Larry Pesavento is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, a therapist, an author and the Founder of CHRISTOS - A Center for Men located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"In 1993 Larry Pesavento started CHRISTOS men's center to help initiate a dialogue about how a man in this confusing, elderless world can find a sense of identity, place and pride. He had been counseling men for close to 25 years and learned from their struggles as well as his own. He then decided to write a book about the internal journey that a man must take in order to find a sense of peace and generativity. He felt called to write this book to share what he had learned as part of his own journey and struggle with manhood.

For more info about Larry Pesavento, visit his web-site, http://www
.christoscenter
.com/
E-mail: Larpes@aol.com

MENSIGHT will publish a chapter each month and we would like for you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.

Chapter 10 - Part 2
Persona

Adolescence is the time a boy starts to develop a social self. This is the side of the boy that interacts with the world outside the family. As he becomes a teen-ager he turns his attention more and more from his family to exploring other relationships. The young adolescent learns to act in a way that observes social norms and social expectations.

In Jungian terms, this social self is called a persona. A persona was the name of the mask that actors used in ancient Greek and Roman plays. A persona is a social mask that allows a man to interact in society in a civilized and effective way. It is that part of a man that he allows others to see. It is his 'image', his role, his outside manhood. For men, it is a necessity, especially in the marketplace.

All social people rely on a persona before a truer self is found. In a man's case, the persona allows him to move in an adult world before he is a mature man. Neo-adulthood is the time of the persona in our society. A young man can learn to negotiate in the adult world using his persona, usually borrowed from his first or second father, until he is strong enough to be independent in thought and action. The persona can provide outside shelter, while the adolescent is incubating and getting stronger inside.

In the best scenario, a persona gives a man a chance to grow through his novice adulthood, while performing some important social and political functions. For example, a man starts out using a father persona to be what he feels is a good father. He has usually borrowed this persona from his own father. Or a man uses his persona to fulfill his job functions even though he doesn't feel up to working that day. A man will bring his persona, his 'game face', to his work and work group. The persona is like a poker face in the game of life.

The persona allows an adolescent a way to fit into society beyond the family. Fitting in is an important adolescent function when it has to do with learning teamwork and group functioning. Fitting in teaches social obligations and responsibility to the larger community, the role of the adult.

In a sense, fitting in is the adolescent drive to find a second family. He is not yet ready to be alone. He is not yet ready to be a man. He is ready to start practicing the role of manhood. He is ready to start seriously wondering what kind of man he wants to be.

A healthy adolescent will start to experiment with his persona to find out which social self feels most effective in reaching his goals. He will try his father's persona one day, then a mentor's or hero's the next. Adolescents are always playing with their image, unconsciously looking for their individuality. Yet adolescents also need a new community, a new family, beyond the one they need to separate from. This dual need leads to strange behavior. Teen-agers run around looking bizarrely different in the same way.

Body piercing is an example of a creative way to individuate from the patriarchy. In fact, body piercing is probably an unconscious, archetypal urge for initiation, since piercing and scarification are still a part of many initiation rites. Yet, when every body pierced, it makes one wonder about individuality. Adolescents are mostly different together. This paradoxical situation mirrors the limbo that adolescents are in. The crossroads leads to individuality, but the teen is not quite ready for that.

The patriarchy does an excellent job in teaching the persona of manhood. This is a great service to a man who doesn't have an initiated father or second father to teach him. Every man does have the patriarchy to fall back on to teach these adolescent tasks. A healthy patriarchy would see the persona as a transitional tool to manhood, a tool for the crossroads. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

The Illusion of Manhood

The building of the persona is the work of the adolescent at the crossroads. Unfortunately, this is also the place most men get stuck on their journey to manhood. Our society sees the goal of manhood as identifying with the patriarchy. A patriarchal persona then becomes the mark of manhood, a man becoming on the outside what the patriarchy wants. A man's work is to develop the image. He goes by the rules to one day become a ruler. As one man said to me, "I've always lived by other people's standards." The persona is there to fit into someone else's standard of manhood.

A society composed of men with accomplished personae seems like a sophisticated society. Certainly it seems well-ordered when everyone goes by the same rules, or gets punished for disobeying the same rules. If the goal of the American man is material success, then many men have a successful persona. It is easy in our society to see the persona as a fitting goal of manhood. Men who have smooth personae seem to make it. They portray a convincing and attractive illusion of manhood.

