Robert Bly's book Iron John has cast a long shadow over contemporary ideas concerning men and masculinity and the practice and shape of 'Menswork' generally, whether therapeutic anti sexist etc. It clearly struck a chord in many men particularly in the United States where it remained on the best sellers lists for over a year. In this country, although its influence seems to have been more peripheral there are few men involved in 'Menswork' who do not know of it.
At a time when the issues of men and masculinity seem to be becoming more prominent in the public sphere it feels appropriate to examine in more depth what is an important and seminal work. Structured around the Brothers' Grimm fairy story Iron John, the book offers a rich and poetic view of manhood and masculinity. It attempts to reconnect the sense of being a man with both Nature and modern civilisation, in doing so trying to offer alternatives to the more 'macho' and destructive stereotypes of masculinity without losing what could be called the 'male soul'. Using parts of the Iron John story as metaphors for different stages of masculine development, Bly attempts to describe a process in which men can discover their maleness and mature as men without losing touch with their connection to the Earth and the historical and anthropological roots of masculinity. Yet although inspiring, illuminating and worthwhile in what it aspires to, it is also riddled with serious contradictions and flaws.
The very name Iron John conjures up the image of a dark and foreboding figure, armoured, inflexible and grim. As a symbol for the transformation of men away from the rational, rigid, unfeeling and destructive stereotypes of the past he seems grotesquely inappropriate. Yet the figure is clearly important to Bly. So much so that the book is named after him rather than the Wild Man, with whom he appears interchangeable during the story as told by Bly.
I believe that many of the flaws and contradictions in the book emanate from the dark qualities contained in this figure, qualities that Bly does not appear to recognise. They appear to reflect his own disowned and unconscious shadow which emerges time and again throughout the narrative. This shadow seems much closer to the social and historical legacy of men and masculinity both in terms of values and behaviour. It is authoritarian and autocratic, impersonal, contemptuous and violent. In short, the very image of patriarchy. Bly, rather than attempting the more difficult task of integrating this shadow with the more human and intimate qualities that his idealised Iron John espouses, instead splits this dark side off and projects it onto the 'macho man' and the savage man. This enables him to subtly lay claim to those enormous benefits that we as men have derived from such behaviour, particularly in terms of power and material wealth, without having to own the darkness from which they have been derived.
| When brought down to earth a darker shadow emerges |
What seems at first glance to be a deeply personal book becomes on closer examination strangely detached and impersonal. Bly's personal history and his own experiences of living through the developmental stages depicted in the story are fragmented and lacking depth. Much of the time he is talking about others or giving his interpretations. Although critical of others for sloppiness and lack of rigour, Iron John is no less guilty of confused and muddled thinking, lacking discipline and intellectual clarity. As a poetic vision, it offers flights of illumination for the soul, but when brought down to earth and examined more closely a darker shadow emerges.
To reveal this shadow more clearly I wish to examine six themes that occur throughout the book and seem central to Bly's work. These are the themes of fatherhood, initiation, mythology and fairy tales, the 'soft' man, politics and the warrior. I believe that all of these themes are important and Bly's acknowledgement and exploration of them is both a significant contribution and of value. Yet too often they are treated in rather too simple and idealistic a way, ignoring the darker depths that these themes also embrace.
The theme of fatherhood runs as a constant thread through Iron John, yet Bly's approach to it seems both reactionary and idealised. He appears to adhere to a model of parenting whereby the mother is initially responsible for child care, and then at a certain age, usually around puberty, the father has to separate the boy from his mother and become the main parent in terms of attachment. He gives many examples of this occurring in other cultures. The notion that a child can be brought up and be nourished and nurtured from birth by the mother and father together seems outside Bly's framework. The type of parenting both described and advocated in Iron John creates the very conditions of over attachment to mothers and distance from fathers that Bly recognises as problematic, yet he appears blind to this contradiction.
