the great gray fear 3) The power of the feminine

is

that haunts his soul.

immense

in the

psychic economy of

men.

The

greatest psychological influence in a

circumstances,

is

his mother.

presence, of which he

is

man's

life,

under normal

Because of the enormity of this psychic

always more or

less unconscious,

men

de-

velop a distorted relationship to the feminine in four major ways.

women; that is, they project the immensity of their mother complex onto women. Crudely expressed, "You have breasts, you must be a woman. My First,

they grant too

much

psychological power to

Healing the Souls of Men

mother was

woman, you must be

a

woman's power,

mother complex, they is

own

fall

by

the issues generated

into a projective relationship

most fundamental

the

between the sexes: Secondly,

fearful of a

will seek to please or control or avoid confronta-

tion. Unable to recognize and

power. This

So men,

like her."

103

their

based on

behind the so-called war

truth

fear replaces eros with power.

men are

of their feminine side. They associate

terrified

their feeling life, their instincts, their capacity for tenderness

nurturance, with the culturally defined nature of

woman and

and

distance

own may be

themselves accordingly. This also distances them from their

anima and occasions misleading to

profound

a

speak of a

tually a necessary part

of what

risk this part of themselves, but

world and

to the

to their

Thirdly, because

propped-up gender selves that don't

men

self-alienation. In fact,

man's "feminine

own

it

means as

life

ac-

in their nature to relate

is

it

is

Men seldom

in

women's.

are so insecure in their sexual identity

roles, they fear

fall

be a man.

much

as

it is

inner

anima

side," for the to

it

and

and deny those parts of them-

When

within narrow collective limits.

they see

those aspects being lived out by others, they reject them violently.

Homophobia live

is

a

prime example. Gay

homosexuality

is

not a choice at

all,

tion that has existed in roughly the tory.

This genetic spin of the dice

oppression.

go

Gay men have

the

macho

closet

same

and name the

incarnate their unlived hfe.

rather our fear that

Fourthly,

it

seems

that

but a biologically based orienta-

is

who

supplant love with fear and

heart,

real

his-

engineered by that same god

same

into battle as their heterosexual brothers.

of the

who

surely have the right to

same percentages throughout

worshipped by the fundamentalists

to

men

according to their sexual orientation. Increasingly

It is

problem

The enemy

is

same courage

soul,

—

time to

that

men

come

out

fear those

not the other guy, but

we are not what patriarchy demands.

men's experience of the power of the feminine has

evolved into an overvaluation and fear of sexuality. Nietzsche once

observed that the primary purpose of marriage was conversation.'^^

'^^

"Human, All-Too-Human,"

in

The Portable Nietzsche,

p.

59.

104

Healing the Souls of Men

The purpose of a committed one example,

is

meant

is

which marriage

grow through and with each

to

be dialectical

—

men, too often feeling deficient

other. Relation-

soulful encounters that

enlarge. One of the bridges between the sexes,

sis

to

temper and

be sure,

in discourse, place too

is,

and

it

is at least

a

profound mystery,

it is

easily

misused. The primary psychological purpose of sex for those

who spend

their lives in the cold, cruel world,

ship with their place.

Sex

is

a

own anima

may numb

transcendence.

one may

is frigid,

the

the closest

to

life

a narcotic to

Orgasm can be an

act offers a

warm

still

the

momentary

ecstatic experience; for the

moment

confines of ordinary consciousness.

It

many men ever come to a religious experience. Thus may mask a desperate search for acceptance, underis

ultimately a destruc-

game. Sex as loving, sex as conversing, sex as

suppose an equal partner. Sex as redemption

dialectic, all pre-

distorts the relationship

Satumian shadow of power.

and allows entry

to the

present, nothing

is really

Men

men

relation-

reconnect with a

neath which lurks the mother complex. This tive

and whose

batters them, then sex, like drugs or

wound. The sexual

feel outside the iron

the act of sex

is

form of emotional reassurance,

pain of the bruised soul. If

work,

4)

But

sex.

is

much empha-

on intercourse.

Whatever sex

is

but

is

not to take care of each other, to reinforce the parent-

child complexes, but to

ship

relationship, of

When

Saturn

is

fun, luminescent or transforming.

collude in a conspiracy of silence whose aim

is to

suppress

their emotional truth.

Virtually any

and suffered

man will

recall

occasions

ridicule or rejection.

Men

when he expressed himself

pay a heavy price for being

seen to be fragile and vulnerable. They are shamed by other men,

sometimes by women,

but,

most of

all,

by themselves. Those who

daily lay siege to the Castle Perilous need as

much

self-confidence as

they can muster to bolster their shaky hold on a strong self-image. in

keeping quiet about what damages them. The

word "conspiracy"

derives from Latin conspirare, "to breathe to-

So they collude gether."

Men

breathe silently together to protect their frightened

Healing the Souls of Men souls, prolonging the

wounding of all.

Again, one comes to the issue of honesty. Individual risk

speaking the

many

truth, their

An

105

personal truth, for

it

will

men must

be the truth for

speaks the right word will be heard a thousand miles

who away. For men

to stop lying, to stop participating in the conspiracy

of silence, they

must

others.

showing

risk

shame them, time 5)

all

old Chinese saying suggests that the one

will

or,

Other men may, reflexively, leap own fear, dissociate from them. But thank those who speak their truth aloud.

their pain.

out of their

come

to

to in

Because men must leave Mother^ and transcend the mother com-

wounding

plex,

is

necessary.

Having delineated the power of the mother complex, the part of a

man

that longs for nurturance

and safety above

all,

we must

also ac-

knowledge the necessary wounding of the male. Our ancestors, with their rites

of separation from childhood dependency to adult indepen-

dence, were not being gratuitously cruel in wounding their youth.

Their

wounds were symbolic, hence

freighted with archetypal

The wounds were a form of synecdoche,

ing.

mean-

a part illustrating the

whole, an introduction to the world's wounding, the experience of

which would henceforth become one's

When a teammate reminded me of the

wounds

larger worid.

to

that a torn fingernail

come, he was being helpful

When

it

was

be ready for the necessary line

daily experience.

third

wounding of a youth was

But even more,

it

was

a

way

assume

else,

its

parent or

tribe,

power sweep

own

to

at the

comforts. So the

of helping him to face the coming pain

the burden of his journey,

its

warm

and achieve

So men must be wounded

hearth.

pain and solitude.

could spare him that journey

his capacity to fight for

for a

a symbolic rite d'entr^e to the worid.

of life and sacrifice his infantile longing for a to

the least

me

and short yardage, the psyche had

collision, to stop the

of scrimmage, not be preoccupied with

tribal

was

in preparing

lest

He was

No one

they also steal

his full potential.

to truly enter the worid, to

have con-

sciousness quickened, to undertake the heroic task of leaving the

mother and becoming masters of

their

own

destiny.

We

are

all like

Healing the Souls of Men

106

We

Philoctetes.

and

feel rejected

hurt;

we would

like to retire to

our

separate caves and hang out, full of self-pity. But for each of us the

anew with

hero task summons: each of us, each day, must struggle

demons of

the grinning

fear

and lethargy

from the

that confront us

foot of the bed, eager to eat another piece of our soul. 1

never cease to marvel

capacity of

at the

men

(and

women

too, of

home and venture into the unknown. I never cease to who first crossed the mountains, who wine-dark seas, who went down into Hades' kingdom

course) to leave

admire the courage of those navigated the

and wrote "Sonnets

to

Orpheus" or the

Fifth

Symphony. And

I

ask

"Why should we honor those that die upon the man may show as reckless a courage in entering into

myself, as Yeats did, field

of battle, a

the abyss of himself."79

Beyond wounding to live

unknown, without

way and life

lies

new

a

without the wounds

that

6)

lives are violent

The wounds men

we pay

the

is

he might become the hero

which we

in his

own

that

would

return,

would

for greater consciousness,

wounding of

the protagonist so

hfe.

because their souls have been violated.

suffer today are not symbolic; that

not transform. Because our culture lacks meaningful

images

into the

and wonderful adventures along the

the strange

be worth anything? The price

Men's

psychopomp, lead us

the blood-burnished trophies with

and worlds worth winning,

we were

level of consciousness. If

that, like a

and

activate

rites

is,

they do

of passage,

direct the energies of the soul,

most

modem men feel

weighted, even crushed, by their roles and the ex-

pectations, outer

and

inner,

upon them. Nothing

helpful

is

touched

and moved. Whatever wounds can also destroy. Violate a man's soul and some part of him becomes killers

have

all

trated postal

Mass-murderers and

The

serial

frus-

employee or bank clerk who goes berserk has become

commonplace on iceberg. Soul

violent.

suffered violent verbal and physical abuse.

the six o'clock news. But that

murders occur

^^ Richard Ellman, Yeats: The

all

is

only the

the time in the lives of men.

Man and

the Masks,

p.

6.

tip

of the

Healing the Souls of Men

Not only job, to

are

men

called

upon

hang from the bridge and scrape the paint

pounding pressures,

to stay cool

pected to suffer such

wounding

they are asked, as their soul to serve

shamed

women

dirty, difficult

push back

flecks, to

and psychological barriers of nature,

the physical

are

do the dangerous,

to

to

107

hold up under

and collected, they are also ex-

in silence

and

solitude.

Most of

all,

too have often been asked, to sacrifice

some economic,

political or cultural

norm. They

they resist the deformation of their nature, shunned

if

they protest, and sometimes even martyred

vision

their

if

if

too

strongly challenges the status quo.

