A Crisis in Masculinity - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover

Last week, I wrote about the Men's Group meeting I attended. One of the guys mentioned something that reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend, Dave, years ago.  

Dave - a true story

Dave:   “Peter, I told my dad I love him.”
Me:      “Seriously, Dave? What did he say?”
Dave:   “He told me he loves me.”
Me:      “Wow, Dave! I’m going to try that with my dad.”

That was in 1999. It was the first time ever Dave heard his dad tell him he loved him.

At the time, both Dave and I were 40 years old.

Dave is an old friend. We’ve known each other for over 50 years. We played high school football together. He’s been close to my family forever. He gave a eulogy at my dad’s funeral. I am godfather to one of his daughters.

Both of us grew up with masculine dads. But they were also macho. As a kid, I didn't know the difference. 

After high school, Dave played college football, graduated, then joined the Navy as an officer and pilot. He is currently a captain for a major airline and also a real estate developer in Texas.

Like Dave, prior to the time I turned 40, I’d never heard my father once tell me he loved me.

The only time I heard my dad mention “love,” was when he sat with me and my brothers and said, “Mom and I love you boys.” Hey, that’s better than nothing.

I remember, especially in the years leading up to the time I turned 40, feeling like something was missing whenever I ended a phone conversation with my dad (I lived in Boston, he lived in Phoenix).

So, thanks to Dave, the next time I talked to my dad on the phone, I ended with, “I love you, Dad.”

He replied with, “I love you, Peter.” It worked!! The barrier was broken. I was 40. Dad was 67.

Sometimes you just need to take matters into your own hands to get what you want.

For the rest of his life, every time we spoke it ended with, “I love you.” When texting, we both ended with a ❤.

When a father neglects to tell his children he loves them, is something missing? Both Dave and I had dads that didn't say "I love you." And very likely our granddads didn't tell their kids they love them.

Yet, just like Dave, since the day my kids were born, I told them daily that I loved them. So we are all better off now, right? 

A Crisis in Masculinity?

On various occasions over the past few years, I've heard guys say things like "men are so feminine nowadays." They talk about the “pussification” of the American male, or “effeminate men.”

At the same time, I’ve heard women talk about “toxic masculinity.”

Let's be honest. A lot of these opinions come from angry voices on social media expressing themselves without any credible data or supporting empirical evidence. 

I like to remind myself of Clint Eastwood's famous quote, “opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.”

Perhaps some of these voices are confusing things with natural processes like aging.

We do know that testosterone declines with age. Earlier this year, I wrote about this decline in Male Menopause - An Inconvenient Reality.

Lower testosterone is a normal part of aging. This is backed by hundreds of studies going back decades.

At the same time, there are a lot of people who believe that men’s testosterone levels are lower now compared to the past. But I am absolutely not an expert on this topic. And I’m not sure what “the past” means. 100 years ago? 1,000 years ago? 10,000 years ago?

The factors commonly cited which might contribute to lower testosterone levels today include terms like lifestyle, sedentary, diet, nutrition, stress, environment, TV, sleep, and of course, social media.

Masculine versus Macho

It could be that there's confusion about what we mean by "masculine" and "macho." Both express aspects of male identity and behavior. Here are some of their differences.

Masculine

- Vulnerability – Values emotional vulnerability, authenticity as part of positive relationships.

- Assertiveness – Encourages respectful and equitable interactions with others.

- Gender relations – Nurtures mutual respect and communication.

- Diversity – There is no one “right” way to be a man.

- Manhood – Embodies positive traits, aspects of being a man.

- Saying "I love you" - Easy for a masculine man.

Macho

- Vulnerability – Rejects vulnerability as a sign of weakness.

- Assertiveness – Can promote aggressive or domineering behavior.

- Gender relations – Prioritizes male dominance and control.

- Diversity – Tends to define rigid, limiting gender roles that can exclude non-conforming men.

- Manhood – Can demonstrate the dark side of being a man. The “toxic” male.

- Saying "I love you" - Not as easy for a macho man.

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover

When I sent out my Middle Passage, Carl Jung newsletter a few weeks ago, one of my readers, my good friend Ben, replied with, “Good one amigo! Always three cheers for Jung & the archetypes of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.”

He was referring to the book he loaned me years ago, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine (1991) by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. Ben and I share a similar intellectual space. We were in grad school together.

Archetypes

Ar·che·type
/ˈärk(ə)ˌtīp/
noun
A.  a very typical example of a certain person or thing:
"The book is a perfect archetype of the genre"
B.  (in Jungian psychology) a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious.

The authors discuss psychological research that identified these four archetypes (king, warrior, magician, lover), the four fundamental configurations that form the deep structures of the mature male psyche. These were first presented in lectures at the C. G. Jung Institute in Chicago.

The authors write:
“In the late twentieth century, we face a crisis in masculine identity of vast proportions. Increasingly, observers of the contemporary scene – sociologists, anthropologists, and depth psychologists – are discovering the devastating dimensions of this phenomenon, which affects each of us personally as much as it affects our society as a whole.”

In the book’s introduction, the authors point to three factors to begin to explain the crisis in masculinity:

1. Disintegration of the Modern Family
The authors suggest the disappearing father, through either emotional or physical abandonment, or both, causes psychological devastation to our sons and daughters.

