Introduction Among the psychological issues affecting men generally, few are as debilitating as the Mother Complex and few strike fear in the hearts of men as much as mention of a Mother Complex. Actually, Actually, few actually know exactly what a “Mother complex” is. But it strikes a chord of dependency and being a “sissy” or “mother lover”, and few men can abide any possibility of either other men or women thinking this “embarrassing” issue might apply to him. him. The fact is it is an issue with every man, and until a man has dealt with his Mother Complex, he is not yet a grown Man. . The Primal Split . The Mother Complex stems from the instinctive connection between a child and its mother and arises from the very earliest relationship between a mother and h er child. A newborn newborn is very vulnerable from birth and very sensitive to the emotional connection it h as with its mother. From birth to about a year and a half, a newborn has no sense o f being separate from its mother. It has a sense of being “merged” with its mother and exists in a state of blissful intimacy with her. . In most modern cultures, this state of Unity is disrupted very early. early. If the mother plans to return to work soon after birth, the child is shifted to a substitute mother or into child care and loses the intimacy it needed from its own mother. She, in effects, abandons it to meet other priorities and leaves the child in the hands of a family member or some some professional care service. Or the mother may in fact abandon her child by p utting it up for adoption. Even if the mother stays with the child in the home, she normally begins to make some space for her own needs at when the child reaches around a year and a half of age by refusing to pick the child up or putting it down to sleep by itself. The child has the sudden realization that its mother is separate and may not be accessible. This withdrawal of the mother is a terrifying experience for the child known as primal separation , and when it happens, the child experiences the fear of abandonment and annihilation. . As the mother attempts to disengage somewhat to encourage her child to develop some sense of independence, the child experiences what is called “primal splitting“ as a result of primal separation. This split in the psyche occurs in its perception of its Mother, its Sense of Self, and in the World. Not only is it traumatic in that it exposes the child to the experience of “rejection’ and “fear”, but it leaves a psychic injury, injury, called a "narcissistic wound" that influences the psychology and worldview of the child and lasts the lifetime of the child. . Separation from one’s mother becomes a narcissistic wound because the infant interprets its loss of oneness with its mother in a way that disparages its own sense of worth. If the child thought in terms of language, it might express this loss of “self” in a sentence like: “My mother has separated from me because she doesn’t love me! “ Or “my mother leaves me alone because she does not want me! Or “my mother is not here b ecause I am not important to her!” Of course, the child…being only about one and a half years old, or less, at this point…does not think in words or language, even if it has begun recognizing some words or identifying some things separate from it which can be labeled with words. The trauma of separation creates an emotional shock of loneliness, fear, yearning for love, and need for nurturing that endures for the life span of the child; the child's interpretation of these experiences is subjective and existential, leaving a need for and a fear of its mother, a wound in its valuing of its self, and a vision of the world beyond itself that is frightening and uncaring. . This narcissistic injury becomes the lynch pin of the entire p sychic structure of the child’s mental model of the world. The narcissistic injury is the central fact that o rganizes all subsequent
experience, memory and information. Furthermore, it becomes the underlying often unconscious assumption about the world from which it reasons. All events which follow therefore reach down and trigger this basic fact: “I am not important enough to be loved unconditionally, unconditionally, and I live in a realm that may not care about my existence. In a young man, it becomes the underlying dynamic that influences his ability to maintain an intimacy with the opposite gender, for his silent mantra becomes: “I am alone and not good enough to be loved by any woman.” This sense of unrelieved anxiety undercuts his self confidence and natural male assertiveness, and leaves him feeling vulnerable to rejection or conflict with his partners. . This infantile interpretation of self and life stemming from the primal split is what is known as the False Core. In most instances, it is not true, but in a helpless infant, it is the central felt experience of its existence. . The split in its perception of its mother is not only personal; it is archetypal. The split in the personal mother split’s the Great Mother archetype into two powerful archetypal images: the Good Mother, which is an idealized and “all good” image of Mothers, and the Terrible Terrible Mother, which is the Devouring or Death Mother image of the Hindu Goddess Kali, the Crocodile, or the Underworld Sumerian Goddess Erishkigal. Terrible Terrible Mother devours or o r eats her young without mercy. mercy. Its encounter with fear causes the child to experience its mother as two possible beings: one idealized, nurturing, loving and providing, and the other as terrifying, abandoning, uncaring and not-providing. The first aspect might be labeled “the Good Mother” and the latter aspect as “the Terrible Mother.” At the same time as the Great Mother archetype splits, there is a corresponding split in the child’s image of its self into an aspect that might be called “the Good Son” and a second, less lovable self called “the Bad Boy.“ And third, from the single unified, safe “otherness“ of the world, two “worldviews” emerge: one a comforting and safe world where mother is present and protecting where the child can get its needs met, and another terrifying world without a loving and protective mother, mother, where the child encounters fear of annihilation and its needs are not be met for nurturing and safety. . This split will happen even under normal and healthy circumstances in the home. But it will be accentuated by abuse of the child, by traumatizing punishment, and by real or imagined abandonment. . By the time the boy is 5 or 6, theory has it that under normal circumstances these dual concepts of mother, self and world are re-integrated as the boy’s father replaces the mother (as a source of guidance and instruction and guides his son away from his mother’s providence and out into the world). That re-integration is known at the “ primal closing ”…an ”…an event that should restore the split mother, mother, self and world into unified states in which the self is good enough, his mother is good enough, and the world is safe and a bundant enough. But in fact, it may be that this split remains in place caused by any one of a number of circumstances, with one aspect of the dualities repressed into the child’s unconscious or subconscious mind and the other polarity retained in consciousness as the prevailing sense of self, instinctual relationship to the feminine within and without, and the world outside. If the father is distant or leaves the raising of his children to his partner, he fails to fulfill the role of guiding his children into the necessary primal closing of their psyches. In this event, each child may handle the disruption in his self image, his image of his mother (and other women as well), and his worldview in different ways. Some may idealize their mothers while repressing their memories of the Terrible Terrible Mother experience, while others may h old the memory of their Terrible Terrible Mother in conscious memory, memory, while repressing their Good Mother memories. Some may repress their sense of unworthiness, while others sink into depression because they cannot hide from their sense of unworthiness. And And some may grow dealing aggressively and even violently with a fearsome world, while others repress their fear and wear a fearless mask or persona. But even when fear and low self worth is repressed, such men behave as though they felt they have to fight to survive. They may be very aggressive, impersonal, competitive, and even ruthless with other men as they strive to impose their will on the world.