Men need to acknowledge their anger, to the level

anger that has accumulated

of rage. Where does that rage go? For

may

as depression, a general heaviness they long. For others

projected in the

For

many

it

manifests

it

whole

life

somatizes in sundry provinces of the body or

paranoid game of

the rage

some

carry their

is

us and them, winners and

acted out against

women

is

losers.

and children or other

men, the deep knowledge of their soul's suffering projected onto any convenient object.

There has been enough brutahty

men must ing.

We

world

cannot help but suffer passively

we

cannot help but be victims while

we become that has

in the

to last forever.

Now

channel their anger to fuel the changes imperative to heal-

conscious

we

grown through

when we

are children;

are responsible for our lives.

the years

is

we

remain unconscious. But once

now

The anger

energy enough for change,

for rebellion, for the necessary struggle to save the soul. 7)

Each man

carries a deep longing for his father

and for

his tribal

fathers.

As

great as

is

the inner pressure, the

the realm of the Mother, so

must

deep pull back and down

a corresponding force

bridge the psyche over the great-in-between. This

embodied

in tribal rites

was

the

of passage out of childhood. The

into

emerge

to

wisdom

rites

were

extensive, psychologically powerful, and prolonged to the degree that the

mother complex had power over the nascent ego.

To leave the comforts of home, the mother world, one must have

108

Healing the Souls of Men

some

place to go. Admittedly, the rites of passage of traditional cul-

tures

were

mogenous

youth into a simpler society, a more ho-

to initiate the

culture than ours.

As well,

their interest lay not in the indi-

viduation of the person but in the integration of that unformed person into the collective definition of tribal masculinity.

such psychically charged images of

identity, take

Still,

away

away wisdom

take

the

of the elders, take away the community of men, and one has the

modem

world.

Since nature abhors a vacuum, so tiated,

fill

we leam

men

the great-in-between with drugs, work, their partners. If

relationship

by

relating to the otherness of others,

firm our identity by modeling like to their identity via the culture

uninitiated males as their

knowledge the is

reality

we

con-

today cannot claim

because they are obliged to find other

models or succumb

of what

lies

to the

may

within.

empty values of

begin,

Among

men must

a

ac-

those confusing

a deep grief for the loss of the personal father as compan-

model and support, and

ion,

Men

like.

materialist society. Again, before healing

emotions

today, childlike and unini-

a

deep hunger for the fathers as a source

of wisdom, solace and inspiration. It

was

the office of the tribal elders to pass

ancestors, to inform the youth of the gods

who

on the wisdom of the

whom

he was to serve and

Men today have no rooting in any tribal history reahty. Men who have no grounding connection with

stood by him.

or transcendent their

gods are

well.

Such men are

in

grave peril and they will bring danger to others as

They

lost.

feel

abandoned by history and the

wise old men. They long for modeling and for the great teachings.

They

suffer their exile in silence or act out their grief disguised as

rage.

Such men are

legion.

8) If men are to heal, they

must activate within what they did not

re-

ceive from without.

Because men cannot turn are

few

if

any wise men,

let

to tribal elders,

alone initiated ones, they suffer a deep

sickness of the soul. Since the psychic

of reference, are missing,

and have learned there

loci, the

men must leam

mythological points

to heal themselves.

Occa-

Healing the Souls of Men sionally,

such healing

large, they

must go

In his novel

the

shared with their fellows, but, by and

alone.

it

Demian, Herman Hesse,

modem

healing of the

may be

who

soul, suffering exile

certainly addressed the

and persecution

thrice

and

Nobel Prize once as recompense, observed, "In a world of wan-

derers,

when

paths intersect, the world feels like

for awhile. "^^

home

But the experience of community, of primal connection, "awhile"; then one

is

/

here. Again, the formative is

only for

Father Task

review of the morphology of the mother complex

che of the child

is

back on the journey alone.

The Mother Complex

A

109

power of

the personal

is

warranted

mother

in the psy-

enormous. The child's experience of the mother

is

intemalized as a complex, an emotionally charged cluster of energy

beyond

the control of the ego.

As

world of nature and the body, and

the

mother

is

the bridge to the

to relationship, so the

boy's expe-

rience of her ripples through his archetypal depths. In other words, a

the his

life

man's relationship

force that courses through

him

to himself, to others is

and

to

profoundly channeled by

primary experience of mother. To the extent that she

is

unable to

meet his needs, and imposes her personal complexes on him, so he will suffer the

wounds of abandonment and overwhehnent. From

former he learns

to distrust his

own worth and

the

the reliability of the

world. Because of the latter he feels powerless to defend his fragile frontier ality

and so evolves a generally compliant, co-dependent person-

or a fearful, overcompensated, power-dominated one. In either

case, he

erful that tion,

not himself, but lives in reaction to an experience so

is

subordinates his natural truth.

it

pow-

This compromise forma-

repeated throughout childhood, produces a false personality and

furthers the projection of that first relationship onto later, adult rela-

tionships.

Thus he

^^ Demian,

p.

lives a false self.^^

104.

^^ See The Middle Passage, chapter

between the

false,

1,

for further discussion

acquired personality and the natural

self.

of the

collision

Healing the Souls of Men

110

Since the child

is

completely dependent, any threat to his needi-

men

ness occasions great fear. All

them

carry within

the replicated

memory of this vulnerability. They suffer enormous fear that their needs may not be met, fear that their neediness will prolong their dependency. Out of this troubled condition, which remains with men however

bred anger and sorrow.

old, are

needs are not met and they grieve the are battered

and buffeted by the

Men As

loss.

are angry that their

they

grow older and

roles of adulthood, these

emotions

tend to slip into the unconscious. But such energies do not go away; they go somewhere, always. Their anger

may be

emotion

as a life-long depression, or somatized in

may

body. They

more

by beating

women

that attacks the

and bashing gays,

or,

by corporate head-butting. Their anima, which they

abstractly,

suspect because

act out

deeply introverted

it

reminds them of the mother world,

is

kept at bay.

She, naturally, expresses herself in irritability and general bitchiness.

The man's sorrow manifests he

slips fuzzily into the

beloved

who will

Beneath

all

as melancholy, as addictions

mother, or through a vague longing for a

enter his

life

and heal him.

of these dynamics

that they will not

be taken care

ing terror of dependency.

and without, as a

whereby

on the one hand, men's

are,

of,

fear

and, on the other, an overwhelm-

Thus men

fight the feminine, both within

unconscious fear of their

result of their largely

own

incestuous longing for peace.

Since

all

men

carry the mother

imago deep

within, charged vari-

ously from one to the other, so the result of their restricted consciousness

is

to

the masculine. cal thinking

produce a highly defended and narrow definition of

Men

evolved the patriarchy, with

and social structures, and

nine, as a defense against the

its

its

rules, hierarchi-

subjugation of the femi-

mother complex. Fathers and sons can

barely talk to each other, lest they be obliged to share the shameful secret that the fathers are castrated

even as Cronus-Saturn as

the

problem

it

did.

seeks

and seek

The compensation, to

defend

to castrate their sons,

then,

against.

is

just as kiUing

Both the

fearful

suppression of the complex and the patriarchal reaction alienate

from themselves.

men

Healing the Souls of Men

Men

everywhere are fated

some emotional analogue,

to face their partners, institutions or

carrying the dynamics of childhood as a

contemporaneous experience. The past father live within, every

111

moment

the collective experience of

—

them

not truly past. Mother and

is

not only the personal parents, but

as well. Thus, feeling

all

the old

need, the old fear, the old longing, the old anger, albeit uncon-

men

sciously,

project these

power

Other, then, has the

dynamics onto the current Other. That the primal parent once had,

will variously try to control or placate, or

why

which men

even avoid altogether.

many men seem angry and controlling at home and in the workplace. It also explains why there seems to be an increase in those who may be described as passive-aggressive. They feel powerless, but they are angry and will find a way to sabotage or This explains

so

subvert the Other. Their powerlessness are so

how

is all

the

more acute

few positive models of masculine empowerment

to tackle

such large needs and fears oneself, thereby

as there

show

that

lifting their

projections off others.

Men

can never be in

uinely different,

complex

if

reality, that is, deal

they cannot discern the effect of their mother

rippling within. Yes,

it

takes a great deal of courage, insight

make such material conmen to work with the mother

and patience, as well as steady work, scious.

It

is

especially difficult for

complex, since uncovering to jeopardize the frail tity.

But, until

compensated

with the Other as gen-

men

its

to

power and influence

in their lives tends

hold they already have on their masculine iden-

can take the

risk,

they will remain stuck in a

and

identity that only furthers their inner division

their

estrangement from others.

What

Is

Before

we can reahstically

Healing, and

Who

the Healer?

address the healing of men,

examine what healing means and where

may be

in

we must

first

our time healing agencies

found.

Franz Kafka wrote a prophetic story tury titled

"The Country Doctor."

A

at the

beginning of

physician

is

middle of a raging snow storm to attend a patient.

this

cen-

called out in the

When

he arrives

112

Healing the Souls of Men

the villagers are all

crowded around

a

young man. The youth says

the physician,

"Save me, save me." The doctor examines

and proclaims

that

The doctor looks again and sees with multiple rose-red layers. ger wriggle to the

That

the youth cries.

a gaping sore in the patient's side,

Worms

as thick

and as long as

his fin-

The

villagers are incensed

and engage

vestments and throw him out into the wild. Strugghng to

way back through is

same me,"

or

doctor of his powers. They chant, circle him,

in a ritual divesting the

find his

wound

After a further examination, the doctor ex-

light.

plains that he cannot save him.

strip off his

his patient

he can find nothing wrong; no apparent

diseased condition. Again, "Save me,

to

what people are

the darkness, the physician thinks:

my

like in

district.