The persona is the way a boy becomes a man from the outside in. In the dark patriarchy, it becomes the only way. The work of manhood in the patriarchy means working on the persona. The task becomes the mask. The mask then becomes the initiatory mark of manhood. The ordeal becomes irrelevant. One's whole energy for initiation is spent on the outside. What we have in this scenario is the illusion of manhood. Outside is the man. Inside is still the boy, neglected and lost and unseparated.

A senior executive in a large corporation came in for counseling. He was referred by the municipal court system. He was a man with a substantial income. He obviously played the corporate game very well. He was married, with grown children, and lived in a house with a very good address. He carried around with him a mature, successful persona. He was referred to me for shoplifting.

Due to the confidential nature of my counseling and his need to talk, he freely admitted that he had shoplifted his whole adult life. He heisted mostly small things. The most expensive item he ever took was a vase worth several thousand dollars. This particular time it was fishing tackle.

This was the first time he had ever been caught. His family did not know he was arrested, since the arrest was in a locality relatively far from his home. His company also knew nothing about it. He showed great relief that his persona was still safe. Yet he also showed relief that he could finally talk to someone who knew his mask for what it was. On closer examination, he also admitted that he would often go to the darker side of town to pick up prostitutes off the street. He had also done this most of his adult life, though he was married to an admittedly beautiful and faithful woman, who was a good mother to his children.

He came from a poor background. He had worked his way up the corporate ladder with a great deal of sweat and inspiration. He obviously possessed an abundance of good warrior energy and significant talent. Recently, he was passed up for a promotion to the highest levels of his company. Though he knew that everyone eventually lost on their way up, he had a hard time accepting this when it happened. He knew his ability placed him higher than he was assigned. He was not ready to live a corporate life with a series of lateral moves. He also lost a great amount of face in being passed over, his persona taking a big hit.

He came a number of times to fulfill his counseling requirements for court. I had hoped to convince him to continue counseling. He didn't, even though he liked coming and felt he could trust me. He had lived his whole life behind his mask. Everyone knew him by his mask. His mask was all he had.

His other life, though tawdry, was really the only way he lived from a more authentic place. His unguided adolescent would pop out, unbidden, to get some air time, and to rebel in the only way he knew how. To a man who ultimately admitted he hated the rules, his adolescent was bidding him to find a different life, with different rules. His adolescent was actually, in an extreme way, calling him to go to the wilderness, outside the patriarchal laws, outside the corporation. He was a good man on the outside. A confused and misguided adolescent on the inside.

He knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew his rebellion was hollow and self-defeating. But he was too afraid to move beyond the corpoarchy. He was too afraid to take his adolescent seriously and consider the wilderness. In his loneliness he was too afraid to be alone, finding refuge under the patriarchal umbrella of the corporation. He had lived behind his mask too long. Despite his recent setback, he continued to portray a fine illusion of manhood.

Enemy of Adolescence

The dark patriarchy tries to block a healthy adolescence. It encourages young men to leap to rites of pseudo-initiation, like marriage and a lucrative career. Most men I see have skipped much of a healthy adolescence, and totally ignored their adolescent inside. Thus they are stuck in the patriarchy, like a bunch of yes men clustered around a dark CEO.

In our patriarchal society, it is the unhealthy adolescent that is secretly rewarded and encouraged. The patriarchs know that the shadow adolescent holds the key to motivation. Sexually, men are almost expected to have sexual affairs or sexual escapades throughout their adult life. This is one reward the shadow adolescent understands. Nobody says so formally, but the dark training manual has a whole section on men's permission to have sex beyond marriage. Couch dancing and blow jobs are O.K. They are not even really acts of infidelity. The excuse is "boys will be boys". Jan Halpern, in interviewing over 4,000 executives, found that two-thirds of these men had from one to four affairs. She found that the majority of men interviewed did not believe that monogamy was a natural state.

Unrestrained sexuality seems to be one of the main rewards the dark patriarchy offers to keep men pliable and obedient. Sexual fulfillment replaces personal fulfillment. Sexual addictiveness replaces a healthy adolescent passion for life.

The other rewards for obedience are adolescent material rewards: fast cars, box seats at sporting events, memberships in country clubs, big-screen TV's, ski trips. This is the world of the Mountain Dew commercial. This is the fantasy of every male adolescent. This is the payoff to the adolescent inside for all the hard persona work, adolescent rewards for 'adult' work.

