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, 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. 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.
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The Primal Split
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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 her child. A newborn is very
vulnerable from birth and very sensitive to the emotional connection it has with its mother. From
birth to about a year and a half, a newborn has no sense of 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.
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In most modern cultures, this state of Unity is disrupted very 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 professional care service. Or the
mother may in fact abandon her child by putting 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.
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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, called a "narcissistic wound" that influences the psychology
and worldview of the child and lasts the lifetime of the child.
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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 because 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.
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This narcissistic injury becomes the lynch pin of the entire psychic structure of the child’s mental
model of the world. The narcissistic injury is the central fact that organizes 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, 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.
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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.
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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 Mother,
which is the Devouring or Death Mother image of the Hindu Goddess Kali, the Crocodile, or the
Underworld Sumerian Goddess Erishkigal. Terrible Mother devours or eats her young without
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, where the child encounters fear of annihilation and its needs are not be met for nurturing
and safety.
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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.
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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 event that should restore the split
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 abundant 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 Mother experience, while others may hold
the memory of their Terrible Mother in conscious 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 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 secure-
seeming leaders or institutions which make them feel safe.
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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.
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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 to emerge with a healthy sense of self reliance and 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 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 problems 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 order to feel
safe around others).
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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, 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.
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Worse, many mothers--denied a exciting and expansive 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 unconsciously, 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 own identity.
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The Anima
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Every boy child, despite his primary sex characteristics of being male, emerges 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 also sometimes called “the carrier of a man’s
soul”. In practical terms, 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 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.
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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.
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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 himself. He is 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. Coupled with that yearning to “return to the womb” however is a
fear of annihilation by the feminine.
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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, 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. 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, 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.
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In his relationship with the feminine, each man experiences his anima or his wounded anima at
three levels:
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• 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
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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. His wounds affect his life, and those of many others,
in ways beyond imagining.
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Symptoms of the Mother Complex
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A wounded anima, where unconscious, is extremely likely to be 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 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. The shadow of the Terrible Mother generalizes into fear of women’s ability to reject
and hurt him.
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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 of his Terrible Mother within. His
rage will drive his partner 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 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 cared for. She on
the other hand will feel trapped and used.
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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.
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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.
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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, Aphrodite. The fear of women caused by
his wounded anima caused him to hide himself in darkness from his new wife, Psyche, so that
she could not “know him or see his wounded self confidence.” In this 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.
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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 behaviors such as rape, beatings, and dominating
and cruel behaviors as he strikes out at the women who torture him in his dreams.
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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.
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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 demands and his family‘s
security. And he knows this. 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.
When the support of the feminine is denied him, he enters a state of madness, pain and grief. He
seeks to die.
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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.
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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, his
impotence in finding a sense of meaning to make his 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.
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As a result, he looks at himself with loathing. The only escape from that self loathing is death or
oblivion.
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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. 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
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 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.
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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 love and safety
through his spiritual seeking. This locks him into an infantile and immature form of 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 Mother God who threatens from his
subconscious depths. On such a spiritual search, he is likely to become overly preoccupied with
the subject of Death and spend a lot of time talking about preparing for or being ready to die.
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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
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).
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Work
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A young male’s childhood is often dedicated to preparing him to take up his social roles as
worker, 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 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.
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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.
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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, 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.
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This sacrifice to a machine god (business corporations) is antithetical to the very inner values that
they require to feel 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 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 Mother. Thus, patriarchy serves the
Terrible Mother and rules men’s lives from the outside world as the Terrible Mother rules their
lives from within the depths of their subconscious minds. In the shadows behind every corporate
CEO stands the Hive Queen.
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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.
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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 of men’s fear of these issues. And so men react to
their fear by seeking power, compulsively and pathologically engaging in activities driven by the
need to win and the fear of losing.
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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?
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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 overcome 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, so a warrior ethic and
spirituality had to be developed to sustain such men through their trials.
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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 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 circumcision or a test of fear and pain. 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..
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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.
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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.
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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, 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.”
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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 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
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. Thus, religious, 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?
.
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,
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, 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, emotionally,
and 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, the individual must move into greater individual empowerment apart from the power
granted through institutional 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 personal 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 our “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, 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 primal 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, 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. 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, 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 in the
world without trying to control manipulate other people 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 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 go forward into a new way of living, those unconscious
issues must be dug out and given away, reconciled, or forgiven. That new way of living may be a
simple life of living in the present...simple "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 are 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 out" 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, 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 not met in the workplace. 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,
there is maybe little that can be done overall to guide young men into life paths that might be self-
reinforcing 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 be 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, 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, guiding our needs, 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. Wars for religious or economic goals often turn
out to be useless sacrifices of life. Part of the individuation process involves challenging each
ideal received from parents or society, whether conscious or unconscious, and determining
whether ideals are distorting life and creating disempowerment. Thus, ideological, religious,
gender-based, and political ideals must all be a part of this contemplative review of ideals for the
individuating 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 of the stresses of modern life
and the disintegration of families. Divorce rates are 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, 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 his 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 are about to enter. Strong 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 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. 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 not 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 masculine sexual identity is 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. There are those young men who experience 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 help 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 to assist youth in this area.
.
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 many men
today get lost in ideology, seeking wealth, or seeking power, and lose themselves. Life becomes,
for many, 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, 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 of 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 new 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. Initiations of men after mid-life ought to include a full 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 fear life and others is to see the world as threatening
and punishing. To speak from one’s own integrity…to risk disapproval and criticism…is to face
one’s own fear. 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 in the face of disapproval 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 in the face of disapproval
and criticism? Can he stand alone and be true to his sense of right and wellness?

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 answers 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 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, without 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 Mothers of power and
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 elected officials, for
those elected officials also serve the machine gods. 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 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 even
their fathers, so that men don’t have to go through the healing process without the human
intimacy, understanding and support they need to face their fear and their 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 have 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 daily, 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 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 problem 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. 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 to understand the Mother Complex by researching it 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. Being able to be vulnerable and open
hearted is absolutely necessary to feel a sense of intimacy with 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 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 emotional or feeling
relationships or conversations among themselves. They fear being labeled as “unmanly”. In 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 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 find the heart,
men must be allowed to feel and express emotion. Society and the company of 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” 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
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 pass through in 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. 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: 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 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, doing their own things and enjoying their own lives. They
are not seeking students. But they can be approached, 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 never 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.
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 as 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 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 back to his mother. There is no escape from the
experiences of living. And so he must learn to look after himself. And even if it brings a man
loneliness and the pain of being outside the comfort of human company, this is what being
human, and a man, is about. Life is a lonely journey. And so we must 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, Ph.D., “The Way of the Human: 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:
2003).

Robert A. Johnson, “The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden” (HarperOne Publishers: 1995).