Always expecting

the

impossible from the doctor. They have lost their ancient beliefs; the

parson

home and

sits at

but the doctor

is

unravels his vestments, one after another;

supposed

geon's hand. Well, as

it

to

be omnipotent with

his merciful sur-

pleases them.^^

Kafka's story has metaphoric and prophetic meaning. The power of the clergy has waned, supplanted by a priest, in a

science, cannot save either.

velous powers,

is

religion,

new

medical

with

all its

mar-

powerless to heal such a wound. Thus the physi-

Kafka warns us against placing our eth century has placed are to the soul,

The physician

new

visible. Science,

becomes another dismantled servant of

wounds

superstition and a

Only upon closer examination does the

symbolic rose-red wound become

cian

new

white coat instead of black. But the

it

—

a discredited divinity.

faith precisely

and only

that

which reaches

a servant of Physis (nature).

is

where the twenti-

in the external, quantifiable world. it

can

Our

heal.

The physician does

we get medicus, "healer," mederi, When the body is broken the physi-

not heal; nature heals. (From Latin "to heal" and docere, "to lead.")

cian

may promote

wounds

conditions that facilitate healing, but cannot heal

to the soul.

Decades ago D. H. Lawrence realized

this:

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly,

^^The Penal

Colony, p.

141.

Healing the Souls of Men that

am

I

I

am

ill.

because of wounds

ill

113

deep

to the soul, to the

emotional self

and the wounds

to the soul take a long,

long time,

only time can help

and patience, and a certain

difficult

repentance,

long, difficult repentance, realisation of life's mistake,

and the freeing of oneself

from the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify .^^

Our society has long

treated

men

as machines, as bodies expend-

Men

able in the

name of progress

and soul's

delight, taught to think of themselves as

or profit.

have overruled

Such an estrangement wounds very deeply; and

is

shadow

is

a dubious undertaking.

lives, the

The wounding

is

only

men

All

suffer

in

and

sanctified,

and men unwit-

own crucifixion.

from neurosis. The word

itself

suggests a mechan-

and, indeed, derives from the Enlightenment's effort to

simply signifies the deep

split

in fact neurosis

between socialization and

tween collective culture and individual psyche. fit

alone a whole

town, and shame on the defector.

models of the cosmos and models of men. But

create

not

let

But the beat goes on, the Satumian

institutionalized

tingly collude in their

ical failure

game

"mechanisms."

has gone on so long

it

so taken for granted that healing individuals,

gender,

their pain

When

soul, be-

outer roles do

the shape of one's soul, a terrible one-sidedness occurs.

the suffering of this imbalance that impels

and on each

The

men

to

It is

war on themselves

other.

role of the therapist is to attend this split

and

to

observe what

images emerge, be they cognitive, of the body or of dream-life. Such

images are symptoms. The German word for symptom, Zustandsbildy

means

"picture of a condition," representing the psyche's effort

to heal itself

through a symbolic bridging.

the unconscious depths

^^ "Healing,"

in

Symptoms

partake of both

and the conscious world. They bridge as

Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade, eds., The the Heart, p. 113.

Rag and Bone Shop of

114

Healing the Souls of Men

metaphoric agents. The word "metaphor"

is

from Greek meta, "over,

across," ¥ pherein, "to carry." Thus psychotherapy

is

etymologically

akin to waiting upon or attending the expression of soul. Jungian analysis

is

not reductive but synthetic; the

Greek analusis, does not mean Images

that

word

from the

"analysis,"

to rationalize but "to

undo, loosen."

undo or loosen one's conscious perception of oneself are by which the psyche heals

the basis for the process

itself.

In Jung's

words:

The mediatory product

[e.g.,

image or symbol]

material for a process not of dissolution but

which comes

and antithesis both play

thesis

a

new

.

forms the raw

their part. In this

way

channel.

Healing the soul

is

gaged by images

life

can flow on with

a process not unlike that of creativity itself, so

perhaps the work of the

artist is a

that float

testified that they

upward

might

start

useful paradigm.

The

into consciousness.

artist is

Many

en-

artists

out with an idea for a work, but

then something else takes over. Their best work, they claim,

when

be-

it

and forcing the energy of the opposites into a com-

The standstill is overcome and renewed power towards new goals.^^

have

.

content that governs the whole attitude, putting an end

to the division

mon

.

of construction, in

comes

they are able to surrender their ego and their talent to express

those images in paint, sound or words. Thus, as Jung noted, the creative process involves the "activation of archetypal

images and the

shaping of those images into the finished work."^^

Depth psychotherapy

activates nascent images in the psyche

and

then supports a dialogue with them. Jung described this process as the transcendent function, barriers

by which the Self seeks

to transcend the

between consciousness and the unconscious.

words, the psyche seeks to heal

itself.

In

other

This approach to healing

is

therefore homeopathic rather than allopathic: like cures like. Healing

comes from resonance,

the re-sounding or re-cognition of likeness.

Men's healing comes when

the proper images are

fathers or the tribal elders, of

^"^

when

"Definitions," Psychological Types,

85 Ibid.

modeled by

their

they themselves can activate

CW

6,

par. 827.

Healing the Souls of Men

comes through

those images. Personal healing, soul healing,

115 the

evocation of symbolic images or acts that resonate and mediate the split.

Shamanic healing

in traditional cultures frequently

recitation of creation myths, foundation legends

employed

of the

tribe,

the

for in

those narratives lay images that evoked the transcendent function in

When

the psyche of the suffering patient.

such images were deeply

accepted and consciously integrated, healing was possible. Today analysts

assist

process by

this

collaborating with the images. it is

due

to a transpersonal,

Then, as Rilke reminds

us,

second large and timeless

by

attendance,

fidelity

and by

But always, whenever healing occurs,

mysterious agency, experienced as grace.

we "know

that there is

room

in us / for a

life."^*^

Seven Steps to Healing In this last section

will

I

None of them

possibility of healing.

may promote a move for men collectively. Let

me repeat

I

ready aspects of the

change the

movement seem strength

its

occur only

is

to

efforts will achieve

much. Al-

faddish and pass6, perhaps un-

fading.

when enough

work of self-healing,

both for individuals and

respect those participating in the current

do not expect such

but clearly

will

I

that support the

original, but together they

is

in the right direction,

that while

men's movement,

fairly so,

advance seven concepts

I

believe that collective

individual

whatever level

we

men

change.

can bring

it,

From

the focus

of our culture will change. This

sudden

may be a

forlorn hope, but

it

is

more

shifts in collective consciousness.

to feel the pressure of traditional

Satumian

called to sacrifice their bodies

and

They

will

still

be expected

triarchal values

selves.

And

expect

than to expect

men

will continue

They will still be for economic ends.

dictates.

their souls

to collude in the silence that supports pa-

and estranges them from other men and from them-

they will

^ Selected Poems

I

realistic

still

carry their grief and rage to early graves.

of Rainer Maria Rilke,

p.

19.

— Healing the Souls of Men

116

But

my

hope, at

least, is that

men

individual

come

the wise elders

we all

become conscious, some will even be-

will

saving themselves and helping others. Perhaps need.

Here, then, are seven steps toward self-healing, followed by a discussion of each. 1)

Re-member the

loss of the fathers.

2) Tell the secrets. 3)

Seek mentors and mentor

4) Risk loving 5) Heal 6)

others.

men.

thyself.

Recover your soul's journey.

7) Join the revolution.

1)

Re-member the If

we

loss of the fathers.

are to learn our nature

from those of our own gender, then

our relationship to both our personal and

tribal fathers is critical.

But

ever since the Industrial Revolution and the vast urban migration

which

is

to say, for the past

two centuries

roots: their relationship to their

and

homes,

to their souls. In return for greater

—most men have

to the

work of

lost their

their hands,

economic security they have

adapted their energies to roles that serve profit but deform the soul.

Such men have suffered grievous wounds and, unknowing, have wounded

Greek drama, the wounds

who make such an lineage and

Like the tragic curse

their sons.

ripple through the generations.

historic

wounding conscious, who see

re-member themselves,

that

scend the Satumian weight of history. rendered the experience of living with a

Olds

in her appropriately titled

is,

heal the

poem "Satum."^'^

filling his

mouth, and no one knew

my

was

87 In Bly et

al.,

eating his children.

Rag and Bone Shop of

split,

and in a

Only men it

in their

may

tran-

Few have more dramatically wounded father than Sharon

He lay on the couch night after night, mouth open, the darkness of the room father

in their pain

the Heart, p.

128.

Healing the Souls of Men

She goes on

to describe

how

117

her father eats each child in turn. She

beheves that in the nerves

of his gums and

bowels he knew what he was doing and he could not stop himself.

This

is

what he wanted,

to take that life into his

and show what a

man

what a man's

was.

Other sons saw as

I

saw my

life

—show

son

his

their fathers suffering the Saturnian burden, just

father leave the assembly line to shovel coal

ends into the bins of others.

on the

mouth

could do

on week-

took for granted

—food

shoes to wear. In "Those Winter Sun-

table, the rent paid,

days," Robert

How much we

Hayden remembers

his father's struggles

and

his

own

innocence and indifference. With pain in his heart he recalls Speaking indifferently

to him,

who had driven out the cold

my good shoes as well. know, what did I know

and polished

What

did

I

of love's austere and lonely offices ?^^

These were our

fathers,

more wounded than we can imagine, with

no alternatives or emotional permission speakably lonely. For such Grief

is

honest.