Otherwise, they may be very timid personalities, associating themselves with more secureseeming leaders or institutions which make them feel safe. . The sense of self which emerges from these very early experiences is an adaptive one…adaptive in the sense that the ego tries to behave in such a way as to avoid the pain of the False Core (its interpretation of its separation or abandonment). Feeling unloved and unsafe, the child may adapt its behavior to be “good” rather than bad, by being cooperative rather than rebellious, by doing as its parents or teachers will rather than by doing what it wants. Such children have been taught very early that their needs are not important. Constantly having to repress their own wishes or desires, they begin to experience a narcissistic rage at those who control its life. But that rage must not be expressed, for to express anger or outright rebellion brings punishment and disapproval. The False Self which emerges is neurotic and repressed. . The child may or may not have experienced a healthy level of nurturing and protection. He may have had too little nurturing and protection to emerge with a healthy sense of self. Or he may have had too much much to emerge with with a healthy sense of self reliance and self self confidence. Mothers tend to push their small children fast to keep up with other children and to develop the motivation to excel in school and life. This type of mother may be experienced as too controlling; where a mother is too controlling, the child may emerge with a crushed sense of self and an inability to relate to other women for fear of being controlled controlled by them. On the other hand, where the mother was too protective the child may emerge with an inadequate sense of self confidence or sense of powerlessness because he never learned to solve his own p roblems or overcome his own problems in life. Such children may display a "pleaser" sort of personality or become withdrawn. Where the child was not protected enough, the child may have learned to be fearful of the world and adopt aggressive behavior (and become bullies or tyrants of other children in o rder to feel safe around others). . Whenever love is conditioned on the child's behavior at an early age, the infant is brought into a tenuous connection to life. He will therefore emerge at an older age unable to feel his own heart or make a loving connection with a woman. The conditional mother wounds the child’s soul and fragments the personality, personality, leaving the child overwhelmed by life, divided against the opposite gender without, barred from his own feeling and instinctual nature within, and overwhelmed by the world outside. The child is highly likely to feel a sense of rage and betrayal at his mother's controlling nature, while she is likely to feel a sense of desperation as she tries to protect her child by dictating his needs and over-mothering him. . Worse, many mothers--denied a exciting and e xpansive life themselves within their families-unconsciously urge their sons to excel in fields they themselves once wanted, but never were allowed to pursue. In their efforts to secure love from their mothers, the sons surrender their own dreams to those of their mothers and become what their mothers wanted for them. Such young men grow up and spend their lives striving to please their mothers, often un consciously, consciously, so that they will continue to love and support them emotionally. Their Mother Complexes hold them in place, inseparable from their mothers throughout their lives, and living out their mother ’s dreams for them. Until at some point later in life, they awake to the realization that they never did anything they themselves really wanted and they never had a sense of their o wn identity. identity. . The Anima . Every boy child, despite h is primary sex characteristics of being male, e merges from childhood with what is termed an “anima”. The anima is sometimes called “the woman within the man”. It is an archetypal image or pattern of instinctive behavior that is the inner guidance all men possess directing their relationship with the feminine. It is a lso sometimes called “the carrier of a man’s soul”. In practical terms, the the anima is the feeling and emotional side of a man. And in healthy mature men, this instinctive part of a man’s nature permits a healthy h ealthy confident, aggressiveness with the opposite sex, a healthy sense of self that is not easily distressed at being rejected by a woman, a healthy ability to be intimate with and bond emotionally to a woman, a healthy ability to
be emotionally vulnerable with either men or women, and a healthy ability to express one’s emotions and feelings in front of other people. . The problem is that this instinctive pattern called “the anima” is easily wounded through a stressful experience with one’s mother. And when that wound is given in infancy, it can disturb not only future relationships with women, but wound a man’s sense of self worth and will to live. When this happens, there are created very serious problems in a man’s ability to express his emotions or feelings; his ability to relate to other men; his ability to relate to, bond with, or trust, women; and his ability to value himself. . When the anima is wounded, the result is in effect a wounded soul. The man then turns to his inner feminine with a sense of betrayal and rage, and he is at war with with himself. He is walled walled off from his feeling and emotional nature. He is unable to love his life and begins to feel a terrible yearning to merge that most of the time is turned outward into spirituality or volatile affairs with outside women. That yearning amounts to a terrible compulsion to “return to the womb” figuratively and metaphorically. metaphorically. Coupled with that yearning to “return to the womb” however is a fear of annihilation by the feminine. . The Mother Complex is experienced by a man as a compulsive longing for warmth, intimacy and nurturance, coupled with a frustrated anger and paranoid suspicion of women‘s faithfulness. This is one symptom of the wounded anima and is experienced by women in relationship with such a man as an energy of “neediness” for feminine caretaking and intimacy, intimacy, as violent generalized anger against women, as a kind of existential grief and need to escape, as an attitude of fear and/or helplessness in the world, and as a self pity which is disempowering. disempowering. Many such men also experience a mind-body split from the Complex because they are blocked from body feelings as well as their emotional and feeling nature. Both are associated with the walling off of a man’s instinctual nature. Many become very “mental” in their way of operating in the world, become emotionally numb, and don’t associate their bodies with pleasure. This is a manifestation of their alienation from their sexuality, sexuality, the Life Force, and any feeling of pleasure at being alive. Much of this is unconscious, of course and is therefore bewildering and incomprehensible to him. . In his relationship with the feminine, each man experiences his anima or his wounded anima at three levels: . In his relationship with Nature, his instinctual nature, his sexuality and the life force itself (his feeling of aliveness) In his relationship to outer women In his relationship to his “inner woman”, or his feeling, sensating, intuitional and emotional nature . Therefore, a man’s soul wounds extend outward and inward, affecting not only his relationship with women and other men, but disparaging his very will to live, his self worth, and his ability to feel the warmth of human love and intimacy. intimacy. His wounds affect his life, and those of many others, in ways beyond imagining. . Symptoms of the Mother Complex . A wounded anima, where unconscious, is extremely likely to b e projected out into the world onto women and to affect the ability of a man to relate in healthy ways to women. For example, his unconscious fear of the (unconscious) Terrible Terrible Mother will engender a fear of women and interfere with his ability to be vulnerable with women, to allow himself to feel his emotions, or to feel intimacy. intimacy. The shadow of the Terrible Terrible Mother generalizes into fear of women’s ability to reject and hurt him. . Typically Typically,, a young man with a Mother Complex will project “Good Mother” memories out in the •
• •
form of a need for motherly nurturing and protection from a partner or spouse. He will expect that his partner will behave as did his “Good Mother” and if she does not, he will react with rage and terror because this draws up his alternative and fearful image o f his Terrible Terrible Mother within. His rage will drive his partner away, away, but his need for feminine warmth and feelings will cause him to hold onto her. At the same time, his fear of her or his desperate desperate need for her” will cause him to defend himself against her. If she gives in to him, as most spouses seem to do, the two of them will settle down into a pattern of mother and child, and he will feel nurtured and ca red for. for. She on the other hand will feel trapped and used. . Women who grew up being programmed into a self perception of powerlessness, on the other hand, may feel drawn to such controlling males in order to feel safe in the world. In this way, controlling men find themselves paired up with disempowered women. In time however, when each is able to withdraw their projections upon the other, each realizes they are terribly unhappy and unfulfilled, and marriages terminate. . This is the state of co-dependency where neither is free to get their needs met and each imprisons the other in a clinging web of mutual dependency. Often the rage each feels at the other’s demands and expectations will break out in furious disputes and arguments over resources, roles and dealing with the children. His