From my personal experience of having three children whose ages range from 3 to 18, I know that it is not only possible for both parents to bond equally with a young baby from birth, but that separation is then much less of an issue. By being attached to more than one parent the dependency on each becomes lessened. But sharing parenting means prioritising child care over work and ambition for a significant period of time, and this involves necessary sacrifice. A further consequence is that parental authority is shared between the parents and the father becomes less special and more ordinary. In particular it means being involved on a daily basis with all the anger and 'boundary pushing' that children are constantly directing towards those individuals who are responsible for restricting and caring for them.
The need for men to be involved with parenting from birth onwards, and to redefine the role of father to include being a parent and nurturer from the beginning, rather than merely being a protector and provider, is not one that Bly acknowledges. A significant number of men have been doing just this for many years now, yet Iron John reflects little of this. Instead the book harks back to an idealised time when mothers' and fathers' roles were segregated and separate, a time that allowed fathers to avoid the sacrifice of parenting and to maintain their position of detached authority within the family.
This idealisation and selective interpretation of the past is further reflected in Bly's approach to initiation, which is muddled and misleading. He fails to differentiate between two very different types of initiation, mixing them inappropriately to suit his arguments. The first of these types is what can be called collective gendered initiation, which consists of a formal and traditional ritual that each boy has to pass through. The function of this is to separate him from his mother and give him a collectively defined male identity. It takes no consideration of him as an individual, instead imposing a socially defined identity upon him that demands a conformity reflected in collective allegiance and obedience within a rigid gender role. In the book Bly shows a great deal of admiration for this form of initiation.
The second type of initiation is very different. 
This is best described as a shamanic initiation. It is not concerned with the socialising function of collective initiation but rather with the spiritual and psychological development of the individual. It requires an internal recognition from the initiate of his calling and the process is informed in considerable part by the initiate's own experiences including dreams and visions. The separation that takes place in such a process is not merely from his mother and family but from the very ground of his being, with the very real danger of becoming psychotic. Relatively few individuals have ever experienced this form of initiation and the guidance given was individual and spiritual rather than collective and political.
Bly's muddling of these two types allows him to claim that by going through a collective initiation men will become more independent individuals. In fact whilst it may result in them becoming independent of their mothers, they become in turn passive and dependent upon a collective approval based upon the prevailing cultural stereotypes of men. This is what appears to have happened in much of the part of the American men's movement that has derived from Bly. Here macho stereotypes and blatant misogyny revolve around the rallying call of men's rights and gender segregation. Although Bly openly disowns and condemns much of this, it is easy to see its roots in Iron John.
Bly's political naivety is further reflected in his attitude to myths and fairy tales. He claims that 'ancient stories are a good help because they are free of modern psychological prejudices'. Whether even this is true, he ignores the fact that they are steeped not only in the prejudices of the time they were originally written but also that they will have been subsequently coloured by those prejudices of the intervening years as they were passed down. The development that takes place in Iron John unfolds in a distinct social framework, reflecting the political values of the time in which it was set. These values included the subordination of women, slavery, racism, religious intolerance, a strict hierarchical structure built upon wealth and power, and the acceptance of violence as a means of obtaining what you wanted, particularly through warfare. The psychology of the story includes and reflects these values.
Unfortunately, by turning a blind eye to the historical framework and romanticising the stories, the prejudices become enshrined rather than recognised and challenged. If we wish to work with myths as reflecting deep psychological truths we must be fully aware of the political values that they are embedded in. We need to recognise their prejudice and incompleteness as guides as well as their richness and psychological depth.
This political naivety and some of Bly's attitudes towards women are revealed further when we examine his claim in Iron John that men today have become soft as a result of being too connected with their feminine side and that they therefore need to re-connect with their masculinity. Setting aside for the moment whether this is true or not, it is worth examining his definition of this feminine side of men. In Iron John this appears to be in the main defined as being passive, lacking vitality and being unable to be assertive, the masculine thus representing active, assertive vitality.
| Bly subtly reinforces the very sexism and inequality that he claims to abhor |
This representation in fact is not so much a description of masculine and feminine as a recapitulation of the stereotypical qualities socially assigned to men and women. These so called feminine qualities are those that women were, and to an unfortunate degree still are, supposed to identify with and embody in our culture. This expectation of women to be passive, unassertive and lacking in vitality has been part of the means by which they have been kept as subordinate to men, for by internalising these life denying qualities women become participants in the everyday reinforcement of their lack of equal status. By identifying these as feminine, Bly subtly reinforces the very sexism and inequality that he claims to abhor, attempting thereby to give it some archetypal and essential validity that easily becomes a justification of men's superior status.
