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How the New Jobless Era is Driving the
Irritable Male Syndrome and Destroying Families: 5
Things You Must Do Now to Save Yourself and Those
You Love
We are told that we are finally moving toward
economic recovery, that a “Great
Depression” has been avoided. Yet,
unemployment remains a fact of life and job
security is a thing of the past. According to Don
Peck, writing in March issue of The Atlantic,
“The Great Recession may be over, but this era
of high joblessness is probably just beginning.
Before it ends, it will likely change the life
course and character of a generation of young
adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many
blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an
institution in many communities. It may already be
plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen
for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our
politics, our culture, and the character of our
society for years to come.”
I had read the statistics on job loss, but I had
no idea how devastating it could actually be until
I lost my job. It was a part-time job and one I
had grown tired of having. I joked that it would
be great if I were fired so that I could get out
and move on. But when I was told on a Thursday
afternoon, a day I still remember vividly 5 years
later, that they no longer needed me, I
couldn’t believe it. I did everything I could
to change their mind, including hiring a lawyer to
fight the termination.
Once I was gone, I fell into an agitated
depression. I was angry one minute, depressed the
next. I didn’t want to eat and when I did I
stuffed myself with food. My wife, Carlin, tried
to be understanding, but she grew tired of my moody
silences and angry outbursts and gradually
withdrew. I finally overcame my resistance to
seeing a therapist and went back to a woman I had
seen years before.
Even though I was a therapist and told clients
that there was no stigma in reaching out for help
when needed, I didn’t fully believe it myself.
Deep down I still had the old beliefs about being
a man: A man is not a man if he doesn’t have
a job. A man always, always, finds a way to
support his family--no matter what. Even after
seeing a therapist, which was a life-saving
decision, there were days that I was suicidal. I
became obsessed at the injustice of losing my job
and could understand those men who went
“postal” and shot up their job site
before killing themselves.
I gradually developed my private therapy
practice to fill in the hours I had lost.
Fortunately I was highly skilled, with years of
experience, and I could heal the wounds from my job
loss. But I wondered how others, less fortunate
would deal with this kind of crisis. As a
therapist specializing in men’s health issues
I’ve had ample opportunity to learn as our
broken economy continues to disgorge its
victims.
Unemployment is a Reality for
Millions
The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October,
2009 and there are good reasons to believe that by
2011, 2012, even 2014, it will have declined only a
little. But as Peck points out in his article,
“All of these figures understate the magnitude
of the jobs crisis. The broadest measure of
unemployment and underemployment (which includes
people who want to work but have stopped actively
searching for a job, along with those who want
full-time jobs but can find only part-time work)
reached 17.4 percent in October, which appears to
be the highest figure since the 1930s.”
There’s lots of talk about recovery and
“green jobs,” but that could be more
wishful thinking than reality. The New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman, who fears a lost decade,
said in a lecture at the London School of Economics
last summer that he has “no idea” how the
economy could quickly return to strong, sustainable
growth. Mark Zandi, the chief economist at
Moody’s Economy.com, told the Associated Press
last fall, “I think the unemployment rate will
be permanently higher, or at least higher for the
foreseeable future. The collective psyche has
changed as a result of what we’ve been
through. And we’re going to be different as a
result.”
Although the economic collapse hits everyone, it
is often the men who are impacted the most directly
and the women who become collateral damage as the
men “act out” their frustration and rage.
One recent survey showed that 44 percent of
families had experienced a job loss, a reduction in
hours, or a pay cut in the past year.
“There is unemployment, a brief and
relatively routine transitional state that results
from the rise and fall of companies in any economy,
and there is unemployment—chronic,
all-consuming,” says Peck. “The former
is a necessary lubricant in any engine of economic
growth. The latter is a pestilence that slowly eats
away at people, families, and, if it spreads widely
enough, the fabric of society. Indeed, history
suggests that it is perhaps society’s most
noxious ill.”
The worst effects of pervasive joblessness can
take years, even decades, to incubate. They can
erode our confidence, shake our stability, and
cause millions of men to become chronically
irritable, angry, and depressed. If it persists
much longer, this era of high joblessness will
likely change the life course and character of us
all. “It will leave an indelible imprint on
many blue-collar white men—and on white
culture,” suggests Peck. “It could
change the nature of modern marriage, and also
cripple marriage as an institution in many
communities. It may already be plunging many inner
cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not
seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp
our politics, our culture, and the character of our
society for years.”
Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS): The Dis-ease
of Our Times
In my 2004 book, The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and
Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and
Aggression, I offered the following definition
of IMS: "A state of hypersensitivity, anxiety,
frustration, and anger that occurs in males and is
associated with biochemical changes, hormonal
imbalances, stress, and loss of male identity."
For most men, our identity is inexorably tied in
with our jobs. Without a job we have increasing
difficulty feeling like real men. If we don’t
feel real as a man, we live in a state of chronic
tension and dis-ease. In her excellent book,
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, social
scientist Susan Faludi described the impact of job
loss on men.
One of the men Faludi interviewed for the book,
Don Motta, could be speaking for millions of men in
this country today who have been laid off,
downsized, or part of a company that has gone
under. “There is no way you can feel like a
man. You can’t,” says Motta.
“It’s the fact that I’m not capable
of supporting my family…When you’ve been
very successful buying a house, a car, and could
pay for your daughter to go to college, though she
didn’t want to, you have a sense of success
and people see it. I haven’t been able to
support my daughter. I haven’t been able to
support my wife.
“I’ll be very frank with you,” he
said slowly, placing every word down as if each
were an increasingly heavy weight.
“I…feel…I’ve…been…castrated.”
Motta is clear about the connection between
manhood, work, and sexuality. “A man who
can’t work and support his family is a man
without balls—not really a man at
all.”
The Jobless Era May Last for
Generations
One of the tenets of our modern industrial
society has been that the economy is cyclic. There
may be a few down years, but they will always be
followed by an upswing. People may lose their
jobs, but there will always be newer, better, more
interesting jobs we can be trained to occupy.
Although the growth of the economy may go through
stagnant periods, it will always rebound. But what
if the rules have changed? What if we are living
in a period where the trend is downwards not
upwards? What if employment as we know it were a
thing of the past?
I believe that Richard Heinberg is one of the
most consistently perceptive and optimistic social
scientists in the world. I’ve followed his
work for the last 25 years and he knows his stuff.
In a March 3, 2010 article, Life
After Growth: What If the Economy Doesn’t
Recover (15 pages), he makes the
following observations:
“In late 2009 and early 2010, the
economy showed some signs of renewed vigor.
Understandably, everyone wants it to get "back
to normal." But here's a disturbing thought:
What if that is not possible? What if the
goalposts have been moved, the rules rewritten,
the game changed? What if the decades-long era
of economic growth based on ever-increasing
rates of resource extraction, manufacturing, and
consumption is over, finished, and done? What if
the economic conditions that all of us grew up
expecting to continue practically forever were
merely a blip on history's timeline?
“It's an uncomfortable idea, but one
that cannot be ignored: The "normal" late-20th
century economy of seemingly endless growth
actually emerged from an aberrant set of
conditions that cannot be perpetuated.
“That ‘normal’ is gone. One
way or another, a ‘new normal’ will
emerge to replace it. Can we build a different,
more sustainable economy to replace the one now
in tatters?
“Let's be clear: I believe we are in for
some very hard times. The transitional period on
our way toward a post-growth, equilibrium
economy will prove to be the most challenging
time any of us has ever lived through.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that we can survive
this collective journey, and that if we make
sound choices as families and communities, life
can actually be better for us in the decades
ahead than it was during the heady days of
seemingly endless economic expansion.”
Will Men Survive the Transition?
I’ve been a psychotherapist focused on
men’s health since 1965. One of my
colleagues, Dr. Herb Goldberg, author of the 1976
best-seller, The
Hazards of Being Male said,
“The American man, an endangered
species? Absolutely! The male has paid a heavy
price for his masculine ‘privilege’
and power. He is out of touch with his emotions
and his body. He is playing by the rules of the
male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he
is destroying himself—emotionally,
psychologically, and physically.”
When I first starting talking about male
vulnerability, most people didn’t take me
seriously. In 1965 or even 1976, the idea of men
as an endangered species seemed a long way from our
consciousness. But times have changed and our
awareness has been awakened. Recently, the
prestigious British Journal of Medicine
published an editorial written by Siegfried Meryn,
M.D. titled “The future of men and their
health: Are men in danger of extinction?”
“Although there is still a long
way to go in most societies around the world, it
is clear that women can perform (and on most
occasions outperform) pretty much all the tasks
traditionally reserved for men,” says Dr.
