David Tacey is an Australian academic and has written this book out of his experience of the anti-sexist men's movement on the one hand, and the mythopoetic men's movement on the other. He tries to find good in both, but criticises the one for being too dry and anti-masculine and the other for being too hard and anti-feminine. I don't find his discussion of all this very convincing or adequate - there are many more tendencies today than just the two he features.
But the best part of this book and the heart of it is the second part, which is all about his own odyssey towards a renewed and initiated masculinity. This is couched in Jungian terms and it becomes clear that he is a Jungian of the Hillman tendency. In fact his whole initiation into a regenerated masculinity was conducted through an analysis with James Hillman himself. This arose in a strange way : after completing his PhD, Tacey was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to study analysis with Hillman. Hillman, true to his puer nature, 'got quickly bored with our intellectual discussions. He was hungry for soul, not intellect, and he complained that our discussions - any discussion - were too abstract and lacked soul... He suggested that we change our academic tutorials into analytical sessions' (p83).
This resulted in an analysis which went on twice a week for two years. During it Tacey dealt with his mother complex, his father complex, his own homoerotic nature, various archetypes and his masculinity. This was a true initiation for him and it is all the more curious that he says at one point that psychotherapy cannot be the answer to initiation for men because not everyone can afford it. He could not afford it himself but he found a way of getting it all the same.
Like so many of us who have found Hillman fascinating, he finds it hard to understand the way in which he has linked up with Robert Bly. Hillman in the 70s and early 80s is brilliant and illuminating, whereas Hillman in the 90s seems to have lost his touch. Tacey says : "Hillman has also suffered personal and professional disappointments, which seem to have had the effect of generating a wave of protective conservatism". (p193).
I think this book would appeal most to Jungians, because at least half of it is couched in Jungian jargon, with much talk about the puer and the senex, about the anima and the animus, the archetypes and the complexes. But as an account of one man's journey and his conviction at the end that the culture has to change away from its patriarchal commitments, it is well worth reading.
John Rowan
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