The identification of basic human qualities such as assertiveness, vitality and being active with any gender is problematic and unnecessary. Although Bly and others may state that feminine and masculine do not denote man and woman, this is an intellectual statement that denies the deeper emotional identification and resonance between man and masculinity, woman and femininity.
An interesting point to be made here is that in Bly's earlier book, A Little Book of the Human Shadow, whilst still denoting the soft passive qualities as being feminine he states that what is missing in such men is their witch, another feminine quality, whose value lies in her assertiveness and who also embodies activity and vitality. In the interim he has effectively removed these qualities from the feminine and set up a polarity between what becomes the 'life giving' masculine and the 'life denying' feminine. He attempts to avoid this in Iron John by describing the 'soft' passive qualities as 'life preserving', but this is nonsensical. You need to be able to be active, vital and assertive to preserve life, as any parent could acknowledge.
The second question that arises is whether Bly's claim that men in general have become 'soft' is true. As has been pointed out by Mick Cooper in Achilles Heel issue 12, there is little evidence to support this. The vast majority of men seem far from acknowledging any value in being 'soft', let alone behaving in such a way. My own personal experience has been that it is only in the New Age, therapy and anti sexist sub cultures, which together make up a rather small fraction of the male population, that men are generally found to be soft in the way Bly describes. My experience of men during years spent working in the business world, in being involved in community politics on council estates, and in my current work as counsellor for men who behave violently, is that they are far more identified with being hard than soft. As a generalisation I would say that most men are still cut off from feelings other than anger and rage, avoid any acknowledgement of vulnerability, and still expect to be the dominant partner in relationships with women.
My own history has more in common with these men than with those Bly describes. I have had to shift from aggression to assertion, learn to express my pain and anxiety as grief and fear rather than rage and withdrawal, and accept relationship, intimacy and compromise over independence, distance and selfishness. This has made me neither passive nor guilty, but I have become more vulnerable, more human, more warm and more willing to say sorry when I am in the wrong. This willingness to be vulnerable is a softness I value and is not only vital and alive but an essential part of my assertiveness. My experience of working with men is that these vulnerable qualities are what are missing, often alongside an inability to be assertive rather than aggressive. Becoming more feminine or masculine does not come into it, broadening their human qualities and experiences to become more inclusive does.
A generalisation I would make is that the majority of men have not gone soft but are confused about their identity as men. This seems to be a reflection not only of the changing status of women but also of a more fluid and educated society which renders rigid gender roles increasingly irrelevant and even dysfunctional. With men's identity and status so bound up with their gender role rather than their personal sense of self this confusion and uncertainty is understandable. But it needs to be tolerated and explored so that a more genuine sense of self as a man can emerge, rather than being fled from in a desperate attempt to recreate a bygone age of certainty.
In Iron John, Bly seems unable to tolerate this confusion, which appears to be reflected in his political views. There is a longing for certainty and dominant leadership running through the book, and there are several occasions when he makes derogatory remarks about alternative political approaches. His reactionary attitudes to parenting and women have already been touched upon, yet the absence of race and homosexuality as significant factors in Iron John is equally telling.
Whether eliciting positive or negative responses, both race and homosexuality exert enormous influence on the political landscape of America. Yet there is scarcely a mention of them in Iron John. The workshops that Bly runs also seem to be almost exclusively white and heterosexual. But then, how would such a story in such a setting speak to a black or gay man? If it spoke to them at all, it would probably be in a very different way to the interpretation Bly gives. For if there is one thing we ought to have learnt by now, from gay men in particular, it is that it is not masculinity but masculinities that we need to be addressing and that this diversity has to be acknowledged.