suspicion of her and his neediness for feminine attention may lead him into fantasies of being with other women or into actual affairs brought about because of his need to feel wanted by women. She in the end may leave him, relieved to be free of his clinging neediness and obsessive requirements to control her. . In the Greek myth of Eros, Aphrodite and Psyche, the youth Eros was tortured by a Mother Complex from his relationship with his fearsome mother, mother, Aphrodite. The fear of women caused by his wounded anima caused him to hide himself in darkness from his ne w wife, Psyche, so that she could not “know him or see his wounded self confidence.” In this way, way, the mother complex causes men to hide themselves from their women partners and refuse to reveal how they feel about themselves. Men with a Mother Complex are haunted by the fear that they are inadequate and unworthy of the women they adore and so need. They hide behind behavior that is overly aggressive or overly meek and pleasing. Through overly aggressive behavior, they seek to control the women/mother-image they fear but need for nurturance. Or through overly meek behavior, they seek to placate the rage of the women/mother images of the feminine they fear but need for nurturance. . In the face of a man’s inability to bond or find intimacy with a woman, he develops a feeling of rage and expectation of betrayal by women that will haunt his dreams and betray him through self destructive behavior. His rage may easily lead him into physical violence against women and physical violence against himself. In extreme instances, where a young boy as a child has been exposed to physical abuse, emotional abuse or sexual abuse, the personality of a man may become sociopath, leading him into violent violent behaviors such as rape, beatings, and dominating and cruel behaviors as he strikes out at the women who torture him in his dreams. . Many of the criminals in our prisons are imprisoned because they have been so soul wounded they no longer can control their rage at women and life. They can’t feel love or guilt or compassion. They cannot empathize with another person at all. They simply are numb in their bodies and soul. Such men self-immolate and self-punish to divert their minds from the torture in their minds. Many fall into drug or alcohol abuse to numb themselves or experience a kind of merging with ecstasy. Or follow the course of any number of addictive behaviors that punish the body and reflect their hate for themselves and their need to escape life. . What a man himself can seldom articulate and few women can understand is how central to a man’s sense of worth and meaning is the importance of the feminine in his life. Man lives his life in pain and fear. He is as a young man sacrificed to his community’s community’s demands and his family‘s security. security. And he knows this. Yet Yet his sacrifice is made bearable and meaningful by the warmth and tenderness of the feminine in his life. For she is his Source and the ground of his spirit. Without
her, life for him is sterile and barren. The world become existential…a wasteland…without her. her. When the support of the feminine is denied him, he enters a state of madness, pain and grief. He seeks to die. . When a man takes on the soul wound of a wounded anima, the support of the feminine is cut off from him. He is cut off from Nature and the Life Force itself. He is crippled in his relationships with other women. And he is cut off from his feeling of being alive and his natural instinctual manhood. . Perhaps no symptom is so perverse as the inner impacts of a Mother Complex upon a man’s self image and self love…when his rage at life itself, his sense of betrayal by his mother, mother, his impotence in finding a sense of meaning to make h is pain and his sacrifice of self bearable, his inability to feel himself or feel alive, his sense of helplessness and incompetence in the world, and his inability to reach out and feel feminine warmth and tenderness for himself. He feels a sense of rejection by Life. He feels that he is unworthy of being loved. He feels a sense of abandonment to a hostile Universe by the very forces which represent Love to him. . As a result, he looks at himself with loathing. The only escape from that self loathing is death or oblivion. . Although such men may hate themselves and their lives, many of them idealize women. That idealizing stems from the memory, faint as it may be, of their “Good Mother” from infancy, who loved unconditionally and provided the primal memory of warmth, intimacy and safety. safety. As a teenager, that idealization creates early problems in a young boy’s emerging sexuality; the new sexual identity of a teenage boy can become overwhelming and frightening, hampered by the boy’s uncertainty of his self worth and worthiness of idealized womanhood. He may become debilitated by shyness as he puts himself below young women, and can’t find a way to related to girls on an equal basis. That idealizing tendency seeps into his spiritual yearning, converting his spirituality into a need to be “Good Boy” for a Divine Mother Goddess concept of the Source. That compulsion to be perfectly Good can haunt him for a lifetime, block him from his instinctive instinctive and natural needs, and prevent him from ever coming down into his body to feel the pleasure and sensation of life in his body. His spirituality spirituality can become a form of divine torment to complete and leave the physical. But it is only his terrible primal yearning to merge and lose the lonely sense of separation from others he experienced in infancy and can’t forget as an adult. . If spiritualized into spiritual seeking, the Mother Complex leads the seeker into seeking the Sacred Feminine without realizing that what he is seeking is to return to the womb and tender care of the Good Mother of his infancy. To be acceptable to that idealized spiritualized concept, he will become “the Good Boy” striving to be perfect and acceptable so as to find find love and safety through his spiritual seeking. This locks him into an infantile and immature form of spirituality. spirituality. His yearning drives him to escape his painful life and merge with a Loving Mother God, yet it tortures him too because he fears being devoured by this the Terrible Terrible Mother God who threatens from his subconscious depths. On such a spiritual search, he is likely to become overly p reoccupied with the subject of Death and spend a lot of time talking about preparing for or being ready to die. . Spiritualization of the Mother Complex also may lead the seeker into a worldview that is reminiscent of the feminine values: idealizing Nature, preferring to be around female spiritual seekers, or idealizing nurturing, love, caretaking or service roles in the world. The seeker may seek loss of self within a mother church, such as Catholicism, where the individual surrenders surrenders himself to absolute laws of good behavior in exchange for a feeling of belonging and safety; to an ideology in which the individual loses himself in the Unity of an idealized Idea or a favored group of people; to the practice of sexual relations with women in a spiritualized orgasmic expression of Unity or Oneness; or even to a Pagan religion, in which the seeker seeks a return to the Great Mother and a participation mystique with Nature (where members might experience the lost sense of Unity again with Nature). . Work
. A young male’s childhood childhood is often dedicated to preparing him to take u p his social roles as worker, worker, soldier, soldier, good son, and husband. He is disciplined to be a good son first. Then, he is disciplined to be a good student. Then, he is expected to become a good husband and supporter of his family. To To be a good husband, he must make his wife happy and his children safe and healthy. To be a good soldier, he must prepare himself to fight and die for his country. . A man’s life is a life of struggle and sacrifice of his own needs for those of others. And the only thing that offsets and makes meaningful that sacrifice is a feeling of inner aliveness and inner self worth that sustains him on the inside, his feeling that his suffering means something to someone, and the loving support of his wife and family that sustains him on the outside. When a man suffers from a wounded anima within, he is likely to have none of those to sustain him in his sacrifice. . As James Hollis argues in his book “Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men”, men’s working life is usually a wound of the soul, as too many feel they have to prostitute themselves for money to support the needs of their family. Men feel they are giving their lives and selves away, away, sacrificing their very souls and life blood for a life of labor that has mo meaning or value to anyone. They know that this economic system of ours is unnatural…a false construct substituting institutional inhumanity for human choice, all in the name of profit or power. power. . This sacrifice to a machine god (business corporations) is antithetical to the very inner values that they require to feel human…sexuality, human…sexuality, feeling alive, feeling a part of things, community, emotion and feeling well about ones self, loving a woman, seeking to fulfill a dream, and true intimacy with another person. The machine gods, our employers, are in fact a form of Terrible Terrible Mother, Mother, who devours men’s’ souls and holds them prisoner in a hive mind where fear is the motivating force, punishment is always threatened, and the struggle for survival is the law of the jungle. The leaders of these machine gods are servants of the Terrible Terrible Mother. Thus, Thus, patriarchy serves the Terrible Mother and rules men’s lives from the outside world as the Terrible Terrible Mother rules their lives from within the depths of their their