Adolescence gets deformed in our society because individuality is the enemy of a dark patriarchy. Instead of using the 20's and early 30's as a time of healthy questioning and adolescent experimentation, men are led to conform to the patriarchal rules. The patriarchy wants the adolescent at its service with no different, competing perspectives. Our society is fearful of healthy adolescence. One reason is because healthy adolescents are less pliable and obedient. They are the enemy of the negative father voice and the negative patriarchy. They question and confront social norms instead of blindly accepting them. They refuse to blindly follow the patriarchal voice. Their fresh perspective allows them to see the old, tired patterns that an adult world can get in to. They are often able to see and express that the emperor has no clothes.

Midlife Adolescent

There is a strong connection between modern midlife and unfinished adolescent issues. As a man's outside age moves past his mid-30's he is ending the age of the father. The adolescent issues of separation and individuation surface again forcefully. For a man to take up these issues effectively he has to realize the signs of the healthy adolescent.

First he must realize that his restlessness about following in someone else's footsteps is a natural sign of his own growth. The restlessness is the yearning of the adolescent to go on his own. He must realize that even the restlessness of the unbidden adolescent is really the unguided adolescent looking for initiation. The initiatory archetype is at work here. A man at this stage yearns for the unknown as a place of discovery, more than a place of danger. The yearning to create one's own footsteps, away from the crowd and the village, has the marks more of unrealized dreams than unrealistic fantasy.

Often men at this time fantasize about leaving their job and their home, sometimes even leaving their family, to start over in a small town where they are unknown and unexpected. They think about starting over like they did in their 20's, except now they're in their 40's. Sometimes men think wistfully of their college or high school years and the different decisions they could have made. All these thoughts signal the adolescent inside, who is still in his teens, wanting to finish his tasks and his dreams.

Unfinished dreams is the stuff of the unbidden adolescent. It is also the place where all healthy adolescents need to start. If a man reacts to separation fantasies without shame or hopelessness, he can start to contact his adolescent, just like he contacted the younger boy. He will realize that he doesn't have to leave home or family to start over, for the journey is really an inward one. He will start to take seriously his adolescent dreams and hopes. He will start to take seriously his adolescent within.

The adolescent within needs to be taken seriously. His restlessness about having to obey needs to be honored. His discomfort with living someone else's dreams must be recognized. His boredom with the traditional rewards of society must be accepted.

His needs to separate from the patriarchy must not be ignored. This is the time when a man often has a falling out with his mentor or other second father. To a man who doesn't understand, this is a tragedy. To a man who understands, he realizes this is inevitable. The adolescent must separate from the father. Sometimes the separation is as hard as the connection was good. As Daniel Levinson writes, "Most often, however, an intense mentor relationship ends with strong conflict and bad feeling." However, as he writes, "After the separation, the younger man may adopt many of the qualities of the mentor. His personality is enriched as he makes the mentor a more intrinsic part of himself." The adolescent needs to go on alone, yet, like Luke and Obi Wan, the mentor's voice still encourages.

Alf came to me because he was having chest pains that were found to have no medical basis. Though he was relieved to find that his chest pains were not serious medically, he decided to take them seriously anyway. He was starting to realize that the stress of his job may be worse than he thought. Though he was quite successful in his career he also realized that in the past year he no longer looked forward to going to work every day. He also felt that the orders he was being given, as financial officer in a small corporation, were not in line with his own ethical code.

Alf had been laid off two years before because of downsizing. At that time he had been rather desperate to get another job, because of the impact on his career and his dreams of financial success. Alf had gone to school with boys from very well-to-do families, even though his own family lived modestly. A good part of his motivation to be successful was to finally fit in with this crowd, who never quite accepted him in high school. When he was more candid, he admitted that he wanted to be more successful than most of them just to show them up.

Alf, the man, was a humble, ethical man and a good father. He didn't realize how much his competitive, unguided, stuck adolescent was running his life. He had taken his present job primarily because of the money and opportunity. The job looked fine on his resume. Because of his reservations, he didn't necessarily plan to stay more than a couple of years.