Bly himself, whilst criticising the New Age and therapy movements for not being more politically involved seems happy to run his workshops on those same circuits, charging high fees that render them immediately exclusive and privileged. Capitalism does not appear to be on the agenda for questioning and those who do not have the financial means are ignored. The giving of a few bursaries in a group of over a hundred men seems an example of political correctness rather than political awareness, all surface and little substance. In this he mirrors the marginalisation that takes place in society as a whole whereby white, affluent heterosexuality is the model for all men. He seems to prefer to ignore this problem rather than struggle with what are very difficult and challenging issues. In this his shadow looms large, a veritable reactionary Mr. Hyde exploiting that which his liberal Dr. Jekyll condemns.
| He seems to have no notion of the terrible damage swords and knives can do... limbs being hacked off, bodies being pierced and ripped, blood, gore, enormous physical pain and often death |
Perhaps where this split is most marked is in Bly's romanticising of the warrior. He attempts to put all the dark parts of the warrior into the soldier, leaving the warrior as some kind of golden ideal who fights and even kills, yet in an almost bloodless and honourable way. Although abhorring guns and modern weapons which are only fit for soldiers, Bly appears to condone and admire hand to hand combat with swords. He seems to have no notion of the terrible damage swords and knives can do, that such combat results in limbs being hacked off, bodies being pierced and ripped, blood, gore, enormous physical pain and often death. These harsh consequences are ignored behind a romantic idea of honour and respect. There is no empathy for the dead or wounded or for their children, wives and families. In fact these men appear unconnected to close others, seeming to be separate men fighting separate men. Such combat becomes as clean and clinical, detached and impersonal as any example of modern warfare, the only difference seeming to be the respect and honour the combatants show each other as they hack themselves to death!
This romanticising and split seems to be rooted in Bly's personal history. Bly says of himself that he was not in touch with his warrior energy when he was a child and a young man. This lack of experience as a youth of 'being a warrior' seems to have affected him profoundly, with the unfortunate result that he has compensated by romanticising and advocating 'warrior' qualities without understanding what they actually mean. The ability to protect oneself and others is an important one to have regardless of gender, but equally it carries a potentially grim and dark consequence with it. The burden of damaging and perhaps killing another human being even in self defence is a heavy one to carry, and has little to do with romance and triumph. Rather it casts a dark cloud over the heart that needs to be slowly and painfully dissolved in human relationship, with a residue perhaps always remaining. Bly is right when he states that the soldier avoids facing this by his detachment and rationality, yet his view of the warrior is equally dangerous and detached with a similar denial and avoidance of this darkening of the heart.
Amongst the shadow I have laid bare there does of course lie my own, for in part it is the darkness in my own heart that enables me to see Bly's. Since I was a child I have been aware of my ability to kill and my wish to wreak vengeance on those who crossed me. I have been both harsh and violent at times with people who I perceived as having damaged either myself or those close to me. My own long standing love of mythology was never simply rooted in the magical and spiritual qualities evoked. The threads of vengeance, conquest and power that pervade many of these stories were equally attractive.
The shadow I carry within is not merely unfulfilled potential and unexpressed pain that needs transforming and healing. It includes a grinning demon who delights in others' misfortune, a messianic angel of light with a ruthless and self righteous demand for purity, a slavering wolf with a hunger for blood and flesh, and a grim faced man who derives sadistic satisfaction in the brutal destruction of everything warm and human. And yes, some, though by no means all, of this grim faced man in particular I see in the figure of Iron John. Projection it certainly is, but I believe that I have demonstrated that there are substantial 'hooks' to my projections in both Bly and the book.
Yet it is of no more value to be blinded by this darkness than it is to be blinded by the light of idealism. They need to be recognised as inextricably linked. The darkness and density of the shadow cast by Iron John is a direct consequence of the richness and light that pervades the book. There is much of value and beauty in Bly's writing and a deep love of men resonates throughout. I recognise a genuine wish to address the conflict between men and women honestly and a desire to heal the damage that men and women alike have experienced both as children and in relationship. His failures as demonstrated in my criticisms and others are not a cause for dismissing either Bly or Iron John. Rather by naming the shadow contained therein a deeper and broader understanding becomes possible. The book then becomes less important for the answers it offers but more so for the questions it raises. And for that Bly deserves respect and gratitude.
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
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