subconscious minds. In the shadows behind every corporate CEO stands the Hive Queen. . Men exist in a kind of double bind. On the one hand, their sacrifice of self for the needs of employers and family creates a self-hate and soul loss that brings to them a despair and a feeling of meaninglessness and grief. On the other hand, their inability to relate to the women outside or the wounded feminine within themselves leaves them feeling no sense of aliveness, no rewarding warmth or love that might sustain their lives or support their desire to remain alive. After a time, many men descend into states of deep depression and hopelessness, unable to find meaning or reason to struggle on or to make a connection with another human being, either man or woman. . A man’s life is a minefield of fear: fear of being found wanting, inadequate or incompetent before their wife, their children or other men; fear of physical or psychological trial; fear of failure; and fear of not being able to defend himself or his family from physical threats or violence. Men deal with their fear through participating in a struggle for power. James Hollis, a Jungian psychologist, argues that all of patriarchy is a manifestation manifestation of men’s fear of these issues. issues. And so men react to their fear by seeking power, compulsively compulsively and pathologically engaging in activities driven by the need to win and the fear of losing. . The stress generated by these negative emotions, the soul wounds, the loneliness and the denial of intimacy leads to others dis-eases. The anger is turned inward, leading to depression and weakening of the immune system. Physical symptoms which can emerge include ulcers, gastric upsets, migraine headaches, heart disease and cancer. . The rage and self hate that some men feel leads to violence not only against others but against themselves. Common self immolating behaviors include, compulsive exercise, binge eating, breath holding, fire setting, smoking or drinking, drugs, and suicide.
. How might modern initiatory standards likely to differ from ancient initiations? . In early indigenous societies, early weaning of children was not generally a practice. Children might stay with their mothers for years, and the entire village supported each mother in her needs and care responsibilities. Thus, infants in such cultures may never have experienced the trauma of primal splitting or the experience of a narcissistic wounding. There would have been no mother complex to be o vercome because there would be no False Core. Yet because of the close bonding of mother and the women of the tribe, the men found they needed to break the bond between mother and child in a dramatic way so that the young men might adapt to the harsh role men had to fulfill: fighting in tribal wars, and hunting and killing dangerous animals for food. Men had to face the real possibility of death or serious injury each day, day, so a warrior ethic and spirituality had to be developed to sustain such men through their trials. . In Man’s earliest tribal cultures, indigenous tribes conducted initiation ceremonies designed to separate young men from their dependencies upon the nurturing feminine…from their mothers… but more, from their co-dependencies upon the feminine more generally so they would bond with their warrior brothers. Although there were variations on these practices, many of these initiations for young males were conducted by men’s societies, who would act out the ‘kidnapping’ of a young man from his mother and take him through brutal and frightening experiences at night. These violent initiations initiations would leave a traumatic scar on any youngsters’ psyche. But these societies knew something we have forgotten; initiation must leave a ceremonial wound in the psyche of the male. It may have involved ceremonial ceremonial circumcision or a test of fear and pain. But But the elders knew that the wounding was necessary to break the hold of the mothers and help the youth pass the test of “becoming a man.” Having passed the test, each youth knew they were indeed a man. There would be no going back to the mother after initiation night.. . In these tribal cultures, males moved, in many instances, in separate circles from the women. There were men’s societies and women’s societies which guided the young men and women and which taught the mysteries of life to each. There were women’s mysteries, taught by the elder women to the young women; and there were men’s mysteries, taught by the elder men to the young men. Often, the men’s societies used hallucinogenic plants to seek visions as a part of their spiritual activities. . Young men had to be tamed and brought under the control of the “rules” of life in the tribe. As they were introduced to the spiritual beliefs and practices of the tribe, they began to move in pattern to the archetypal powers in terms of masculine roles, how to find meaning in life, what “right relationship” meant between men and between men and women. The young men learned that their lives belonged to the tribe, and their wish to be individuals had to be sacrificed to the need for the tribe to survive in Nature. . These initiation ceremonies and the cultural practices which kept women and small children separate from men also helped moderate the issue of a “mother complex” in primitive societies. But they did so at the cost of the growth of the ego and individuation of the individual. Individualism and rebellion were not permitted, for the security and power of the tribe could not be challenged.. In most modern, industrial societies, wealth and democratic cultural modifications has made it possible to move beyond tribalism into nationalism, beyond survival economics into huge capital-intensive economies where egotism and individual expression is the rule, where initiation of young men (and women) is forgotten, and beyond blind conformity, conformity, so it is feasible for a young man or woman to walk away from, or drop out of, their mainstream culture in order to “find out who they are as individuals.” . Modern Western cultures have been long criticized by psychologists for being dysfunctional and neurotic. For example,, social ethical values, belief systems, mythologies, rules, and ideals are designed to enforce conformity with the needs of social institutions and stability rather than the health of individuals; each child is taught these values, beliefs and rules by its parents. And as
each young person continues to adapt and conform to social pressure as he or she matures, he or she becomes increasingly neurotic and repressed. Their behavior becomes adapted to meeting the needs of employers, politics, social groups, churches and affinity groups. Each individual’s own needs, self esteem, and healthy sexuality are repressed so that any individual goals can be redirected towards the needs of employers and social order. And a vast marketing apparatus works feverishly to manufacture goods and services which will feed consumers‘ need to feel they have won a measure of security and well-being through their sacrifice of self. But because of this, each person is “set up” for a eventual crisis in psychic and spiritual wellness at some point later in life as they gradually come to the realization that the life they have been “sold“ has very little meaning or satisfaction in the end. This is often the underlying cause for what has been come to be called “the mid-life crisis”, when individuals arrive at their long sought goals to discover they held very little meaning for them. . Whereas ancient tribal cultures imposed an unyielding demand for conformity on their people as well, those cultures were small and intimate. Tribal Tribal meetings discussed issues of justice and fairness in tribal council, seeking resolution of disputes and individual needs. Modern cultures, however, are impersonal, and the isolation and depersonalization of the individual is unavoidable. This impersonalization cuts the individual off from the ethical and community support he might have experienced in the past, and throws him back on his family roots for emotional support. And And this dependency upon extended family bonds the generations together and enables the continuation of parental dependency and the mother complex. Impersonalization creates a tension and social isolation of individuals which in turn creates an enormous pressure on people to “identify” with “their groups which share their perspective, values, beliefs, and ethnic culture” within society. society. Thus, religious, nationalistic, nationalistic, and ideological groupings become enormously powerful in these societies as people attempt to deal with their feeling of powerlessness, depersonalization, loneliness and isolation. These organizations then often become channels of rage and aggressiveness as people try to act together to deal with fear, anxiety and the feelings of powerlessness. . What is needed in modern initiations? initiations? . There are few sources of initiation for either young men or young women in modern cultures. It is plain that the initiation practices of the ancient past are inappropriate, but the need remains to “separate young men from their dependence upon mothering”, help them deal with the consequences of the mother complex, and teach them how to live in a meaningful way. Now, Now, young men are often tied to their families throughout life and parents continue to guide and hold onto their children as long as they live. But parents, like their children, children, are locked into the cultural dysfunctions of their societies. And so, the dysfunctions, neurosis, and unhealthy patterns of belief and perspective are passed down from generation to generation within these groups. The underlying dynamic of anxiety, or fear, drives the needs of people to adhere to the values and belief systems of their group identification, and group shadows are projected out upon other scapegoat groups or individuals who disagree with group values. Society then radicalizes into angry, frightened groups. . For one thing, initiation in modern Western societies must be driven by separation not only from the family values but from the values and belief systems of family identifications as well. This need not mean physical separation, but it does mean detachment psychologically, psychologically, emotionally, emotionally, and spiritually. spiritually. What might have been effected by a “kidnapping” by the men of the tribe, or initiation by the elder women of the tribe, at one time must now be undertaken individually by each man or woman. . So first, the individual is likely to find he must break with both family and cultural history and take time off to find out what is essential and authentic to him alone, because immersed in the dynamic of family and culture, the individual cannot hear the voice within or find their own center. Individuation is a journey to the soul…no longer simply a journey into “manhood” or