It

it is

88

sweetest

Ibid.,

p.

is

a blunting of the

it

may

cleansing and healing in

involuntarily pull us under, life's

142.

grieve.

or was never

to carry that

open remembering, and while

moment,

lost,

there.

Men

life force;

how-

press the father loss into the unconscious, the

psyche knows and condemns us is

was

most often as a depression they may

not even be aware of. Depression

we may

be themselves, and un-

men we must unashamedly

values what

carry this heaviness in any case,

ever deeply

to

its

weighted

feeling. Grief

not feel very good at the honesty. Depression

however functional our outer

moments may be

tinged with this heaviness.

life.

may Even

Healing the Souls of Men

118

One man, a stock driven him. He could on

broker, drove himself as his father had once

not relax.

worked himself

ther's approval, he

ther

was dead,

still.

Even when he exceeded

let

Weekends were

the time to catch

work. His father had only valued work,

his

up. After

to the edge.

win

up

his fa-

Even though

the fa-

imago remained charged and drove him

the father

his father's financial status

two years of therapy he managed

weekends and,

so, to

to stop

he could not

working on

father's grave for the first time.

finally, visit his

There he wept for the tenderness and acceptance that he would never receive from his father. His tears, his grief, allowed

him

to

begin

moving forward in his own life, a life he scarcely knew at all, having been defmed previously by the Satumian shadow of the wounded and wounding

pushed underground produces depression, so does anger

If grief

denied.

father.

Anger is

wounding. Once

a legitimate and reflexive reaction of the organism to I

had an analysand

who

casually

announced he had

involved his sons in incestuous acts. They had collaborated, he averred.

felt

I

my

anger

and for father's touch

ther's love

their powerlessness, their naivete

ing bodily sex for love. adult sons

hope was

who were looking for faand found one who would betray

rise for the

I

boys

and unconscious

to suffer their grief

might heal somewhat, even

that they

feel

gnaws

at

them,

and if

mistak-

this to his

now

their anger.

The

asked him to speak about

and be willing

The anger many sons

literalism,

he would not.

in their ulcers, their

mi-

graines, their drivenness to achieve the affirmation every child de-

serves.

Men

wounder,

if

need

angry

to get

they are ever to heal.

at

the

wounds, as well as the

One may

But anger,

well ask what good that

any powerful emotion,

does so long after the

fact.

does not go away.

always goes somewhere. The wounded son

will

It

like

wound his son if he does not cleanse anger may clear the air and produce

cle. If

still-living father,

wedge only front.

then

it

deeper, then

it

must be

himself and break the cya fresh beginning with the

risked. If anger will drive the

must be a conscious decision not

But each son must confront

stays the prisoner of Saturn.

to

con-

that anger within himself or

he

Healing the Souls of Men It is

imperative that

They

scious.

men

render what

certainly cannot

is

change the

inside of

119

them more con-

past, nor, often,

can they

change the outer father-son relationship. But what they do not know operates silently within them nonetheless. Given Jung's profound

observation that the greatest burden the child must bear life

is

the unlived

of the parent, so each father's son must examine, without the

motive

to judge,

where

his father's

wounds were passed on

to him.

Either he finds himself repeating his father's patterns or living in re-

action to

Each

them

—

in

father's

both cases he

Saturn's prisoner.

son must ask himself, "What were

wounds? What were were

is

his hopes, his

his sacrifices, if any, for

dreams? Did he

emotional permission to live his

me and

live out his

life?

Did he

my

father's

others?

What

dreams? Did he have

live his life or the Satur-

What did he receive from his father and culture that hinWhat would I have liked to know from him about his life, his history? What would I have liked to know from him about being a man? Was he able to answer such questions, however tentatively, for himself? Did he ever ask them? What was my father's unlived life, and am I living it out, somehow, for him?" nian tapes?

dered his journey?

These are the mostly unspoken questions between generations.

If

they are not voiced consciously, their implicit answers have been lived out unconsciously, often in

wounding ways. When we ask

father, we are more likely to He becomes more a man like us, a same ordeal. Then we are more likely,

such questions, even of a deceased avoid idealizing or devaluing him. brother

even

who

in the

has suffered the

case of severe wounding, to operate out of compassion.

we are caught up in hate we stay bound to that which wounds us. When we understand our fathers better, from the vantage point of adults, we are better able to begin the process of fathering ourselves. If

2) Tell the secrets.

Those nial the

one

in the healing professions

wound

festers. Or, as the

resists, persists.

to the truth. Rarely

Men's

know

that

wherever there

twelve-step programs put

lives are

it,

is

de-

what

based on denial and resistance

does one hear the unvarnished

truth, as in the

120

Healing the Souls of Men

confession of Pablo Neruda:

so happens

"It

man."^^ Note that he does not say he role as a

man

I

am

sick of being a

sick of being himself;

is

that sickens him. This is the deepest truth

Thoreau who

to find his soul again, to

there are a million into collective

slips

engage

women

men, and

away

lives

woods

to the

who

loo,

tion of soul is recorded

men's

lives

Neruda

tells

life,

every day slide back lead, in

Thoreau 's

of quiet desperation.

Since the psyche knows more than consciousness,

The most notable of

for awhile

of his

in a radical revisioning

anonymity and soullessness. They

memorable phrase,

his

carry,

deformed through being defined by outside

that their souls are

forces. For every

it is

men

this

deforma-

and occasions a concatenation of responses.

reactions

even though they

the tinge of sorrow that haunts

is

may

cover themselves well. Again,

the truth, inescapably:

There are expanses,

sunken factories, pieces of timber which I alone know, because

and

I

I

am sad,

know

The other

and because

the earth, and

tell-tale

ferentiated, turns

sign

is

a real

I

travel,

am sad.^

their rage

on themselves and

which, misdirected and undifothers.

And

underneath

all this

No man

feels human is the terrible fear. man. His macho behavior belies his terror. W.H. Auden

"fury and mire of

he

is

I

veins"^i

also told the truth: Patriots? Little boys,

obsessed by Bigness,

Big Pricks, Big Money, Big Bangs.^^

When men sense soul's intention tion.

that they are frauds, that

is,

Estranged progressively from their inner

89 "Walking Around,"

^

in

ibid,

p.

"Melancholy Inside Families," 9^ W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium," in 243. 92 "Marginalia,"

caught between their

and external demands, they are forced

in

life,

to dissimula-

their

anima, they

105. in

ibid,

The

p.

104.

Collected

Poems of

The Collected Poems of W.H. Auden,

p.

W.B.

592.

Yeats,

p.

Healing the Souls of Men

women

expect

much from

to carry the burden. Sex, in particular, is

importance, for through their

it

feehng state and from

them and

to reconnect

battering. This

to reassure

makes them

As humans must

men seek to overcome their own body. They

upon

failures as

men,

that

is

their isolation

ask the Other

dawn

whom they depend,

replaced by the

is

These are the central secrets of men

are torn

the

given too

brings

new

as vulnerable and dependent as before.

hate those

animosity grow, and eros

them before

121

as persons

—

that they feel

who happen

between fear and rage, and

so tension and

shadow of power.

to

themselves

be men, that they

that they are emotionally

depen-

dent but resentful of the object of that dependence. Again, the only

way

out

is

consciously to acknowledge these insufferable truths.

They must begin with themselves and then share others

—not with

a

woman

also in fearful defendedness,

proportion to his to

acknowledge

but he

fear,

may scorn the truth-teller, his scorn in may also step from behind the ramparts

his brother.

Our mythology

is full

of heroic adventures

ogres fought, dragons defeated

—but

man

truths.

to

that truth with

but with another man. That man, caught

speak his emotional

it

—mountains climbed,

takes even

more courage

The hero quest today

is

for a

not

through the physical world but through the badlands of the soul. The evil

men must engage

is

not the barbarian at the gates but the dark-

ness within, the fear from which only boldness

Jung described The its

spirit

may

bring delivery.

this heroic task:

of evil

is

fear, negation, the

adversary

who opposes life in who in-

struggle for eternal duration and thwarts every great deed,

fuses into the

body the poison of weakness and age through the

treacherous bite of the serpent; he

tinction in task,

bondage

the spirit of regression,

fear

is

pensation or

who

to the

because only boldness can deliver from

not taken, the meaning of

Our

is

mother and with dissolution and exthe unconscious. For the hero, fear is a challenge and a

threatens us with

the task

—

life is

somehow

failing the task

shamed complicity.

^^ Symbols of Transformation,

par.

fear.

And

if

the risk

is

violated.^^

we

bluster into

macho com-

Telling the truth of our soul to our-

551.

Healing the Souls of Men

122

selves telling test

the

is it

Living that truth

first task.

Such

to others is the third.

of our

we

And

the second task.

be the supreme

truth-telling will

Afterward, perhaps,

lives.

is

can stop being "sick of be-

ing a man." 3) Seek mentors

and mentor others.