Meryn in his editorial. “In most of the
developed world women are starting to outnumber
men in medical schools and making rapid gains in
terms of equality in compensation and
opportunities in the workforce. With the
advent of sperm banks, in vitro fertilization,
sex sorting techniques, sperm independent
fertilization of eggs with somatic cells, human
cloning, and same sex marriages, it is also
reasonable to wonder about the future role of
men in society.”
Men and the Family in a Jobless Age
In The
Unemployed Man and His Family, Mirra
Komarovsky vividly describes how joblessness
strained—and in many cases fundamentally
altered—family relationships in the 1930s.
During 1935 and 1936, Komarovsky and her research
team interviewed the members of 59 white
middle-class families in which the husband and
father had been out of work for at least a year.
Her research revealed deep psychological wounds.
“It is awful to be old and discarded at
40,” said one father. “A man is not a man
without work.” Another said plainly,
“During the depression I lost something. Maybe
you call it self-respect, but in losing it I also
lost the respect of my children, and I am afraid I
am losing my wife.” Noted one woman of her
husband, “I still love him, but he
doesn’t seem as ‘big’ a man.”
Children described their father as
“mean,” “nasty,” or
“bossy,” and didn’t want to bring
friends around, for fear of what he might say.
“There was less physical violence towards the
wife than towards the child,” Komarovsky
wrote. In my own work with men and their families,
I’ve found that men become increasingly
irritable, angry, and withdrawn. Some turn to
alcohol or drugs. Other’s spend endless hours
on their computers. The impact of joblessness can
wreck families.
Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of
Warwick, in the U.K., and a pioneer in the field of
happiness studies, says no other circumstance
produces a larger decline in mental health and
well-being than being involuntarily out of work for
six months or more. It is the worst thing that can
happen, he says, equivalent to the death of a
spouse, and “a kind of bereavement” in
its own right. Only a small fraction of the decline
can be tied directly to losing a paycheck, Oswald
says; most of it appears to be the result of a
tarnished identity and a loss of self-worth.
Unemployment leaves psychological scars that remain
even after work is found again, and, because the
happiness of husbands and the happiness of wives
are usually closely related, the misery spreads
throughout the home.
I’ve found that middle-aged men are often
the most hard it. They have long been accustomed
to the routine and support of the office or
factory. When they lose their jobs, they not only
lose their support systems, but they lose faith in
themselves. This loss was perhaps captured best by
American playwright Eugene O’Neil in his play
Long Day's Journey into Night. The play was
autobiographical and although it was completed in
1940, it wasn’t produced until 1956, three
years after his death. The play itself captured
the desperation felt by many men caught in the
depression. The following lines from the play
speak to the internal devastation so many men faced
then and still face today:
“It was a great mistake my
being born a man. I would have been much more
successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I
will always be a stranger who never feels at
home, who does not really want and is not really
wanted, who can never belong, who must always be
a little in love with death.”
How Can Men Choose Life in a World Without
Work?
We may be going through the most difficult
transition that humans have ever experienced on
earth. These are strong words, I know. But the
truth is that we have been living out an addictive
fantasy for some time and we must change if we are
going to survive. We can not continue to have a
growing economy, one that takes more and more of
the earth’s resources and turns them into
garbage. We have to live more sustainably if we
are going to live at all.
Daniel Quinn, the visionary author of Ishmael
said, “The problem is that man's conquest of
the world has itself devastated the world. And in
spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't
have enough mastery to stop devastating the world,
or to repair the devastation we've already
wrought." He reminds us that if humans are going
to be around in 10, 20, or 100 years, we will need
to change our ways. It is often the ones who are
most devastated by the present who lead the way to
the future. Here are 5 things that men can do
now.
Accept that this is the end of an era.
Despite what many will tell us, the economy as we
know it is never going to recover. The sooner we
face that fact, the better. Here’s how
Heinberg puts it: “We have reached the end of
economic growth as we have known it.” The
"growth" we are talking about consists of the
expansion of the overall size of the economy (with
more people being served and more money changing
hands) and of the quantities of energy and material
goods flowing through it. The economic crisis that
began in 2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable,
and that it marks a permanent, fundamental break
from past decades—a period in which economists
adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual
economic growth is necessary and also possible to
achieve.
When I work with alcoholics and drug addicts in
recovery, the first step is to acknowledge
powerlessness. It’s paradoxical, but we gain
power the more we accept the things we cannot
change. One of those things is that the world of
employment we have known is over. When we accept
that fact, rather than fighting it, we can move
on.
