I summarized this book because it was a book recommended to me by a well-known Argentinean Therapist and Psychologist named Guillermo Vilaseca, who is an expert in men’s psychology and male gender issues. I hope you enjoy the summary and I wholeheartedly recommend reading the book if you do have the time.
The main theme of “Iron John, A Book about Men” is male softness and immaturity. The author, Robert Bly, uses the story of Iron John, (an old German fairy tale), as a way to describe and dissect the issue of male initiation and the lack of it in contemporary culture. The effects of lack of male initiation are the prevalence of men who are “life-preserving instead of life-giving”. Robert Bly argues in favor of a masculinity that goes beyond the macho men stereotype but doesn’t end up in the other extreme, the soft male that is only able to be in tune with the feminine and willing to gain the favor and the admiration of women but losing sight of his beliefs and wants in the process.
Iron John: Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale, c. 1820
The story begins in a remote area of the forest near the King’s castle. Hunters go there and never come back. A courageous hunter offers helping the King by going to that area and trying to discover the source of the problem. Upon arrival to the problematic area, the hunter’s dog is pulled by a mysterious hand into a pond. The hunter goes back to the King’s castle and gets more people involved so as to fix the problem of the pond. The hunter goes back to the pond accompanied by some other helpers. They bring buckets with them to dry out the pond and get to the bottom of the pond. They find a hairy man at the bottom of the pond. This hairy man has reddish hair to his feet. They bring the hairy man to the castle and the King names him Iron John and puts him in a cage. This hairy man is a metaphor for the part of men that is lacking in current male culture. Iron John represents the wild man. The wild man represents the primitive male energy that is associated with authentic masculinity, which is different from the other extremes: it is neither the macho-man that is unable to have feelings, nor the receptive and soft male-type.
The rest of the Iron John tale explores the relationship between Iron John (the Wild man) and the King’s son. Letting the Wild Man out of the cage is a metaphor for the male opening his inner psychology and letting out the inner Wild Man to achieve complete male maturity.
The following are some of the main concepts and ideas discussed in the book:
Men’s Lack of Initiation
The main problem with contemporary men, according to Bly, is that so many of us are not properly initiated into manhood. In contrast, most ancient or tribal societies have clear procedures where older men initiate younger men into adult manhood. The lack of initiation in today’s society has led to men’s softness, passivity and lack of vitality. Women generally mature naturally through the process of giving birth, which gives clear visual indications of their own transition into maturity.
The Lack of Older Men in our Society and how it negatively affects male development
“Eventually a man needs to throw off all indoctrination and begin to discover for himself what the father is and what masculinity is” Robert Bly.
There is a big disconnect (physical and psychological distance) between the sons and the fathers’ world and the fathers’ values. Men are not properly initiated into manhood by older men. Men go from one hierarchical, vertically-governed institution to another (schools, businesses, government jobs, etc.) with no time or resources to develop from boys to men. Older men – who in ancient cultures would take the role of initiators of children into mature men – are either not physically present (because they retired and moved away to a warmer climate) or simply take a passive role. Fathers work long hours, sometimes in remote locations, and are physically and psychologically detached from their sons. Women end up doing most of the fathering and this is reflected in the values that the boys grow up with, with a general negative attitude toward men. This negative collective male identity is further disseminated across the cultural context by the influence of TV, movies and media in general. Paul Dobransky and the Men’s Psychology website propose that we men need to learn to “father and mother ourselves”.
Passivity and Naiveté in Man
Passivity in men can be seen in the lack of involvement in activities that require energy such as finishing conversations at home, setting discipline with children, saying what one wants and what one doesn’t want and fighting for possessions or beliefs. On the other hand, naiveté is related to a lack of boundaries. The naïve man takes pain from women and carries it; the naïve man is content with absorbing the pain and recover in isolation. The naïve man shares whatever is in his mind at any time, from personal plans to last night’s dreams, in the belief that “each person is basically noble by nature, and only twisted a little by institutions.” In other words, the naive man is often taken advantaged of or subjected to ridicule, easily cheated or betrayed.
Many Men Fear and Distrust Authority
Fathers have transitioned, since the Industrial Revolution, from making things with their hands and being able to show their sons the trade, to abstract labor that makes the relationship between men and work more vague and difficult to understand and communicate between fathers and sons. That process of physical to intellectual work has created a metaphoric hole in the son’s psyche. Most young men don’t know what their fathers actually do in the office and they become suspicious of their father’s occupation. This disconnect can lead sons to make the assumption that the fathers’ work is inherently evil. This negative attitude toward fathers’ occupations is what is behind the general disdain for authority in many young males; this lack of knowledge of what the father does is what underlies the idea that men in positions of authority are suspicious. Robert Bly says, “There is a general suspicion now that every man in a position of power is or will soon be corrupt and oppressive. Yet the Greeks understood and praised a positive male energy that has accepted authority.” This lack of trust and respect in everything that revolves around the father’s work is one of the reasons why boys tend to gravitate more toward the feminine, which is represented by the mother’s values and ways of being.
Why Some Women Prefer Passive men
Many women today prefer passive men who avoid conflict at any conflict at any cost. This same pattern is seen in institutions such as corporations, universities and the church, where men comfortable with conflict are rare and conformity and compliance is encouraged across the board. Team-worker is often a euphemism to describe the lack of passion required to fit in corporate environments.