As mentioned

here earlier,

years ago, the ratio of

when I began my

women

to

men who

practice about fifteen

sought therapy was per-

haps nine to one. Today, without seeking to change ratio is

about six to four

things: that

men

in favor

deep trouble,

are in

my

of men. This shift

climate of the collective has shifted

that

clientele, the

tells

many know

it,

me

several

and

that the

somewhat and therapy

is

there-

fore less risky. In fact

who

it is

men

of greater emotional strength and core honesty

seek therapy. The others are too

dragged into therapy by his wife, of tissue

at his

fearful.

Some,

like the

who condescended toward

elbow and the cauterizing

the

man box

tears they implied, are in the

deepest trouble. They are at war with their partners and themselves.

men to share their lives honest and know they are not going to be

Therapy offers a unique opportunity be emotionally

privately, to

shamed, the

to share secrets

enormous

serves as a

tion into the

about the task of being a man. For awhile,

ring of isolation

rite

back on

therapy also

life is

in,

as

men

track. In time they

come

that

She

is

the fathers though this to

problem"

to realize that

wrong, that choices made unconsciously led them

have a troubled relationship

dom suspect

initia-

generally do,

labyrinthine paths of ever-greater self-estrangement.

realize they

come

many men

there," that if they can "fix the

their lives will get

down

For

male world. They often come is ''out

whole

is lifted.

of passage, a separation from the mother and

thinking their issue

their

for

in

is

They may

to the feminine, but they sel-

them. They have an enormous longing for

fundamentally unconscious.

And

they often

recognize that they have lost their gods, their connection to

nature and their

own body.

Generally, for

numb. But they

all

feel

the pain they feel, these

men

are often curiously

even more pain as they become conscious. They

Healing the Souls of Men realize they

greater

123

need the teaching of the wise elders and they long for

meaning

They also learn that they must heal cannot. Then they cry and rage, and admit

in their lives.

themselves; their partners

When these things happen, healing begins. Most men will not enter therapy of course. They

the fear.

lack the

means

and opportunity, or are too afraid of the huge emptiness they might find inside. Yet

even they may turn

from

they have learned, or learn, visited the other side

Collectively,

and can

men have a

fully separated.

men and

to other

A

others.

mentor

us something of what

tell

As

lot to share.

pass on what

one

is

who

individuals they are fright-

The men's groups dotting

the continent are truly

men

wonderful opportunities for sharing and mentoring, but most will never

go near them and

will suffer their isolation forever.

Unfortunately, few mentors are to be found.

had an

initiatory

has

it's like there.

How many men have

experience and integrated that experience into a

working Weltanschauung? Boys

still

man

need that older

to teach

and model the knowledge of the outer world. But who, as Nietzsche asked, will teach the teachers?

Who

no collective

truth,

once again,

sage,

no mythically grounded body of experience

is

that in

their journey. So, they als, like

our time there

must do

the bodhisattvas of

it

mentors? The

will initiate the is

as individuals.

rite

to assist

And

of pas-

men

in

such individu-

Buddhism, can reach back and, out of

simple compassion, bring their fellows along. 4) Risk loving men.

Recently an analysand observed it

was

for him to risk loving men.

how As a

how

necessary but

difficult

particularly insightful,

courageous man, he acknowledged that the problem was his

homophobia,

literally, fear

of men.

own gender after all? Yes, we have all grown

Why

should he be afraid of

and

own men,

his

been conditioned the other fellow

game. But a social

to

suspicious of each other, for

be competitive.

We

we have

are ever wary, fearful that

might get the upper hand, the old patriarchal power

in considering this

wounding and

dilemma we have

find the source of

to take

it

homophobia

deeper than

truly within.

Healing the Souls of Men

124

men have commonly narrowed

Just as

their relationship to

through the fragile bridge of sexuahty, so other lest they sexualize that relationship.

mophobic,

for they

have even more

to fear

Physical camaraderie

weep

Men may share even their blood

in

Thus,

their fellows. role.

permissible on the playing

is

hug, slap and hold each other, even

room.

from

hand of fear plays a determining

again, the silent

women

men are afraid to love each Even gay men may be ho-

field.

Men may

together, in the locker

combat. Recently a female

analysand went white- water rafting in Canada. The river was perilous

and her

leamed

life

was

in jeopardy, but

to control her boat

she fought through her

fear,

and had a wondrous bonding experience

with her male boatmate. After a few days, she said, they thought as

one and did not have

had had a very

ever have

treasure

it,

know how

to talk to

told her she

to navigate the rapids.

rare experience,

one

that

men,

if

all their lives.

There are few things more rewarding than for a shortstop, deep the hole, to turn

ond baseman

I

they

and throw the

intersect base

and

ball

in

toward second, and see the sec-

moment. This

ball at the exact

about practice than about the integration of soul. Perhaps this rare sense of oneness

is

spirit,

the

is

less

communion of

possible in part because

the outer challenge occasions a transcendence of the individual

ego

to

serve the joint purpose, but perhaps also because the occasion allows

men

to feel their

masculine natures without threat or ambiguity. In

less animate, less transcendent, settings, the old

doubt and ambiguity

insinuate themselves anew.

How

sad, that

men have

sports and warfare. friend.

How

Intimacy between

so few transcendent meetings outside of

rare, to

men

is

have an emotionally intimate male

compared

largely superficial

to that

between women. Most men would sooner die than discuss fears, their

that

impotence, their fragile hopes. They ask

emotional burden.

strained

from sharing

Fe, though

we

As mentioned

we

left

I

to carry

was con-

my feelings with a men's group leader in Santa

surely had a lot to talk about. But

Indianapolis and one near Vienna with

graph

women

in the first chapter,

their

unfinished years before.

whom I And

I

have a friend

in

can pick up the para-

as a therapist

I

have been

Healing the Souls of Men

125

some wonderful moments with men, conversations that could only occur as I grew more and more comfortable with myself, less fearful, more willing to disclose. privileged to have

Like the paradox of Jesus, that one can only love the neighbor to the degree

one can love oneself, so

men if they

and

whom we

then avoid.

When we

acknowl-

we are estranged from our brother because we fear him, we fear him because we are riddled with fear of ourselves,

that

that

then

only learn to love other

can learn to love themselves. Our self-blame and rage are

projected onto other men,

edge

men can

we have

not hatred;

it

taken the

is fear.

first

step toward love.

The most

individuals or as a group,

is

difficult part

we have

that

The opposite of love

is

of loving other men, as

to take the terrible risk

of

loving ourselves. Such self-acceptance in the face of failure and fear is

profoundly

tas

5)

difficult.

But replacing homophobia with eros and

Heal

thyself.

made

Repeatedly the point has been

missing in action.

And we know

here that the tribal elders are

their

from

that healing occurs

re-sonance, re-cognition, re-membering.

like to like,

So wounded men wound

sons and other men. The cycle of Saturnian sacrifice finds ever

new youth book,

We tainly

it

is

to grind up. If there is

any gospel, or good news,

that nonetheless healing

its

impact on

us.

And we

cer-

cannot change our personal history with the huge influence of

and dead, or

how we

internalized that history

cultural context, adapted ourselves to

of

in this

can and does occur.

cannot change our culture and

parents, living

all

cari-

begins at home.

us, then, lost

our

way along

it

in order to survive.

the road.

Longing

and our

Almost

for mentors, the

blind lead the blind. In

The Middle Passage

I

presented

many examples of how we

de-

velop a provisional personality in reaction to childhood experience,

how we

and make choices

that

and how by midlife we suffer the growing

split

set off into life

further estrange us,

with

this false self

between the acquired personality and the natural whatever stage of life, need

to traverse this

self.

All men, at

middle passage and save

Healing the Souls of Men

126

The

their lives.

not

first

knowing one

will later

make

is

passage, of course,

is

leaving

home

physically,

carrying inner baggage in accord with which one

inauthentic choices.

The

final

passage brings aging

and confrontation with mortality.

A good

man who way is dramatized in Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich." The name Ivan Ilyich would translate roughly as "John Johnson," so we know we are dealing with an Everyman illustration

of the dues that must be paid by a

has not found himself along the

motif.

Ivan lives his roles.

Then he

is

stricken with a mortal illness and finds he has

inner reality to turn

of no help.

whole

his

no

His wife and friends are similarly empty and

finally concludes, as

rather than his.

men carry,

lived his

to.

one

in therapy often does, that

has been a sham, someone else's sense of what his

life

was about all

He

unconsciously, accepting socially prescribed

life

Then he has

life

to confront the greatest fear

not the fear of death but the fear that he had not truly

move from a provisional, manhood had not

His middle passage, the

life.

childhood-bound, culture-driven

life,

to authentic

occurred and he was as woefully unready to meet death as he had adequately lived

ment

that a

life.

The crux of

man, whatever

his

the middle passage

is

in-

the require-

age or station, pull out of his reflexive

behaviors and attitudes, radically reexamine his

life,

and

risk living

out the thunderous imperatives of his soul.

Once having the subsequent

identified the role

mother plays

mother complex with

its

and the loss of the father and the absent of what

we must

Men carry

face

in

our development,

archetypal reverberations,

elders,

we know something

on our own.

their psychological history within, especially the long-

ing of the child for nurturance and protection. That child

is

subse-

quently flung out into the world to fight and ultimately die. Because the

enormous longing

landed

women

mothering the

with

man

in

men have generally this burden. But most women rightly resist their life, so men must take on this role. Robert for a safe harbor persists,

Bly recounts the Australian aborigine

men

sit in

rite

of passage for boys. The

a circle and cut their forearms and press the blood into a

Healing the Souls of Men

communion of blood,

bowl. Then, in a

from

man and youth

older

it,

ished you.