Define “being a man” in new
ways. If we continue to define our manhood
based on our ability to work in the old economy, we
set ourselves up for failure. It would be like
holding on to the horse as a symbol of manly
transportation. “Real men ride horses.
Choosing any other way to get around means
you’re not a man.”
In the new era, manhood will be defined less on
what we do than by who we are. Are we kind,
compassionate, understanding, supportive?
We’ll have to learn to take on qualities that
have been traditionally more associated with women.
For some men, they’d rather die than do that.
Others will find it a relief to let go of the old
macho constraints and learn to live in new
ways.
Learn that feelings are manly. Most of us
have grown up believing that real men stuff their
feelings. We were told that real men don’t
cry. Real men don’t complain. Real men
aren’t afraid. The only feelings we grew up
being allowed were anger and lust. We would spend
endless hours talking about who we were pissed at
and who we wanted to have sex with.
But men experience a whole symphony of feelings,
but have only learned to play two notes.
Here’s a list of a few feelings. Which ones
do you express openly and often? Which ones would
you like to learn to express more fully?
Understanding, playful, calm, afraid, worried,
hurt, courageous, delighted, overjoyed, festive,
affectionate, tender, guilty, considerate,
enthusiastic, ashamed, secure, optimistic, brave,
liberated, thrilled, gleeful, and ecstatic.
Help others. Find the path with a heart.
It’s easy to sit around a feel sorry for
ourselves. Yes, we were promised a better life and
yes, we feel entitled to more. But, let’s
face it, the party’s over. We’re not the
only ones who are hurting. Believe me, there are
many others out there who are suffering. No matter
what your situation, there is a lot you can do to
help.
We have longed based our identity on material
success. But the era of earning more money to buy
more “stuff” is over. We don’t have
to have stuff in order to be a success. Some of
the best people who have ever lived shared their
gifts with others and had little material wealth to
show for it.
Mahatma Gandhi died possessing only a pair of
sandals, a robe, a staff, a spinning wheel, his
spectacles, and a prayer book. Yet, he helped
millions.
Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper’s
grave. His music has touched the hearts of the
world.
Confucius was a failure as a bread-winner and
was dependent on his small band of disciples for
his sustenance. His philosophy has lasted
thousands of years.
Rembrandt ended his life in austerity, as did
Beethoven, Bach, and Van Gogh. Jesus died leaving
only a robe for which the Roman soldiers cast
lots.
This is a great time to be alive. The economy
may be going under, but there’s still a lot
that needs to be done. Find someone you can help.
Find something you can do. Opportunities surround
us. “Wherever a man turns he can find someone
who needs him,” said Albert Schweitzer.
Join a men’s group. Throughout human
history men have congregated in support groups. It
was recognized and understood that men needed time
to be with other men, just as women needed to be
with women. Women still spend time with their
sisters, but men have lost connection with
brotherly love.
I have been in a men’s group that has been
meeting regularly since 1979. We came together as
a way to support each other through the changes we
were experiencing in life. We’ve stayed
together because we’ve come to love each other
and depend upon each other for mutual support.
We just returned from a four day extended
weekend at a ranch in Arizona. As usual, we ate
well, went on long walks together, caught up on our
lives, and just shared the pleasure of being men
and being alive. Here’s something I wrote to
the 6 other guys in the group at a time I was
facing a life-threatening operation and wasn’t
sure about my future: “I’m thinking of
you all with love and affection, a sly smile, and a
deep sense of gratitude for all you have meant to
me. You are my brothers, my friends, my teachers,
my playmates. I honor you and us and our group. I
love you.”
Ultimately it all gets back to love. As author
Sam Keen says: “The radical vision of the
future rests on the belief that the logic that
determines either our survival or our destruction
is simple:
1. The new human vocation is to heal the
earth.
2. We can only heal what we love.
3. We can only love what we know.
4. We can only know what we touch.
If this article has touched you, I look forward
to hearing from you. I can be reached through my
website at www.MenAlive.com
©2010 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
+ Suicide
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of eight
books including Male
Menopause, now
translated into 17 foreign languages. Other books
include Looking
for Love in All the Wrong
Place,
The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression and his
latest book Mr.
Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the Irritable
Male Syndrome. For over
45 years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Men’s Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Men’s Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. To receive a Free E-book on Men’s
Health and a free subscription to Jed’s
e-newsletter go to www.menalive.com
 .
If you are looking for an expert counselor to help
with relationship issues, contact Jed at
E-Mail.
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