Alf's boss was a hustler who tended to see himself as a legend in his own mind. He seemed to feel fine about bending the truth because he knew he would pull things out in the end. Alf was not so sure of his boss's judgment, and he was sure he didn't believe in warping the truth as much as this man did. Alf was also questioning how much he enjoyed his work for its own sake. He started to question how much his job was just a vehicle for his career and status needs. He did enjoy a challenge. He enjoyed studying the big picture and devising financial plans that were creative and effective. He enjoyed creating teams of people from different backgrounds and managing them. He did not necessarily enjoy the day-to-day number crunching, Neither did he enjoy taking orders from someone whose judgment he suspected.

Alf was miserable. He was so miserable that he impulsively quit his job the next week, after arranging for a decent severance package. Alf figured his boss probably wanted him out of there anyway, because of Alf's 'problems' in supporting the boss's judgments. His boss was probably a competitive, narcissistic patriarch who needed yes men to prop his ego.

In counseling with Alf I encouraged him to stop from impulsively looking for another job. I tried to help him, as second father, by letting him borrow my judgment that he was not in a desperate situation and that his talents would be recognized in a number of career areas. I gave him the benefit of my experience in telling him there were other facts about his life that he was unaware of, and that he might need these in making future decisions. I told him that much of what he was going through was not abnormal psychologically, though it was not necessarily what the patriarchal society considered normal.

I first tried to get him in touch with the adolescent inside. I tried to show him how his adolescent was following a career track, only because he still felt less than his peers. We talked about how useless and meaningless this dark competition was. I encouraged him to look at his numerous accomplishments and start to appreciate the gifts and talents of that neglected adolescent.

I talked about his father. I showed him how his father was a good, ethical man who happened to be depressed. This man had no time to father Alf because he had struggled with his own career as an insurance salesman. Alf's father never fit into the corporate world, nor was he a success. He had a hard time helping Alf find his talents. He had little stamina to give Alf the strength he needed to make choices about corporate life.

I talked to Alf about fathers and second fathers, and how those in his life were unable to give Alf the self-esteem he needed. I suggested that he didn't have to attain material success in order to feel like a man. I then talked of the steps the adolescent within had to go through to feel like man on the inside. I encouraged Alf to go within to find his answers.

I started to elder Alf by challenging him to find the other dreams of his adolescent, the ones he never lived out. Healthy adolescent dreams, the dreams we all had at 16, are often the keys to our true direction. He would need these dreams as a starting point for his coming ordeal.

When I talked of the patriarchal separation and the need for ordeal, Alf understood. He recognized my emerging elder voice. He was starting to become ready for the confusion and chaos of the coming months. He promised he would not neglect his adolescent and abort his ordeal.

Besides individual counseling I talked to Alf about joining a men's group. I was doing some of the work of second fathering and eldering. However, Alf also needed brothers. Brothers would be crucial in his coming ordeal.

Finding Brothers

It sounds strange but men have intimacy needs for other men. This is not sexual intimacy, but a sense of closeness and trust. If men do not feel close to other men they will look to have all their intimacy needs met by women. This is not how we are hardwired. For men, it is not essential to have a bosom to have a buddy.

Stuart Miller talks of the difficulty of finding deep male friendships. When he mentioned writing a book on male friendship to colleagues he was astonished to hear their warnings that he should not write a book on homosexuality. They were worried for his career. Stuart is not gay and did not intend to write a book on homosexuality. The idea of deep male friendships was too foreign for his colleagues to understand in ways other than homosexuality.

Most men I meet in counseling will automatically think of a woman when they want to share their deepest feelings. One struggling man felt stuck because he felt most men "extremely boring". To him, his newfound women friends were quite interesting. This man was succumbing to regressive maternal forces, as do most men, by obsessing sexually and emotionally about one interesting 'friend'. This detour took energy away from his own internal journey and a marriage that could be saved. When he did start connecting with other men, in sharing his internal journey, he stopped obsessing.

Stuart Miller talks of the danger of even a good relationship with a wife or significant other. He says that "the problem then arises that, as rich as his relationship with his wife may be, he eventually suffers from claustrophobia, from a sense of being suffocated in the arms of the Great Mother, an archetype he gradually projects on his spouse as his relationships with men become less vital."