Men

Now

father's

need for nurturance. All creatures need care and feeding.

anyone who has

must accept

their

need for nurturance.

is

nurturance

own

that seeks fulfillment

shame, hold the feminine business of building a

from the

would be

their

it

from

fear of

and

and go about the

empowerment

power complex. The power game

One

life.

that

feels the

one

when

feels

cas-

good energy

permission to dive into feels that there are re-

the forces of darkness are nigh.

helpful to have the

model of

the personal father at

such empowerment, but most men

will

have

to

own.

In effect, the

mother and father complexes are charged

clusters of

own beyond the control of consciousEach man must inventory his own internalized imagos and dis-

energy having a ness.

Then

out there. Personal

men. Empowerment means

close hand to activate

on

seek

inner truth, deal with fear and

and struggle for depth and meaning. One

it

Men

testify.

empowerment is the archetypal father world. He needs to see fa-

in respectful balance,

sources within to draw upon

do

pathological,

And whether they

responsibility.

own

new world

available for the tasks of

it

is

say that

not to be confused with the

Again,

—

on

the archetypal need behind the boy's relationship

we might

ther develop a relationship to his

life

the lonely drifter

put into proper perspective.

is

to his mother, so

trates all

—

they need to recognize that the care and feeding

primarily their

is

need for others

is

dependency

around such a person will

to live

women or other men, of themselves

for

John Wayne, Clint Eastwood model

the plains, the

need

"Mother's milk nour-

alike, saying,

understandably fear being dependent, but they should not

fear their

If

they pass the bowl and drink

blood nourishes you."^"^

The male overcompensation as

127

life

of their

cern what their message

is

regarding the capacity of

life to

How

sustain

it-

self

and the power

ters

charged? With what messages, implicit and explicit? Where have

to fight for

they led to false choices?

^^ Iron John, p.

121.

still

greater

life.

are those clus-

Healing the Souls of Men

128

The same

sort of questions

asked above

in

and grieve the father must be asked by each are his

own wounds and

an effort to understand

man

What Each man must

of himself.

aspirations, his unlived life?

ask anew the questions he wanted his father to ask for him.

If

he

know how to be a man, how to cope with fear, how to find courage, how to make unpopular choices, how to balance masculine and feminine energies, how to locate and move in accord with the soul's gyroscope, he must now risk those questions to himself. And if he does not know the answer he is at least asking the right questions. As Rilke once wrote to a young friend: wanted

Be

to

patient toward

all

that

is

unsolved in your heart and

the questions themselves. ...

Do

not

now seek

try to love

the answers,

which

cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.

And

the point

is,

to live everything.

Live the questions now. Per-

haps then you will gradually, without noticing distant

day

it,

live

along some

into the answer.^^

A man must ask himself,

for

example, what fears block me? What

my heart of hearts, know must undertake? What is me to do? Can bring my work and my soul closer together? How can I serve both relationship and individuation? What areas of father's unlived life must occupy and plant my own flag tasks

my

do

life

I,

in

I

calling

I

I

on? Then comes the moment of decisive significance, the

risk, the

man

boldness to live the questions in the existential world. Being a

means knowing what you want and then mobilizing sources to achieve start,

it

is

it.

This

may seem

extraordinarily difficult to

simplistic, but

the inner re-

it is

know what one

not.

wants.

For a

How

does one separate the inner truth from the cacophony of personal

complexes and truth, It

does one is

this

worlds, that

cultural directives?

summon

And how, having

the courage to live

it

discerned one's

in the real

world?

kind of questioning and daring, in outer and inner

makes

a

man. The past and the Satumian weight of

ture play powerful roles, but the

psyche

is

plant the past with insurgent energies to forge a different future.

^^ Letters to a Young Poet, p. 35.

cul-

resourceful and will sup-

Jung

Healing the Souls of Men

once observed

we do

that

not solve our problems,

them.^^ This capacity of the psyche to enlarge possible.

We

all

would

still

mother

like

we

way. But that

not going to happen. Each

is

of the parent complexes and

own

hungers.

What was

man who

now be

arms and

man must shed the direcown decisions, feed his

his

his loss,

in a hostile universe.

was

acti-

self-activated.

as a child had lost his father in

Two. For years he had grieved and unprotected

make

not activated by the parents, or

vated only in partial ways, must recall a

what makes healing

is

long to stand behind father while he leads the

tives

I

we outgrow

to take us in her

nurture us, and

129

World War

always feeling inadequate

He would

often attach himself

powerful or learned men, even occasionally to ideologies,

to

search of the missing father strength and wisdom.

in

One week, while

vacationing by himself in Cape May, he held a series of dialogues

with his dead father, asking

chance

to.

versed and

all

the questions he

He felt a presence within himself, one with whom who did in fact respond to his questions.

Of course he was

own

nature that he himself, by his ques-

imago, a part of his

tions,

had activated. The personal father

a slavish fashion; he tion the father

imago

his questions, fears that

needed

is

to activate

in the son.

When

to serve the purpose, the

can be significantly,

he con-

not talking with his actual father, but with the

father

wounded

had never had a

if

son

is

not there to be imitated in

by example and by affirmathe father is left

is

absent, or too

with the

deficit.

This

not totally, overcome by the son, by turning

and aspirations inward and respecting the images

come. Through active imagination and dreams, the son can be

touch with the empowering father after

The

all.

biological parents are charged with a large responsibility for

transmitting and activating the

life

force in their child,

than they can reasonably achieve, given their

much more

own wounding. But the

son can, through courage and deep soul-work, surpass the tions

in

imposed by

his parent's

limita-

wounds. This work he does not only

^^ "Commentary on 'The Secret of the Golden Flower,'" Alchemical Studies,

CW

17, par.

17.

Healing the Souls of Men

130

and for the world

for himself but for his children

As Nikos Kazantzakis proposed Humanity

What

is

is

which he

in

the task:

such a lump of mud, each one of us

is

lump of mud.

a

our duty? To struggle so that a small flower

from the dunghill of our flesh and

The scarab

beetle,

known

lives.

for

may blossom

mind.^'^

its

habit of rolling dung-balls,

was

sacred to the Egyptians, for they saw, ineluctably, that something living could

wounded 6)

come

out of the dung.

a

soul from the dross of personal history.

Recover the souVs journey.

Men are now are as restricted

free to

by

courage of women tions that

make

who have

many men have men not but,

that their lives to the

protested at traditional roles and institu-

themselves because

away from them

— —thanks

known women's

their first secret

role definitions as are

deny uniqueness and

Predictably,

Women

equality.

have led the way.

resisted the effort of

only

felt

women

to free

something would be taken

even more, they thought they were comfortable

in their rigidly defined

gender

roles.

That

and deforming did not occur to most to

So too may one rescue

their roles

men

until

were oppressive

women

forced them

look more closely.

The average man

reluctant to

still is

examine

his life lest

obliged to change, and change always occasions anxiety. But

one

realizes that the anxiety

accompanying change

is

he be

when

preferable to the

depression and rage occasioned by constriction, change becomes

more

attractive.

when

the infinite possibilities of the individual are subordinated to

Jung noted

that neurosis

is

the necessary

outcome

the restrictions of the culture: I

have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content

themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of

They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success or money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined life.

^ The

Saviors of God, p.

109.

Healing the Souls of Men within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their

131

has not sufficient

life

content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into

more

spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears.^^

Jung's

list

of false goals and golden idols matches the Western

dream of success,

men do

yet

not feel successful even

have achieved those goals and sacrificed to those

shamed and

easy,

alienated.

man

idols.

They

they

feel un-

can forget the family standing

Loman

around the grave of Willy

Salesman? While

Who

when

in

Arthur Miller's Death of a

Charley offers the eulogy for a working

his friend

driven to ground by tough times, Willy's son speaks the sad

truth:

"Charley, the

Surely there

man didn't know who

no sadder epitaph

is

has worked hard and been broken.

spinning planet,

if

not to try to

for a

Why

know

he was."^^

man, especially one who

else are

we

ourselves?

here,

Men

on

this

still

have stopped

asking the right questions and so suffer a sickness unto death. They

can only save themselves by recovering a sense of their soul's jour-

They have

ney.

to

do

this;

they really have no choice.

Recently an analysand brought the following dream: I

am with

a

man in water. He has a bad leg. He goes under. I should I am not a good swimmer. I have to do something. I

help him but

am

afraid, but

up.

I

dive under and find him on the bottom and pull him

CPR.

give him

I

comes

to

I

had

to

do

it.

No one

else

That drowning ness intuits and

saved when he

man

is

knows

is

the dreamer himself, it

must

rescue.

us;

the proper

After the inner their outer world.

only save and be

own depths and No one can do it for

hero journey of old and dive into our depths.

work of man, the work that saves. work men will be able to take a necessary look Most men

they do not feel valued even

^^ Memories, Dreams,

^ Death

He

willing to take the dive into his

we must renew the is

it.

which ego-conscious-

He may

administer the life-giving re-spiration (spiritus).

This

would do

and breathes.

when

Reflections,

of a Salesman,

p.

at

use their job to validate themselves, but

138.

p.

they have achieved success.

140.

They

.

.

Healing the Souls of Men

132

when they have not done the work Camus noted, "Without work all life goes

use work to validate their identity

As Albert when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.''^^^ While we rotten. But cannot ignore economic realities, we must also ensure that our work give meaning and substance to our lives. It is necessary for men to decide anew, then, who they are and how they will spend their of individuation.

precious energy.