“womanhood.” In fact, ancient initiation rites all had their foundation in spiritual experience. The attempts of today’s social groups to indoctrinate their youth in their own values and beliefs seldom allow personal journeys that might challenge their firmly-held beliefs. . Secondly, Secondly, the individual must move into greater individual empowerment apart from the power granted through institutional participation. participation. He or she needs to discover his own power within and learn what that power really is. Part of self empowerment is the willingness and ability to take care of ones self, to be self-reliant, and to stand on one’s own two feet economically and socially. In all mass cultures, the individual is challenged to compromise his p ersonal integrity or principles when “employed” by institutional employers or through his membership in affinity groups. Buddhist teachers would point out that this means each of us must find ou r “right livelihood” where we can “be ourselves“ and live true to our own individual principles and values. Psychologists such as James Hollis would call this a person’s “vocation” by which he means…not his work precisely, precisely, but rather his “Calling.” . Third, the individual must accept that his own needs are important enough to be put first during this time within, if necessary, and that the admonition to be “unselfish” and serve others instead is a social value designed to disempower the individual and continue the old patterns of codependency and disempowerment unaltered. This is where each of us can address the self doubt and feeling of low self worth inherited from our infancy and our own p rimal separation with our mothers. Here, the individual must find a new definition of freedom which permits him to live in a way that is psychologically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually healthy; self-love must become a mantra that re-programs the way we think about our selves, our lives and our relationships. . In his description of the “Monomyth”, Joseph Campbell describes the stage in the journey called “the Return”, when the hero must leave the magical realms of the mind and return to society. society. He will bring with him, Campbell, maintained, a gift. But as many have found, society is not waiting for or much interested in the gifts of this journey, and the journeyer is apt to discover that few are interested in his insights and adventures. He finds in many cases that he silently must retire into obscurity, obscurity, unable to relate to the society he left to find himself and unable to communicate to others the importance of what he discovered. Rather than putting on the robes of the King archetype to “rule“ a Kingdom among others, he finds he must put on the robes of the Hermit instead. He must become resigned to his own solitary identity and become intimate with his loneliness. And yet be well with himself and his life. . Fourth, individuals undergoing individuation must learn that taking power over other people, or manipulating others for personal gain or to feel secure, is a subtle affect of their fear of life, and therefore, each person must learn to bear the tension of aloneness and self-sufficiency self-sufficiency in the world without trying to control manipulate other p eople into meeting their needs for them. This is a direct challenge to the prevailing ethic of business and politics in Western cultures…that it is every man for himself and that greed and deceit must the basic motivations holding all society together. . Fifth, the modern journey of individuation is not one necessarily of a journey to gain power over life by the unrestrained ego but rather learning to find one’s own center, learning to move into “flow” by living “in the present”, working in co-partnership with one‘s soul or High Self to realize the purposes of our incarnations, learning to recognize the dysfunctional patterns of living imposed by society and staying free of them, working with one’s own shadow and psychological complexes to bring them to consciousness and healing, creating one’s own values and choosing to live by them, and withdrawing the projections each of us have made upon others in our reality. Each individual must learn to live in the world as it is and stop living in fantasy and illusion. This is adulthood. . Sixth, young people who are preparing to move into their lives as adults in this culture are entering a phase of "becoming" successful. In America, it is virtually impossible to avoid the catastrophe of "becoming". It is the American ideal...becoming a success, becoming an
entrepreneur, becoming powerful, becoming famous, becoming rich, becoming influential, and becoming admired. If the drive towards self-improvement self-improvement is successful in terms of social advancement, the result is ego inflation. If not successful, the result is defeat by life. Unfortunately, neither do anything but drive an individual away from his true "being" because the drive to "become" is driven by unconscious negative issues such as fear, guilt, shame, anger, jealousy, or the need to be loved. Driven by these compulsions to "become better", a young person cannot become familiar with, or fall in love with, the person they already are. In the initiation of young people, there is likely little that can be done to alter this experience, these compulsions, and the assumptions that drive them into their flight into "becoming" someone else. But at least the choice to "Become" can be made conscious and initiates can be educated on the fact that there are alternative assumptions about how life can be lived. Later in life perhaps, the stress of living a life of "becoming" may lead to a collapse of one's life force, and in the detritus of mid-life crisis an individual might come to terms with the demons which have driven him all his life. To To go forward into a new way of living, those unconscious issues must be dug out and given away, away, reconciled, or forgiven. That new way of living may be a simple life of living in the present...simple "Being"...with "Being"...with self-acceptance and self-appreciation for who one is after all. In the initiation of elders into the second half of life, these new assumptions about how life might be lived more fully...the wisdom of ages past...can be broached and discussed. Many are likely to discover, even after all the years of struggle and becoming, that they do not know who they are and they do not like who they believe themselves to be. Much inner work then lies ahead to discover and clear these unconscious determinants of worldviews and self concepts, compulsions and addictions. It is then that elders can begin to discover that the issue of self realization is not an issue of "becoming" other than they a re but of "uncovering" the Essential Self that lies beneath the False Self. . Seventh, while there may be wisdom in at some point learning to just "Be" so that men may find peace within themselves and stop their endless struggle to "Do something significant", it is also true that men in Western society feel enormous pressure to "do something" with their lives. This imperative "to do". This need to "act" is basic to the masculine principle: the active, conceptive principle of the archetypal masculine. And most of the time perhaps young men enter this phase of their lives without much difficulty. . Men's careers provide a good share of the "programming" of values and psychological rules that will have to be confronted and "dug o ut" in later stages of individuation. But perhaps that is unavoidable, since men who are pursuing careers are likely to have families to support and children to raise. Careers are sought here in part for fulfillment of creative needs and the need to be useful or productive as well. But as psychologists since Sigmund Freud have pointed out repeatedly, repeatedly, the work environment is not likely to provide that sense of meaning or fulfillment to all because men soon enough discover that their own needs are often n ot met in the workplace. Too Too often, the work experience results in a crushed sense of self and self-value. . So long as American society is based upon the model of the corporation and mass-technology, mass-technology, there is maybe little that can be done overall to g uide young men into life paths that might be selfreinforcing rather than self-denying. These paths are often dictated by parental guidance or the conforming tendencies of educational institutions. But where initiations can be conducted, young men can be introduced to the facts of life of working in corporate environments and helped to understand that "starting wages" and "white collar job opportunities" seldom define all the considerations that need to b e thought through in selecting a career. . Initiations also ought to include provisions for educating young men on the psychological cost of many career choices and how the corporate environment sometimes can emasculate the psyche. Sometimes, opportunities in small business ownership, teaching, entrepreneurship or social
