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March
Treating this Heavy Midlife of Men
“How heavy this life, the life of men. Is it
true they cannot raise one eyebrow without the
other? So weighted with their work, eagerly curving
their shoulders to the contours of the yoke. A
world dry to tears and bleached of color. One never
hears the wind chimes or the music of jewelry. In
the mornings they brush away their dreams like
flies. There is no carpet and no grass over the
rough brown boards of their existence. Perhaps,
never owning more than two pairs of shoes, the
richness of life has escaped them.”
When Anais Nin uttered this delicious send-up of
the constrictions of male experience in her book,
“The Four-Chambered Heart” (1950), she
presaged current discussions on male development.
It served me well when I was looking for an
introductory epigram to a discussion of male
identity at the threshold of adulthood (Newberger,
1999). I think it applies even better here.
Nin asserts that the life of men is heavy, and I
think she’s correct, starting with how we are
wired. Male readers of this article have all had
the unsettling experience of walking into a room
full of people, eyeing the other guys, and
wondering, “Can I take those guys?” or
“Am I going to be a victim?”
Where does this come from? All behavior, and the
ways we make meaning of experience, derive from
both nature and nurture. Beasts that we are, we
also have a capacity for conscious reflection, and
for making behavioral choices. In my view,
character is that it is all about choice,
especially in the face of moral challenge, when you
have to reconcile your own desires, needs, and
impulses against the needs and rights of
others.
But many generations of evolutionary adaptation
are woven into our bodies’ cells, and scripted
into how we respond to the hormones that course
through our veins. We males have a particular,
built-in need to locate ourselves in a dominance
hierarchy, or pecking order, in every relational
situation. I think therapists too often neglect
this biologically determined aspect of our nature.
In midlife, our genetic heritage affects the major
challenges men must face: sustaining life-giving
relationships; maintaining a sense of personal
potency; finding fulfillment within and outside the
workplace; and coming realistically to terms with
the limits of one’s capacities.
Deriving from my research on male development, I
believe that there are five essential elements in
earlier life experience that make for strong,
admirable male character. I will list them and give
some thoughts on how this foundation applies to the
treatment of men at midlife.
First, and most important, a male in childhood
needs at least one adult in his life who is crazy
about him, who through love and sustained
involvement will assure him of his worth, and who
will always respect him and give priority to his
needs and views, and who will advocate for him when
needed. This person (or even better, persons) need
not be a biological kinsman. A committed therapist
can play this role for the man for whom midlife is
an experience of work and sensory and relational
isolation.
Second, on this relational core, beginning in
earliest childhood, males need to learn words with
which to characterize, sense, and express a full
range of feelings. In my work on domestic violence,
I have been constantly struck by the extraordinary
absence of affective sensibility in abusive men,
most of whom would not recognize a feeling if they
ran into it on the sidewalk. Why should violent men
not sense emotion? Because it has been forbidden to
them, both by how they were brought up, and because
of the rage, anxiety, and, most of all, the
powerlessness associated with witnessing their
mothers being emotionally and physically assaulted.
In search of mastery and a sense of personal power,
they seek dominance in relationships and
invulnerability to having their nurturing needs cut
off.
Selma Fraiberg (1959) coined the concept of
“word magic.” Just as we can show babies
and toddlers picture books of kids expressing
emotions, we can help men “get in touch with
their feelings” by, quite literally, insisting
that they talk about them and attach words to them.
I also believe, from my own experiences as a
musician, that performing and listening to music,
and engaging in other aesthetic pursuits, can build
one’s sensory vocabulary, if not create a
harmonious balance in one’s heavy life
(Newberger, 1999).
Third, boys – and men – need to be
protected from exposures to violence. It’s a
mean, cruel world out there for many, if not most,
males. Longitudinal research suggests that
aggression as about is stable a developmental
quality as is intelligence, and it can start as
early as two years old (Cairns & Cairns, 1994).
These are the boys who, as you walk with them by a
movie marquee, have to be pulled away from the
violent posters. They become the men who, in
midlife, continue to see the world as a hostile
place, and who often misconstrue every social
relationship as carrying a portent of threat.
Fourth, children and adults can have their lives
transformed by the experience of giving back. Not a
few of us go into human service because of our
solicitude for our ill loved ones when we were
growing up. Robert Coles (1997) cites Dorothy Day,
the visionary Catholic advocate for the poor, who
spoke of the revelatory moment when college-aged
volunteers came to see that the helpless help the
helpers more than the helpers help them . For the
men who seek our care for life’s
dissatisfactions, I propose that here are great
opportunities to find meaning in life.
Fifth, and finally, males need to learn
self-control, and “inductive discipline”
(Grusek & Goodnow, 1994) is the best approach
to foster it. There’s a widespread misbelief
that it is manly to “do what you have to
do,” even if it hurts someone. Men may feel
regret afterwards if this happens, and may be moved
to apologies. But they may never come to see that
behavior actually involve choices. Nor may they
arrive at a point of internalizing a sense of
responsibility to others, arguably the most
important attribute of admirable character. The
task is continually to reflect on one’s
behavior toward others, and to make amends if one
offends. Too many therapists foster a sense of
entitlement, if not narcissism, in men, by focusing
only on their individual unfulfilled needs and
expectations.
Walter Lipman, in his 1929 book, “A Preface
to Morals,” noted: “In all the great
moral philosophies from Aristotle to Bernard Shaw,
it is taught that one of the conditions of
happiness is to renounce some of the satisfactions
which men normally crave.” Add to this the
positive notes suggested by Anais Nin, and I
believe you have a prescription for a fuller, if
not a lighter, life of men.
References
Cairns, R.B., & Cairns, B.D. (1994).
Lifelines and Risks: Pathways of Youth in our Time.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Coles, R. (1997). The Moral Intelligence of
Children. New York: Random House, 191-196.
Fraiberg, S.H.(1959) The Magic Years:
Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early
Childhood. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
Grusek, J.E. & Goodnow, J.J. (1994). Impact
of parental discipline methods on the child’s
internalization of values: A reconceptualization of
current points of view. Developmental Psychology
30, 4-19.
Lippman, W.(1929). A Preface to Morals. New
York: Macmillan, 156.
Newberger, E.H. (1999). The
Men They Will Become: The Nature and Nurture of
Male Character. Cambridge: Perseus
Publishing.
Newberger, E.H. (1999). Medicine of the Tuba, in
Doctors Afield. New Haven, Yale University Press,
67-74.
Nin, A. (1950). The Four-Chambered Heart, cited
in Goethals, G.W., & Klos, D.S.(1986)
Experiencing Youth: First-Person Accounts, 2nd ed.
Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 340.
©2010 Eli Newberger
Eli Newberger,
M.D., a leading figure in the movement to improve
the protection and care of children, is renowned
for his ability to bring together good sense and
science on the main issues of family life. A
pediatrician and author of many influential works
on child abuse, he teaches at Harvard Medical
School and founded the Child Protection Team and
the Family Development Program at Children’s
Hospital in Boston. From his research and practice
he has derived a philosophy that focuses on the
strength and resilience of parent-child
relationships, and a practice oriented to
compassion and understanding, rather than blame and
punishment. He is the author of The
Men They Will Become: The Nature and Nurture
of Male Charaacter
and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife
Carolyn, a developmental and clinical child
psychologist." www.elinewberger.com
or E-Mail.
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