No man may grievous not

wounds

home

leave

body and

to

or be in the world without suffering soul.

But he must learn

my wound or my defense against my wound.

The wounds of

may

life

to say, "I

am my

I

journey."

may quicken

crush the soul or they

am

con-

sciousness. But only ever-greater consciousness can bring luminos-

Miguel de Unamuno sounds the challenge:

the journey.

ity to

Shake off

Throw

sadness, and recover your

this

spirit.

yourself like seed as you walk, and

.

don't turn your face for that would be to turn

and do not

let

Leave what's

the past

move

from your work you

The recovery of himself. the

He must

.

it

to death,

weigh down your motion.

alive in the furrow, what's

for life does not

.

.

in the

will

same way

dead

as a

be able one day

the soul's journey

is

in yourself,

group of clouds,

to gather yourself.i^i

necessary for

man

to

save

again be able to see himself in a larger context, in

framework of the

eternal.

Jung asks of

a

man what we must

all

ask of ourselves: Is

he related

to

something

tion of his life

If

we

infinite or not?

That

is

the telling ques-

understand and feel that here in

this life

we

already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, tial

It

we embody,

we

and

count for something only because of the essen-

if

we do

not

embody

that, life is

wasted. ^^^

man feels at home in some religious He is his journey, and that is what is of

does not matter whether a

or political or domestic form.

^^° Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, p. 96. ^01 "Throw Yourself Like Seed," in Bly et Heart, p. 234. ^^2 Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 325. p.

al.,

Rag and Bone Shop of

the

Healing the Souls of Men

The

decisive significance. is

terror

he

may

on the high seas of

feel

understandable, but in relinquishing the imperative to

giving over to an ideology or to dependency on

manhood.

loses his

It is

time to

come

133

someone

he

else,

acknowledge the

clean,

life

sail on, in

fear,

but live the journey.

The summons to journey is not a justification for narcissism. A man still is obliged to fulfill his commitments to others, to meet his he has an inescapable calling to individuation.

responsibilities. Yet

he forgets that calling, squanders his brief

problem

to those others

anyhow. To

moment on

live the

he

earth,

journey of the soul

is

Then we

luminous

episode between two great mysteries. i^^

7)

this short

will

have incarnated the

invisible,

a

is to

serve nature, to serve others and to serve that mystery of which are the experiment.

If

we

made

Join the revolution.

book seems pessimistic about imminent

If this

somewhat

skeptical about

men's movements,

it

social is

change and

yet optimistic

about the power of individuals to gain consciousness, to find the

courage to change, to reclaim their lives

change

Historically,

sided.

—and thereby bring about

in the world.

change occurs when a culture has become too one-

The compensation

citizens.

It

exists, then, in the

unconscious of

takes a person of intuitive gifts, that

conscious material

is

values to the surface.

more

The

is,

one

to

all its

whom

un-

readily available, to bring those neglected artist,

nates the neglected value in a

perhaps,

is

work ahead of

the its

one

who first He may

time.

incar-

suffer

ridicule or rejection or, worse, indifference, but his seed begins to

may be marcollective. And just so

germinate in the liminal zone of others. The prophet tyred, but his truth has already challenged the

now, the

Change

cat

is in

is

out of the bag, the Satumian cinctures loosened.

the

air.

No wonder

sionaries, for they are

dictators suppress artists

most dangerous

to the

and

Satumian control

vi-

that

group-think requires. ^^^ Jung: "Life ...

is

yet are one." (Letters,

a short episode vol.

1,

p.

483)

between two great mysteries, which

Healing the Souls of Men

134

were property

In the nineteenth century children

Women were

leased to others.

be sold or

to

chattel without rights or respect.

And

from the beginnings of history men have oppressed each other as well. If the rights of children if

women are demanding,

now have

a place in our sensibility, and

and deserving

of, respect,

men have

so

to

become more than soulless machines. The French General Lyautey was admonished, as he set out to plant a certain sapling, that the tree would take a hundred years to reach full maturity. "Why, then we must begin

very afternoon," he replied. ^^"^ So,

this

gin this very day. Each of us

is

It is

time to stop the

man when

none

are.

time to oppose those

who

he has power over another man, or a

time to oppose

It is

lies:

all

who would

unctuous politicians and the

too must be-

part of the problem, or, individually,

part of the solution. Until all are free,

a

we

like

oppress others

—and, most of

say that one

woman,

—

all,

men be

told.

fearful bigots,

time to oppose

the tyrannous silence that perpetuates Saturn's rule,

separating men. Let the secrets of

is

or a child.

shaming and

They

are the Lil-

liputian threads that will bind the giant.

To join the revolution does not oblige one to stand on a soapbox. It

means

that

one

lution begins at

starts to

be honest about one's

home, with oneself.

Now

the reader

not as strange as he might have feared, that he other

men have

own

is

The revo-

life.

knows

that

he

is

not really alone, that

experienced what he has, and that they are suffering

with him side by side.

The

revolution begins

when men

stop deceiving themselves,

when

They will but they may now be honest. They

they acknowledge and take responsibility for their secrets. still

have

have

to struggle

to start at

and

suffer,

home, with themselves, and

realize that the

Satumian

assumptions with which they have grown up castrate and destroy

them as surely as

the tyrant

gods of old with

their severing sickles.

The man who walks out from under Saturn's shadow sonal

life is

or not.

^^'^

The

He

also doing a great thing for others,

has learned that no one has power over him

Little,

Brown Book of Anecdotes,

p.

372.

in his per-

whether they know if

it

he does not

Healing the Souls of Men give

it

ney. His

He

them.

to

on a new meaning and

takes

life

has recovered the worth of his

own

soul's jour-

his prayer, in the

Kazantzakis, "is the report of a soldier to his general: This did today, this

how

is

I

fought to save the entire battle in

sector, these are the obstacles

j-Q^ "105

When

this

man, and

how

found, this

I

I

words of is

begin to take personal responsibility for their

what

I

my own

plan to fight tomor-

man, and the other one over

that

135

lives, the

there,

old tyrants

will lose their grip. It is

Zeus heard rumors about

said that

power

greater than

manner of

power

a

and he was deathly

itself,

in the universe

afraid. In the usual

henchmen Force and Might,

a bully, Zeus, with his

swaggered about and intimidated others. Even Prometheus, whose

name suggests

that revolutionary

rock in the Caucasus. ever.

It is

the force

whose bar even

When the

the

tyrant

all

But

that

bullies

foreknowledge, suffered on the

energy could not be suppressed for-

and tyrants fear

and seek

most men are press other

long

way

their

still

own

is

Justice, before

reject collective

hurt

expec-

path, then justice returns. Yes, currently

oppressed; acting out of their

men and

off.

it

gods are overthrown, when individuals walk out

from under the shadow of Saturn, when they tations

—

gods must tremble.

women

But each of us

is

own

hurt, they op-

and children. Surely, justice

obliged to find

it,

first in

is

a

our hearts

and then on the long road ahead. Traveller,

you have come a long way

But the kingdom of the wish

May you fare

is at

led

by

that star.

the other end of the night.

well, companero; let us journey together joyfully ^^^ light.

Living on catastrophe, eating the pure

10^ The Saviors of God, p. 107. 10^ Thomas McGrath, "Epitaph," Heart, p. 256.

in

Bly

et

al.,

Rag and Bone Shop of

the

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Index

Castration and Male Rage, 94

abaissement du niveau mentale, 88 abandonment, 44-46, 56, 59, 64,

Catlin,

George, 65

Charles, analysand, 45-46

74-75, 109 Adler, Alfred, 25

child, inner,

Agee, James, 12-13

Clinton, President Bill, 35

Allen, analysand, 76-77, 96-98

complex(es): 23-25, 29-30, 57,

Amfortas, Fisher King, 77-78

109, 127-129 father, 13-15, 30, 45-46, 61, 66-

analysis, 7-8, 31-33, 44-47, 49,

70, 83-99, 107-111, 114-119,

52-53, 63, 72, 76-77, 96-98,

127-129

114, 118, 122-123

food, 31-33

anger, 43, 47, 54, 56-59, 79-82,

84-85, 97, 107, 110, 118

mother,

9, 11, 19-20, 29-36, 38, 40-48, 51-57, 65, 69, 77, 83-

anima, 36, 41-43, 47-52, 54, 60,

84, 90-92, 102-111, 126, 128 power, 10-11, 21-27, 35, 58, 8485, 94-95, 103, 127, 134-135

120

64, 103,

animus, 33-34, 49-50 anxiety, 55-57

Aphrodite, 10, 36 archetype/archetypal, 16, 24, 29-30, 32, 38, 40, 42-43, 47-52, 55, 67-68, 72, 83-85, 94-96, 114 Ares, 36 artists,

114, 133

Asclepius, 38

House of, 55 Auden, W.H., 86, 120 Atreus,

54

Berlant, Tony, 8 birth trauma,

virgin-whore, 60

Conrad, Joseph, 88-89

Comeau, Guy, 37 "Country Doctor, The," 111-112 creativity, 114-115 Cronus (see also SdXMm), 10, 110 cummings, e.e., 99 Cynthia, analysand, 31-33 Dante, 54, 78, 86 Death of a Salesman, 131 "Death of Ivan Ilyich, The," 126 death-rebirth motif, 18, 84 Demian, 109