service occupations...while less remunerative...can be more fulfilling and satisfying than other more conventional paths into the world of work. This is not to say that all men experience unsatisfying careers in corporate America. Those who do will be quick to defend their choices. . Similarly, Similarly, those men who are aging out of their time in the work place often require help in transitioning into their elder years. Leaving the work force occasions a loss of identity that sometimes creates psychological depression and feelings of loss and worthlessness. Having the opportunity to meet and share feelings with other elders, discovering satisfactory activities and interests, and helping others make their transitions are all ways in which initiations into later life may help older men cope with their changes in life. . Eighth, each individual needs to accept that the ideals society programs him or her with are often also causing psychological, emotional, spiritual, and even physical unwellness in his or her life. Ideals function unconsciously, unconsciously, guiding our n eeds, goals, and obsessions, and cause huge suffering as individuals pursue unachievable objectives for years and years. Ideals, more than any other issue, cause people to “sacrifice themselves” for abstract causes which too often turn out to be the interests of power elites in society. society. Wars for religious or economic goals o ften turn out to be useless sacrifices of life. Part of the individuation process involves challenging each ideal received from parents or society, society, whether conscious or unconscious, and determining whether ideals are distorting life and creating disempowerment. Thus, ideological, religious, religious, gender-based, and political ideals must all be a part of this contemplative review of ideals for the individuating seeker. seeker. There may be ideals we each can adopt and live by, but each of us must carefully consider which we want to give our allegiance to. . Ninth, the issue of healthy "fathering" is intimately connected with the matter of initiation, and in modern Western societies, fathering is often incomplete because o f the stresses of modern life and the disintegration of families. Divorce rates a re above 50 percent in the U.S. And among some minorities, the incidence of children raised without a father or male model present exceeds 70 percent. According to James Hollis, a psychologist with publications in the pathologies of males, in American society, society, fathers are reactive and passively involved in their son's lives, leaving to institutions the task of initiating their sons. Even among homoclite families, too many fathers tend to focus their roles in their careers and provide distant parenting to their children. . Every boy needs his father to take him aside and teach him what he needs to know to cope with life as a man. Every boy needs h is father to model for him what it means to be a man. When fathers do not know what it means to be a man or do not themselves cope well with the outside world, their sons are not prepared to cope with the world they a re about to enter. Strong fathering fathering is required to close the primal split which occurs in the psychic anatomies of their sons when they experience separation from their mothers. If the father is not prepared to fill that role, primal closing is not achieved and their sons are left to cope with the mother complex for the remainder of their lives. . What this means is that his sons lives are going to be ruled by fear, unprepared to deal with the power of the feminine within and without themselves. Their own emotional life is likely to be repressed and numbed. Their work lives are likely to be violent and self-denying, with the result that their soul is wounded from the sacrifice of self they encounter. Their own instinctive and sexual nature is likely to be wounded, with the result that they become followers rather than leaders and creatively numb. Without healthy attitudes towards women and mentoring in their own sexual natures, young men experience difficult relationship issues with women and cannot get their own needs met. If initiation is to be meaningful, the elders who offer these initiations to younger men have got to provide experiences and mentoring that counters the lack of fathering and provide what is missing in young men's lives to close the primal split. . Tenth, healthy manhood is not a separate issue from feminine values or qualities. Because of the mother complex, men hold an unconscious fear of the power of women. As a consequence, they too often go to extremes to avoid confronting the feminine energies without or within themselves.
But as psychologists tell us, the truth is that there is a woman within each man (the anima), just as there is a man within each woman (the animus). The fulfillment of the individuation process implies that each man seeking to understand himself must explore the feminine aspect within his own self--his own feeling, loving and nurturing nature…to balance his energies. To To honestly confront the reality of this presence within can be very intimidating and confusing, and it does help to have the support and encouragement of other men in doing so. . From this experience, a man learns that society’s extreme examples of “masculinity” or “manhood” are neurotic and even pathological. Each individuating man therefore discovers that he is thrown back on his own inner core and will in defining “manhood” for himself. himself. A man must be prepared to stand alone and express his own manhood as it is and not succumb to social pressure to behave in a way n ot true to himself. There is, therefore, no modern social “test of manhood” that can be the test of any individual. Some see the passage through “basic training” in military service as such a test…and the fact is that this experience has provided an initiation for many…but it is not the only test and it is not a test of the Spirit. Instead, it is a test that enforces conformity to military organization and not an avenue into individuation, maturity and self knowledge. A mature mature masculine sexual identity is also also necessary for a man to be able to stand in the energy of feminine anger/rage and hold his space. No healthy woman wants a man she can totally control because he has too weak a sense of masculine identity to stand up to her. . There remains, however, the essential biological test of manhood: that of attaining one's sexual identity. identity. There are those young men who experience difficulties difficulties in passing through the stress of becoming sexually mature. In earlier societies, some initiations included ritualized sexual initiations to bring young men through that ordeal. Some provision should be made for helping young men passing into adulthood to express their own frustrations or needs for he lp in this transition, and in some cases consult professional help with psychological problems. Gay men may also experience problems with this issue. Elders also, passing into the last quarter of life, may be experiencing declines or losses in sexual activity and may need opportunities to address these issues involving loss of sexual identity and information on alternative treatments. . Eleventh, learning healthy relationships is also part of the individuation process, including how to relate in healthy ways to other men and women in intimate and not-so-intimate settings. Often, men have not had good mentoring in relationships and simply do not have the skills or understanding to make and maintain healthy relationships. The mother complex, for example, is only one factor interfering with healthy relationships between men and other men or men and women. This training, which society expects mothers and fathers to give to their sons or daughters, is seldom well done, and so youth are left to learn by trial and error in chaotic youth cultures such as in our schools (often with tragic consequences). This is extremely difficult for an individuating person to effect by him or herself. Marriage is, of course, a wonderful laboratory for learning healthier male-female relationship skills. But too often young people enter marriage without any such training, and the result in the West is a divorce rate of more than 50 percent. There is a great need for new institutional forms forms to assist youth in this area. . Twelfth, Twelfth, individuation and initiation needs to address the issue of Meaning. Society expects young people to discover their meaning in life in their careers, marriages or children. But Meaning has always come from spiritual experience and understanding of one's personal myth. Too Too many men today get lost in ideology, ideology, seeking wealth, or seeking power, and lose themselves. Life becomes, for many, existential. existential. The individual becomes stuck in boredom or overwhelmed by striving and struggle. In overwhelm or depression, individuals must find meaning to their suffering to remain alive. What makes it worthwhile to bear one’s suffering and persist in the experience of life? Initiation in the ancient cultures introduced young men (and women) to the mysteries of life, and through the awe of the mysteries, initiates were given a meaning to sustain them. But in modern society, society, where are the mysteries? Where is the modern equivalent of Eleusis? From whom can the mysteries of life be sought? Only in cults and esoteric schools are such teachings available, and all too often at the cost o f one’s individuality and self empowerment. Lacking such teachings, the individual who goes within must seek “the initiation of the Spirit” to find meaning in life.