“The weak or absent father cripples both his daughters’ and sons’ ability to achieve their own gender identity and to relate in an intimate and positive way with members both of their own sex and the opposite sex.”

To be honest, I carry some guilt from the many nights I spent on the road for business, traveling with my clients.

2. Disappearance of Ritual Processes
The authors say we should seriously consider the disappearance of rituals for launching boys into manhood. There are standard definitions in traditional societies that frame what Moore and Gillette call “Boy psychology” and “Man psychology.”

In tribal societies there are “carefully constructed rituals for helping the boys of the tribe make the transition to manhood.”

They argue that almost all of these ritual processes have been jettisoned or “diverted into narrower and less energized channels – into phenomena we call pseudo-initiations" (e.g., conscription in the military to "make a man out of you," gangs in our major cities, prison culture).

“The Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment were strong movements that shared the theme of the discrediting of ritual process…By disconnecting from ritual we have done away with the processes by which both men and women achieved their gender identity in a deep, mature, and life-enhancing way.”

The result of ritual processes becoming discredited, the authors suggest, is boys have no initiation into manhood or they have pseudo-initiations that fail to elicit the necessary transition into adulthood.

The consequence is the dominance of Boy psychology – abuse and violence against both men and women, passivity and weakness, inability to act effectively and creatively in their own life, and an oscillation between both abuse and weakness.

I shouldn't complain. My sole initiation experience happened at the age of 12 when I was initiated as a Boy Scout in 1972 with other scouts, including my younger brother, at the Ventana Campground in Big Sur, California. It was awesome. 

3. Patriarchy
The authors say that patriarchy is the social structure that has ruled over much of the world from at least the second millennium B.C.E. to today.

“In our view, patriarchy is not the expression of deep and rooted masculinity, for truly deep and rooted masculinity is not abusive. Patriarchy is the expression of the immature masculine. It is the expression of Boy psychology, and, in part, the shadow – or crazy – side of masculinity. It expresses the stunted masculine, fixated at immature levels.”

“Patriarchy, in our view, is an attack on masculinity in its fullness as well as femininity in its fullness. Those caught up in the structures and dynamics of patriarchy seek to dominate not only women but men as well. Patriarchy is based on fear – the boy’s fear, the immature masculine’s fear – of women, to be sure, but also fear of men. Boys fear women. They also fear real men.”

“The patriarchal male does not welcome the full masculine development of his sons or his male subordinates any more than he welcomes the full development of his daughters, or his female employees.”

I can relate to some of this having grown up in a house where Dad made most, if not all, of the rules.

The authors' clinical practice

The authors spent years in clinical practice. They say that the men seeking help were not missing connection with the inner feminine, but adequate connection to the deep and instinctual masculine energies, the potentials of mature masculinity.

Their clients, they said, “were being blocked from connection to these potentials by patriarchy itself…and by the lack in their lives of any meaningful and transformative initiatory process by which they could have achieved a sense of manhood.”

“We found, as these men sought their own experience of masculine structures through meditation, prayer, and what Jungians call active imagination, that as they got more and more in touch with the inner archetypes of mature masculinity, they were increasingly able to let go of their patriarchal self and other-wounding thought, feeling, and behavior patterns and become more genuinely strong, centered, and generative toward themselves and others – both women and men.”

“In the present crisis in masculinity we do not need, as some feminists are saying, less masculine power. We need more. But we need more of the mature masculine. We need more Man psychology. We need to develop a sense of calmness about masculine power, so we don’t have to act out dominating, disempowering behavior toward others.”

Good news to share from Carl Jung

Moore and Gillette, as students of human mythology and Jungian psychology, tell us they have "good news to share."

"Those of us who have been influenced by the thinking of the great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung have great reason to hope that the external deficiencies we have encountered in the world as would-be men (the absent father, the immature father, the lack of meaningful ritual process, the scarcity of ritual elders) can be corrected. And we have not only hope but actual experience as clinicians and as individuals of inner resources not imagined by psychology before Jung. It is our experience that deep within every man are blueprints, what we can also call 'hard wiring,' for the calm and positive mature masculine. Jungians refer to these masculine potentials as archetypes, or 'primordial images.'"

"Jung and his successors have found that on the level of the deep unconscious the psyche of every person is grounded in what Jung called the 'collective unconscious,' made up of instinctual patterns and energy configurations probably inherited genetically throughout the generations of our species." 

"The existence of the archetypes is well documented by mountains of clinical evidence from the dreams and daydreams of patients, and from careful observation of entrenched patterns of human behavior...We want to show men how they can access these positive archetypal potentials for their own benefit and for the benefit of all those around them."

Documentary – The Mask You Live In

Last week, I saw the documentary, The Mask You Live In (IMDb). I watched it here on YouTube.

It’s a 2015 film written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. It’s her second film.

This documentary explores masculinity in contemporary society. It examines the ways in which societal expectations shape boys' development and how these expectations can lead to issues such as violence, depression, suicide, and substance abuse.

See also Wikipedia - The Mask You Live In.

Conclusion

I'm happy to say my buddy Dave is coming to visit me here on the beach next month.
I’ll take him for a swim. It will be great to catch up with him. 

Thank you for reading!

Be well,

Peter Pavlina