Bailey, Pearl, 25 Beatrice,

51

56

Blake, William, 28, 58, 87

depression, 52, 57, 75, 82, 110,

Bly, Robert, 85, 91-93, 126

117-118, 130 dreams, 19, 31-32, 52-54, 68-69, 76-77, 96-98, 129, 131

bra burning, 21-22

Buddhism, 123 Campbell, Joseph, 65, 78, 101 Camus, Albert, 132

Cape

Fear,

24

castration, 10, 94,

Duino Elegies, 28-29, 42 Dunn, Stephen, 42 eating disorders, 31-33

110

ego, 29, 49, 109, 114, 124, 131

140

Index 141 elders (see also tribal fathers), 16-17,

20, 66-70, 76, 91, 116, 123,

125-127 Eliade, Mircea, 16, 66 Eliot, T.S., 78 Empedocles, 41 eros, 10-11, 25, 30, 41, 56, 60, 65,

67, 95, 103, 121, 125

Eros, as god,

28

Heracles, 37-38, 40 hero/heroic, 37-38, 40-41, 52, 63,

105-106, 121-122 Hesse, Herman, 109 Hillman, James, 26, 91 Hitler, Adolf, 88, 95

Homer, 63 homophobia, 123-125 homosexuals/homosexuality, 35-36,

109 father/father complex, 13-15,30, false self,

48, 103, 110, 124 Hopcke, Robert, 73 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 80

45-46, 61, 66-70, 83-99,

107-111,114-119,127-129

Iliad,

24-25, 29, 35-36, 40, 42-48, 51-52, 56-61, 94,

impotence, 24

fear, 9, 11,

101-104, 110, 120-128 feminine (see also anima): 27-61

men's fear

of, 30,

35-36, 42-48,

57-61, 94, 102-104

Finding Our Fathers, 84 Fisher King, 77-78 food complex, 31-33 football, 70-72, 80-81 Friedrich, Kaspar David, 41 Freud, Sigmund, 25, 33, 38, 56

63

incest, 52, 110,

118

individuation, 39, 72, 89-91, 108,

133 inflation, 33,

94

initiation (see also rites

of passage),

16-17, 65-68 introspection,

46

"Iron Hans," 69n, 91 "Iron John," 91-93, 96 isolation, 19, 25,

-

40

Jesus, 125

Gauguin, Paul, 75 Ge/Gaia, 10 George, analysand, 49 Gerald, analysand, 63 Gillette, Douglas, 94 Glengarry Glen Ross, 73 Grail legend,

78

Johnson, Robert, 78 Joseph, analysand, 44-46

"Judgment, The," 86-87 Jung, 10, 16, 26, 29, 33, 35, 38, 47, 51, 54-55, 65, 72, 90, 114,

119, 121, 128, 130-132 justice,

135

Great Depression, 13-14

Great Mother, 38, 40, 47, 83-84 117-118, 128

Kafka, Franz, 86-87, 89-90, 111-112 Kazantzakis, Nikos, 130, 135 Keen, Sam, 91

Haggard, H. Rider, 47 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 87 Hay den, Robert, 117 He, 78 healing, seven steps, 115-135

Kennedy, President John, 88 Kierkegaard, Soren, 8 king, 77-78, 92, 94-95

grief, 57, 115,

Hemingway,

Ernest,

63

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover:

Rediscovering the Achetypes of the Mature Masculine, 94-95

142 Index Ladies Home Journal 24

opposites, 83, 114

Larkin, Philip, 75, 82

Osherson, Sam, 84

Lawrence, analysand, 52-53 Lawrence, D.H., 39, 112 Lee, John, 21 lover archetype, 95 Lyautey, General, 134

Owen,

Wilfrid,

62

patriarchy (see also Saturn, legacy of), 48, 58, 83,

93-99, 103,

110, 123

Pederson, Loren, 47

machoism, 35-36, 40, 74, 91, 103, 120, 122 magician archetype, 95 Marx, Karl, 26 matter, as mother, 32-33, 37, 66 McKem, Leo, 47 Meade, Michael, 91 men's movement, 21-26, 85-86, 91-93, 115 mentors/mentoring, 122-123, 125 Middle Passage, The, 90, 125 military, 35-36, 103 Miller, Arthur, 131 minnesingers, 57 Monick, Eugene, 93-94 Moore, Robert, 94 mother/mother complex, 9, 11, 1920, 29-36, 37-38, 40-48, 51-57,

personal unconscious, 29-30 phallos,

94

Phallos: Sacred Image of the Masculine, 93-94 Philoctetes, 37-38, 40, 52,

Physis,

playboy, 60

power/power complex, 10-11, 21-27, 35, 58, 84-85, 94-95, 103, 127, 134-135 projection, 23-25, 27, 30, 34, 36,

38, 41-42, 46, 49-50, 53-56,

59-60, 64, 69, 88, 109

Prometheus, 135 psyche, levels

of, 29,

rage, 25, 28, 38, 42-44, 47-48, 59-

60, 79-82, 84-85, 107, 115,

120-121, 125, 130

102-111, 126, 128 "Mourning and Melancholy," 56

rape, 42, 57, 79,

"My

reaction formation, 45

myth, 18, 37-38, 40-41, 51, 67, 70, 77-79, 83-84, 86, 92, 108, 115, 121, 123

32

puer aeternus, 45

65-66, 69, 77, 83-84, 90-92,

Kinsman, Major Molineaux," 87

106

112

93

"Red Surrender, The," 73 regression, 38-40, 51-52, 121 relationship, religion,

103-104

30

Rhea, 10 narcissism, 38, 47, 52, 59, 95, 133 Neruda, Pablo, 120 neurosis,

3%

Richard, analysand, 76 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 28-30, 42, 90,

113-114, 130-131

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 64, 103, 123

100, 115, 128

Norman, analysand, 67-70, 72

of passage, 16-21, 24, 65-77, 105-108, 122, 126-127 ritual, see initiation an^ rites of

Oedipus, 52

role expectations, 21, 25, 27, 100-

Niklaus,

St.,

75

rites

passage Olds, Sharon, 116

101, 130

Index 143

Straw Dogs, 24

Romanticism, 41, 57 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 12 "Rumpole of the Bailey," 47

suffering, 19, 40-41, 132,

"Symbolic sacrifice, 70-71, 88, 95, 107,

Life, The," 16,

72

125

Santa Fe, 22-24, 124 Sassoon, Siegfried, 62 Saturn: legacy of (see also patriarchy), 10, 12-27, 75-77,

80-81, 85-86, 95, 104, 115119, 125, 128-129, 133-135

shadow

of, see shadow, Satumian "Saturn," 116-117 scarab beetle, 130 Schwartz, Delmore, 79 Secret Sharer, The, 88-89

secrets, men's, 9, 11, 21, 24, 30,

Self,

134

symbol, 113-115

Thanatos, 41 therapy, see analysis

Thomas, Dylan,

18,

83

Thoreau, Henry, 120 "Those Winter Sundays," 117 Tolstoy, Leo, 126 transcendent function, 114-115 transference/countertransference, tribal fathers (see

48

also elders), 27,

85, 107-108, 114-115 Trump, Donald, 94

Unamuno, Miguel, 132

73, 79, 88-89, 99-110, 119-

unlived

122, 134

Uranus, 10

life,

33-34, 54-55, 90, 119

114

separation anxiety, 55-56

106

serial killers, 42,

serpent motif, 38-39, 53

Venus, 36

Vietnam, 63 virgin-whore complex, 60

sex/sexuality, 28, 35, 46-47, 50,

60, 64-65, 103-104, 118, 121 shadow: 23-24, 26-27, ^S, 94-96 Satumian, 8-11, 13-15, 24, 27,

87-88, 96-99, 113, 115-119,

133-135 Shakespeare, William, 11 shame, 24-25, 63-64, 71-78, 94, 96, 102, 104-105, 107, 110, 122 Shapiro, Karl, 63

Walder, Paul, 95

Wanderer Above the Mists, The, 41 warrior archetype, 95

"Wasteland, The," 78

We 've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse, 26 witch, 31-32

"Snake," 39 Social Contract, The, 12

work, 14-15, 75-77, 80-82, 85-86, 100-101, 116-117, 131-132 World War Two, 14-15, 129 wounding, necessary, 64-82, 90, 105-106

sociopath, 43

Wright, Frank Lloyd, 54

S^he,

Sky

47 Father,

"Sometimes

83-84

I

Feel Like a Mother-

less Child,"

57

yearning for eternity, 41

Sophocles, 37, 95 Speck, Richard, 42

Yeats, William Butler, 106

Stephen, analysand, 46-47, 49

Zeus, 10, 135

55

5

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Under Saturn's Shadow Saturn was the infamous

Roman god who ate his children m an Men throughout history

stop them from usurping his power.

attempt to

have been

psychologically and spiritually burdened by the Saturnian legacy, suffering

from the corruption of empowerment, driven by

their fear

of

women and

wounding themselves and others. In Under Saturn 's Shadow, the acclaimed author of The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife (Inner City, 1993) addresses these issues and more, suggesting practical ways in which men may reother men,

claim their sense of personal integrity.

Women as well for

its

as

men

will find this

book well worth

revelation and elucidation of the "secrets"

its rich perspective on what from the worst influences of patriarchy.

but also for

we

all

men

reading, not only

carry in their hearts,

must do

to free ourselves

James Hollis, Ph.D., is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He has lectured extensively in North America on mythology and religion, men's issues and midlife. He has a private practice in Philadelphia and Linwood,

New

Jersey,

where he

lives.

780919"123649