The Inner King and How to Bring Him Back
Image by Flicker user Menage a Moi http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearpark/
The Inner King represents what we are passionate about and what we desire. At some point during our childhood, it sometimes happens that our father carries a huge Inner King and our Inner King is diminished and eventually we become numb to our Inner King. The process turns us from being boys that are able to freely express our desires, to sulking teenagers that have repressed emotions because there is only space for one Inner King in the house (typically our father’s Inner King). With our own Inner King being dormant and useless, we can’t express our wants and preferences, and we become passive and dull. To recapture the Inner King later in life, we should pay attention to our tiny desires and become sensitized to what we enjoy and prefer. The key to being a more active and persuasive individual lies in developing and nurturing the Inner King, which is another way of saying that we should make a conscious effort to put our passions and desires first and reduce our need to please other people all the time.
How to Go past Shame and Liberate the Inner Deep Masculinity
Mainstream culture, through the years, has made it shameful to be a man. Notice the embarrassment that expressing our desires can bring, and the fact that manliness in general is often a source of ridicule. How can we reclaim our inner King, our Wild man? The first step would be to understand the cultural problem and how it affects us individually. The second and subsequent steps need to entail getting in touch with our deep masculinity and our desires and nurture them. We need to turn the passive, numb individual that is a guest in his own house, to a person that is in close contact with his emotions and his passions. We will not be able to find this deep masculinity by spending time watching TV or drinking alcohol, but we are more likely to grow and mature if we become in contact with an older man that we admire and try to obtain some guidance on how to be a man.
Top 5 Takeaways
1. Issue of Boundaries (Or Lack Thereof)
We must build boundaries that are rigid enough to protect our desires and wants from outside psychological aggression (usually in the form of put-downs or ridicule), while at same time flexible enough to be able to sustain relationships with others. In other words, the boundary has to be semipermeable so that some influence from others is welcomed but on the other hand, we need to be firm when it comes to protecting our inner desires. The boundary has to turn into a membrane that lets good stuff in and keeps the harmful influences away. This is something that we need to work on and get better at. The concrete message to take away is that we need to protect our desires and opinions firmly and not let anyone ridicule us for what we want and believe.
2. Learning to Say No
This is related to the issue of boundaries. Without boundaries, we let others dictate our agenda and our objectives. If we are passive and we “go with the flow”, we are not in control of our life and how it unfolds on a daily basis. We need to be in touch with our objectives and have a level of self-respect such that we are able to say no, especially to those that are closest to us.
3. Expressing Our Desires
When we are confident in our ability to protect our inner psychological health from outside attacks, we are secure and more likely to articulate our desires and express those desires to the outside world without repression or inhibition, and thus able to someday reach those objectives or simply live and affirmative life; a life that is in line with our intrinsic values.
4. Making a Clean Break from our Mother, connecting with our Father and later also breaking from our father.
We need to cut the metaphoric umbilical cord that attaches us to our mothers and that stunts our maturity as men. The break has to be clean and peaceful instead of messy and violent. Many immature boys mistakenly become hostile to their mothers as a way to create some psychological distance. Robert Bly talks about stealing the key to Iron John’s cage from our mother’s pillow as metaphor to describe the need for becoming psychologically independent from our progenitors.
5. Setting the Wild Man Free
“Wild Man energy, by contrast, leads to forceful action undertaken, not with cruelty, but with resolve”.
“The true radiant energy in the male does not hide in, reside in, or wait for us in the feminine real, nor in the macho/John Wayne realm, but in the magnetic field of the deep masculine”.
“Getting the ball back is incompatible with certain kinds of conventional tameness and niceness”.
We need to gradually become in tune with our passions and tiny desires, and expressing them to the outside world with exuberance. The sulking boy that many of us have inside has to evolve into a man that respects himself and is willing to take risks by just listening to our wants and needs and going after what we want. The key is to go after what we want and do this consistently. We need to be more expressive, more assertive. As men, we need to understand that we decide the persons we want to become and that we are not relegated or limited by a stereotype.
Steps to Getting the Golden Ball Back
The golden ball with which the boy in the story plays rolls into the Wild man’s cage and the boy wants it back. There is fear surrounding the Wild man and it takes courage to ask for the ball back. But before we can get the Golden Ball back, we need to water out the pond.
1) Bucket the water out of the pond >>> represents “to leave the collective male identity”. Bucket work implies discipline. Jung: successful requests to the psyche involve deals. We need to make deals with the psyche in order to achieve more discipline.
2) Get the key from mother’s pillow >>> it is necessary to steal the key because mothers won’t give the key. If mothers give the key, they lose their boys.
Problem: the old men outside the nuclear family no longer offer an effective way for the son to break his link with his parents without doing harm to himself. Young males need to be welcomed into adult life by older men; young men cannot be initiated by men their same age.
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Additional resources:
Here is an audio version of the book that is free to download.
Also, here is a video on YouTube where Robert Bly is introduced and where his views on being a man are discussed.
For more help on how to heal our wounds and get back up as men, Paul Dobransky’s products offer visual guides and clear explanations for the psychology and neuroscience related to men’s development and maturity.
