Title Iron John
Author Robert Bly
Year Published 1990
Kind of Book Masculinity/Psychology
How strongly I recommend it 6/10
My Impressions This book takes the fairy tale "Iron John" from Grimms Fairy Tales and uses it to symbolically explain the development (or lack of development) of the male psyche. I was on board for the most part of Bly's analysis, though he was a little too all over the place for me at times, connecting ideas that he didn't support and so-forth. I enjoyed the spirit of this book, but didn't love the execution.
Date Read November 2021
What question is the author trying to answer?
Practical Takeaways
Make contact with/Unleash the "wild man" ie. Primitive instinct buried in your pond ie. psyche
Go down into the swamp of your psyche and pull out the wild man ie. Shadow
Have initiation ritual at puberty for the boy to transition from boyhood to adulthood
Make sure the boy has a strong Father present during development
Make sure the boy has a clean break from the father
Big Ideas
Animals store more of their knowledge (how to attract mates/reproduce etc.) in their DNA
Humans store most of their knowledge (how to attract mates/reproduce etc.) in stories/fairy tales/legends/myths that are passed down from generation to
Modern men have nurtured their feminine consciousness
However
Modern men have not become more free as a result from nurturing their feminine consciousness
Modern men have largely become "nice guys" who try to please their mother or the women they are living with
every modern male still has a wild primitive instinct buried in the core of their psyche
Modern men (of the 80s and 90s) have not made contact with the wild man sleeping in their psyche
Freud, Jung, and Reich all went into their unconscious and laid bare what they found there
A man can only achieve unity and wholeness (Individuation) if he lets his shadow out of its cage
A Mother's main job is to civilize the child
Therefore
Symbolically the Mother keeps the key to the boy's inner wild man hidden away
The boy must steal the key from his mother (she will not give it away) ie. The boy must release the wild man from the cage of his psyche (and not expect his mother to do it for him)
When a boy releases the wild man from the cage in his psyche he becomes a man
Mothers are aware of the fact that if her son releases the wild man from the cage of the psyche he will become a man (and no longer be her boy)
Therefore
Mothers unconsciously don't want to allow their boys to release the wild man in their psyche
Mothers feel a strong possessiveness of their sons
Fathers feel a strong possessiveness of their daughters
The transition from boyhood to manhood is something which requires active intervention on the part of the older men in the society (ie. Initiation ritual)
Only men can initiate boys into manhood
Only women can initiate girls into womanhood
The second birth at the time puberty (12-14) is the death of the child and the birth of the man
In many cultures boys are sent to the father when they are 12 years old
Even when a boy grows up with his Father, there may be a strong covert bond between him and his mother to try to evict/cast out the father
This covert bond can be difficult to break
It is better/cleaner when the son breaks with the mother via an initiation ceremony around puberty
If a boy/man hasn't undergone an initiation ceremony to manhood and broken his bond to his mother he may begin to unconsciously treat his mother poorly (being rude to her etc.) as an unconscious way to make himself unattractive to her and make her not want to posses him as a way to break free from her
It is crucial to a boy/man's development to have a clean break with his mother
The Industrial Revolution damaged the bond between Father and Son
Because
After the Industrial Revolution Father's went to work in factories and were no longer present at home for their son's development
Most school teachers are women
Modern boys are mostly raised by women (teachers and mothers)
Until the age of 30 or 35 many men Idealize and obsess about their mother (ie. Strong feelings of love or hatred for her)
Around the age 45 men tend to gravitate towards their father and desire to see him more clearly and
Around the age 45 men tend want to be closer to their Father
Male Initiation ceremonies worldwide tend to have two parts
1) A clean break from parents (going into the forest, wilderness)
2) Being given a wound which is symbolic of the separation from the mother (a cut, tooth knocked out, wound on penis)
Boys/Young men who don't receive any admiration from older men form psychological wounds
In Western culture the sky is thought to be Masculine
In Western culture the earth is thought to be feminine
If a boy is not allowed to live out his wildness/hunting stage in his development, it will remain repressed and he will find himself trying to live it out over and over in his adulthood (doing things like buck hunting)
Surprising Facts
Among the Hopis and other native Americans of the Southwest, the old men take the boy away at the age of twelve and bring him down into the all-male area of the kiva. He stays down there for six weeks, and does not see his mother again for a year and a half.
the Kikuyu in Africa. When a boy is old enough for initiation, he is taken away from his mother and brought to a special place the men have set up some distance from the village. He fasts for three days. The third night he finds himself sitting in a circle around the fire with the older men. He is hungry, thirsty, alert, and terrified. One of the older men takes up a knife, opens a vein in his own arm, and lets a little of his blood flow into a gourd or bowl. Each older man in the circle opens his arm with the same knife, as the bowl goes around, and lets some blood flow in. When the bowl arrives at the young man, he is invited to take nourishment from it.
Unknown Terms
Symbols
Hair= the instinctive and the sexual and the primitive. Sexual energy
Pillow=the place where the mother stores all her expectations for the child. (Michael Meade)
Gold =sun-glory, royal power, self-generating radiance, freedom from decay, immortality, spiritual luminosity,