. Thirteenth, most people today have no exposure to the concept of individuation and have no idea what it means or implies. When the time comes for their search for meaning and ne w life, they need institutional access to education and support. The needs of young people for initiation will be different than the needs of middle-aged and elderly; each will have age-specific needs that are relevant to their stage and pressures of life. Some people are born introverted and possess an inner world in which the journey within can manifest. For such persons, dream work, active imagination and journaling may provide adequate methods for the spiritual journey of initiation. Other people are born extroverted and need outer support from other men (or women) to seek knowledge of their inner dimensions. For such persons, organizations such as the Mankind Project can provide training, mirroring and initiation support. . Shadow work provides the "lion's share" of the inner work occurring during individuation...coming to terms with the repressed needs, wishes, and "selves" of the subconscious. This inner work is never fully completed, but when it is, it reaches in time the core of narcissistic rage and memories of "abandonment and fear" that were created in the moment of primal splitting. When that does happens, men can totally surprised to discover within themselves a rage at life and women beyond all understanding. Nothing within their experience perhaps accounts for these feelings of helplessness and abandonment, since they were created at a time prior to the development of their ability to understand things conceptually. . Individuation seems sometimes a haphazard process. In theory it seems orderly and powerfully driven by an archetypal process that is divine in origin. But in fact, individuation is a chaotic struggle of the psyche to become conscious. It is a painful process. Few undertake it fully cognizant of how disorderly a process it is or how psychologically frustrating is can become. It is a process characterized by severe swings of mania and depression, by extreme discouragement followed by almost ecstatic insights into oneself. It commonly takes many years of inner work and creates a disorganization and disruption of life few other events in a man's life cause. It can be helped along with therapy or participation in men's support groups, but in the end, the work must be done by each man individually. individually. Initiations of men after after mid-life ought to include a full briefing briefing on the process of individuation and provide reference materials to men who are seeking to understand their own inner turmoil during this time. . Fourteen, as Robert A. Johnston points out in his book The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden, the wound of the Mother Complex in men is also the inability to confront their own fear of speaking against authority, the inability to stand alone in the face of social disapproval, and the castration of men’s creative energies. To To fear life and others is to see the world as threatening and punishing. To To speak from one’s own integrity…to risk disapproval and criticism…is to face one’s own fear. Being Being a man in today’s society means to be capable to standing alone and facing all of society’s disapproval when a man speaks what to him is the Truth. Man’s inability to speak that Truth Truth in the face of d isapproval and being labeled a social scapegoat stifles creativity and the courage to be different. Thus, the wound of the Fisher King in myth is a wound in the mouth and the genitals. Not only is a man’s mouth shut and speechless, but his very Life Force is wounded and impotent. This is the truest test of a man: can he speak his Truth Truth in the face of disapproval and criticism? Can he stand alone and be true to his sense of right and wellness? Twelve, Twelve, young men and old need to grow in wisdom until we can tolerate not having clear answers to everything. In fact, life teaches us, if we pay attention, that none of our an swers are very believable. If we pay attention to how insecure we all are and how we grasp at black or white answers to everything...whether everything...whether there is evidence or not on which is the best choice, we learn to slowly put aside all our beliefs and learn to balance on nothing at all but our own two feet. We don't need to have the answers to everything. We don't have to have opinions or beliefs about everything. It is only our fear which drives us to grasp at unambiguous answers or beliefs. . All dualities are only points of view. The Wise learn to take the Middle Way and to tolerate the tension of the opposites, to see the positives as well as the negatives in everyone's "truth". Each
of us needs to learn to live without security, security, without certainty, certainty, and still be fine and open. Life is to be lived from moment to moment, free from fear of the future or holding on to the past. Those who can attain the Middle Way find peace in their lives, for the need to fight over any point dissipates and the need to defend one's own position disappears. Any initiation should teach this principle to its initiates. . The Way to Healing . How astonishing the power of Love in the life of a man. And how tragic the consequences of conditional love, or the withholding of love. . Men are alone in the this culture as they come to face the Mother Complex. Fathered by men who suffer from their own mother complexes, young men go out into life doubting their own manhood and seduced into conformity to the whims and power of the machine gods of our economic system. There, they are again betrayed by the Terrible Terrible Mothers of power and patriarchy. patriarchy. They won’t find support or assistance from the schools or colleges they struggle through seeking advantage over their fellow students., for those very institutions serve the machine gods. They won’t find support or assistance from government or e lected officials, for those elected officials also serve the machine gods. Terrible Terrible Mother devours her children. . The opportunity to heal this common issue usually comes only when men’s minds or bodies fail from the stress of living and refuse to continue the torture of selfless existence. When this comes, if it comes, a man will stop fighting and fail. As he falls, he will seek for a reason to live. If he finds one, he may begin to search for an understanding of what has happened to him, an explanation of why his life has been so hard when he tried his best to “follow the rules“ he was given by his parents, his teachers and his superiors. His first inclination is to seek outside himself, and off he will go into “self improvement“ books, Cds, videos and seminars. He may rest in confusion for a long time, not understanding what it is he is looking for. Too Too few, perhaps, think to look inside themselves. If he does, he may discover that there is a world within of memories, of unnoticed emotions, of feelings, of forgotten needs of which he knows nothing. If he does he cannot escape seeing and perhaps feeling the lack, the empty place--a hole in the middle of the donut….in the middle of himself. . He may need someone to point the way for him, for the way is unfamiliar to most men. What is it men need to heal themselves from this terrible burden called the Mother Complex? . First, men need to help themselves by facing and admitting their own wounding and the existence of their immaturity and their Mother Complex. Women too need to understand the nature of this dis-ease and to lend their loving support to their sons, their husbands, their brothers and e ven their fathers, so that men don’t have to go through the healing process without the human intimacy, intimacy, understanding and support they need to face their fear and their aloneness. aloneness. Many women will discover here that they too have a mother complex, feeling empty and alone, unable to reach out and find intimacy or love outside themselves because they h ave this demon within them that awaits to be exorcised. . Second, men and women who can admit to themselves that they have not overcome their Mother Complex need to commit to do the work. They must commit to and follow the path into their own Underworld. They must talk this out. They must journal d aily, aily, study to learn the tools of the journey and learn the warrior’s skills of self understanding so that they have the weapons to fend off the monsters they will encounter on the darkest places inside themselves. Those who cross the bridge into the Other World will find that the very first battle they will face is the Dragon Battle. The Dragon is the Terrible Terrible Mother that hides within them. He (or she) must get past the memories that haunt them and wound them at not being loved by their mother. . Those men or women who cannot admit to themselves that this is there own p roblem are the travelers who turn back from the bridge into the Underworld and Refuse the Quest. They are the