Men's groups, formal or informal, are vital to men's development. They are the analogue of ancestral tribal bonds. In men's groups the bonding of members is a crucial step for the healthy adolescent within. It is the key to healing the adolescent as well as preparing for healthy maturity. Men seem to quickly develop a different sense of themselves in a conscious men's group. The archetypal need to bond gets stimulated early. The adolescent immediately seems to feel a lift and a desire to go the next steps, and face the initiatory pain. Young men have always started the the initiation with their brothers. Brothers lend courage for those first steps into the wilderness. Brothers understand those first steps.

In my experience men feel a support that uplifts their sense of a male, valuable self. Brothers give different feedback than fathers and mothers. They tell us of different parts of ourselves. Brothers have less of a stake in our life direction. They don't succumb to the manipulative temptation of the mother's dreams or the father's ego. They are as open as we are to questioning the patriarchal rules or the matriarchal pleasures. They yearn as we do for satisfaction and the inside sense of manhood. They provide a safe place for us to experiment with other ways of relating and being.

In the adolescent subculture, no longer is the adolescent just taking from parental figures. Now he is asked to give also. At first it is very hard for the adolescent to realize that others have legitimate but sometimes contradictory needs. He will make a lot of mistakes in this learning process. Brothers help us learn the give and take of the next steps. We can make mistakes with brothers and not feel judged or guilty. These mistakes can teach an adolescent the beginning of relationships of equality and mutuality.

Brothers can provide a second family to help us leave the first. We are not hardwired to go the whole initiatory journey alone. Most of the journey is with men as fathers, brothers and elders. Only the last part is alone. We need the strength of other men to face that ordeal of aloneness. Bonding with a brother helps men finish the mini-initiations of separating from mother and father.

Once a man is able to grow past early adolescent issues he is ready for late adolescence and the time of initiation. He will have the yearnings of midlife, yearnings for a greater sense of self and more meaningful direction. The regressive adolescent fantasies of sex and success will feel less and less satisfying and attractive. His need to fit in to the adult world will seem more and more irrelevant. He will become more uncomfortable with the empty values of pseudo-adult responsibility and rewards. His fear of other men will dissipate. He will realize the satisfaction of good friendships and his ability to give of his emerging self. He will start to learn the blessing of having brothers.

It is interesting that the Chinese pictograph for the word crisis in composed of two symbols. One symbol means danger, the other opportunity. A modern man needs to take advantage of midlife crisis by turning it into an opportunity. Often at the inspiration of a second father and brothers, he can double back to finish issues that are important to him. He can then have the ability to turn the ongoing crisis into an ordeal, an ordeal that will change the rest of his life.

Han Solo

In the Star Wars myth Han Solo is the prototype of the unguided adolescent. He is in it for the money, partly because he is in deep debt to the loan shark, Jabba. The assumption is that he gambled, somehow, and lost Jabba's money. He is single and answers to nobody but himself. He is unmoved by the larger struggle of good and evil in the galaxy. He is obsessed with the marketplace.

Han is in the presence of a mentor, Obi Wan, yet sees no strength in him, nor use for the 'old religion' of the Force. His initiatory urge only comes out in his need to take reckless chances in smuggling or evading bounty hunters. His big adolescent toy is the Millennium Falcon. He is proud of it and what it can do, just like any adolescent is proud of his 'wheels'. He boasts about it constantly, as if it makes him manly.

Han continually displays the persona of a man, including calling Luke 'boy' throughout their first encounters. His reaction to stress and danger is always the dark warrior's reaction, anger and focused violence. He doesn't learn from Obi Wan that there are other ways of the mature warrior. He is immediately attracted to Princess Leia, but acts with bravado toward her. He hides behind his male persona and ends up acting more adolescent. As a maturing young woman, she is unimpressed.

Finally, the only thing that keeps him in the story, and close to the initiatory process, is his sense of brotherhood with Luke. He has his money. Lea is ignoring him. He won't go on the suicide mission of destroying the Death Star, a true initiatory experience. Yet he returns to save Luke from Darth Vader's destruction. Han somehow does not fall prey to a dark competitiveness with Luke. He must sense from deep inside that brotherhood has some answers for him. Maybe he is tired of the loneliness behind the persona. He saves Luke from the destructiveness of the dark father, as good brothers do. In doing so, he finds a new family. Luckily, the second father is Obi Wan Kenobe. Luckily, that brother is Luke Skywalker. This bonding to a brother, who has a second father's values, becomes a key to a whole new life.

Larry Pesavento ©2005