ones who cannot face their sense of woundedness and who cannot stand alone and vulnerable before others and admit their inability to meet their needs for love and intimacy. intimacy. They are lost. These men and women will likely end their lives in lonely bitterness, according to the words of Joseph Campbell. . Third, men and women need n eed to understand the Mother Complex by researching it thoroughly, thoroughly, realize how it is created and maintained in people’s lives, and recognize how it has twisted and distorted their own lives. They need to talk about it with their loved ones and help them understand how they feel inside about themselves and how much they really love and need others. They have to admit their fear of women (if it is a man) and their fear of men (whether it is a man or a woman) and accept that this fear is normal and very common and is no cause for shame or guilt. This is a difficult first step in learning to open up and be vulnerable with others. For until the Mother Complex has been healed, true intimacy is virtually impossible. Like the Sun god Marduk of Babylon, until his mother Tiamat has been killed and “cut up”, the hero cannot rebuild his or her world out of the body of his mother. mother. Being able to be vulnerable and open hearted is absolutely necessary necessary to feel a sense of intimacy intimacy with anyone. anyone. . Once our mutual fear of being hurt and rejected is “on the table” so to speak, and we have dropped our masks of indifference and pseudo-toughness to reveal the human being inside, we at last have an opportunity to make a connection with others. Men discover that they they have a need to make caring--even loving--connections with other men as well as women. In fact, men live lives of quiet loneliness because of the conspiracy among males to avoid e motional or feeling relationships or conversations among themselves. themselves. They fear being labeled as “unmanly”. In fact, fact, men lack the inner self confidence in their own masculinity that would shield them from the opinions or cruel comments of other males. Never having passed through any initiatory trial, they have never been “certified” as a real man by their elders, never received the mysteries in ceremony that would show them how to live lives of meaning, never been taught by their fathers that each man must stand alone and face life no matter what comes…and make up a response from their own center. They They have never been taught that the only judge that matters is the one within themselves. . Fourth, men need to be taught to find their heart and how to live from the heart. To To find the heart, men must be allowed to feel and express emotion. Society and the company o f groups of men will never allow that, so it is the women they love and his fellow men who must teach them “how” to live from the heart. What heals the wounded man’s heart is unconditional love and regard. What heals the wounded man’s heart is the realization that he is worthy and fine and acceptable just as he is. Woman heals her man’s heart with her body, her unconditional love and her understanding. Sometimes, only she can “break his pattern” pattern” by showing him that she is well and he is worthy of her as he is. . Both men and women have a deep longing to know their fathers and to be taught by their Elders. But in modern families, too many fathers are disengaged or distant, preoccupied with work or careers, and not involved much in the raising of their children. Grandparents live far away and their wisdom is lost to their grandchildren before the grandchildren are ready to listen. Young Young people are by far more interested in spending their time with their peers of the same age than with the Old. By the time a young person has grown into manhood or womanhood, he or she is already engaged in the sacrifice of self and needs all young adults must must pass through in society. society. . It sometimes takes as many as three decades of struggling before it begins to dawn upon young and aging adults that something is wrong and that they need wiser guidance. By then, parental knowledge has frayed, memories lost, and grandparents passed on. But they need a resource to tap at this point that points them in a better direction, supplies them with the necessary information, and perhaps provides a Mentor. Mentor. The Mentors needed at this time of life are not the typical Mentors and Life Coaches one finds serving job hunters, corporate ladder climbers, and spiritual seekers. They are more the kind of Mentor described by the IX Key of the Tarot: Tarot: The Hermit archetype…the Wise Old Man who watches silently from the sidelines of life as everyone
scurries by in pursuit of a job or some entertainment. There There are such Wise Old Men and Wise Old Women close by, but they are not generally visible. They are seldom “on the Internet”. They are not joiners. They live quietly and silently, silently, doing their own things and enjoying their own lives. They are not seeking students. But they can be a pproached, and many will share their wisdom if the student is ready to listen. . One of the tragedies of men’s attempt to heal themselves is the fact that they can n ever recall why they feel so alone and unloved in their lives. The trauma of the primal split occurred too early for memory to retrieve any specific event and the mind was still too unformed to be able to recall the trauma in anything like concepts or words. Instead the event haunts them wordlessly. wordlessly. Because the event structures their whole way of thinking and interpreting the world, it is usually too unconscious a presence to even notice or comprehend. Only by “getting outside the mind” might it be noticed as an organizing issue, but who can get outside their whole understanding of life? For this reason, therapy is seldom effective in healing the wound, for therapy assumes that an identifiable cause lies within history. . The False Core lies solely in a wordless interpretation of a traumatic event in pre-history: “My mother didn’t love me. I was not good enough to be loved. I am afraid of her now and I am afraid of being abandoned or being hurt. I am not safe here anymore.” It may have been that the interpretation was, in fact, true. Or it may have been untrue. But whichever was the case, the only sure cure of the wound is for the mature man to realize that he was too young a s an infant to understand the truth, and that manhood requires us to accept this world as it is. And this means tolerating the tension of the opposites: being able to withstand the pain of separation as a fact of life and that interpreting Nature’s requirement of separation as being a personal rejection is a mistake. Separation must occur regardless of the the reason. Whether one’s mother was overwhelmed by the experience of motherhood or not, life has facilitated our entry into this world and ushered us into manhood. And we are left with the challenge of making a life here for ourselves. Separation is necessary. It is why a man must be wounded in his initiation into life so he understands that there is no going ba ck to his mother. There There is no escape from the experiences of living. And so he must learn to look after himself. And And even if it brings a man loneliness and the pain of being outside the comfort of human co mpany, mpany, this is what being human, and a man, is about. Life is a lonely journey journey.. And And so we must learn learn to nurture ourselves and meet our needs ourselves. Treating ourselves as if we are important enough to get our own needs met is the first principle of self love. . Bibliography: . James Hollis, “Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men” (Inner City Books: 1994). James Hollis, "Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path" (Inner City Books: 2001). Steven Wolinsky, Wolinsky, Ph.D., “The Way of the Human: Volume Volume II - The False Core and the False Self” (Quantum Institute: Capitola, CA), 1999. Michael Washburn, “Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World” (State University at New York: York: 2003). Robert A. Johnson, “The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden” (HarperOne Publishers: 1995).
