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Chapter 5 - Addictions: Life Behind the Wall (Part 1)
Much of the story of a man trying to separate from the mother object involves the story of a man fighting addictions. Addictions are like an emotional umbilicus, connecting a man to a mother object and tricking the boy inside into believing he needs a mother for existence itself. The trouble is the umbilicus is emotional and invisible and the dark Mother weaves her spell of unconsciousness to keep it that way.
George Santana once said that he didn't know who first discovered water, but he did know it wasn't a fish. We are an addictive society. It is hard for a man to recognize his addictions in the sea of addictiveness around him. Addictions keeps a man artificially connected to a ready source of numbness at the very time he needs to face initiatory pain. Addiction is like pain insurance and a policy comes very cheap in our society.
Most men do not realize the myriad ways they are addicted or what the addiction is doing to them. Like Ed in the last chapter, addicted men do not see the futility of their lives. Of course the more obvious substance addictions, such as alcohol and drug abuse, are recognized when they cause serious harm to a man's reputation or career. Alcohol or drug abuse can also become obvious when it leads to domestic violence involving a spouse, lover, or child. A man who has multiple D.U.I.'s sticks out as someone having a problem. However, when serious addictions pop out publicly they are often seen as aberrations, the sins of some "sick" men. The man addicted to work, sex, rage, money is seen more as macho than addicted. The models of manhood in our society are models of addicted men. The training manual teaches addiction. There is little social awareness that addicted men are still in their boy stage emotionally.
The occurrence of the emotionally regressed, addicted man as a cultural ideal is unsuspected. We don't recognize the disease much less the major symptom. Men are taught in our society to be boys and to revel addictively in that boyness. That we label manhood. When watching old movies, especially old detective flicks, notice how strange it seems today to see so many people lighting up at every opportunity. The ubiquitious haze gave an atmosphere of mystery. Nobody questioned the addiction or the secondary smoke dangers. Only today does the addiction seem obvious.
The Desperate Boy
Most often when a man comes into my office after suffering a sudden separation from a mother object he will report that he got drunk. It is considered manly and forgivable in our society to get drunk and out of control because of love gone wrong. Somehow it proves the depth of love instead of the depth of dependence.
This kind of addictive behavior seems to be the universal reaction to a modern man in deep pain. I can always spot an addicted man when his first goal when entering my office is to get rid of the pain. I don't blame a man for wanting to eradicate the searing pain as quickly as possible. He has not been taught how to handle it any other way.
Most men will struggle their whole lives against regression to a passive, painless place which is the world of the young boy and the dark mother. Think of a young child around 6 years old. For this is the boy inside that we need to deal with when understanding most addictions.
Any boy this young has little experience in changing the world about him to get his needs met. For example, if a parent chooses not to feed him at a time he is hungry, he has few choices. He can cry, throw a tantrum, make a nuisance of himself. He has no job, no access to money, no ability to barter, no leverage. He must ultimately wait until he gets the food he needs, usually from his mother. He depends on her to make him feel better again. He depends on her to take away the hunger pangs. He is powerless in substantial, survival ways.
When a man first experiences the threat of separation his first reaction will be anger, just like the little boy throwing a tantrum. If he becomes desperate, he will move from anger to rage. Then he is moving into the area of addiction. Unresolved anger is most often a man's gateway to addictions. Unresolved separation is most often the cause.
The painful feeling of powerlessness is the catalyst. A raging man is a man gripped by impotence. A man's threatened separation from a mother object is usually his first conscious experience of powerlessness, and the cause of his deepest pain. As Robert Johnson says, "Most dark moods in a man are his mother complex coming to the surface." The childs' feeling of powerlessness within a man's strong body then leads to a dangerous situation.
Men have two unhealthy ways to deal with their inevitable anger at feeling separated. A man can act out the rage, using addictive rage to try to bully a situation, stop a separation, and soothe himself with false bravado. Or he can medicate his rage with other addictions, hiding depressively behind his walls.
Rage
Anger is a natural emotion, even healthy. A man often needs anger to start setting healthy boundaries. Rage, on the other hand, is learned and unhealthy. Rage is unconscious, uncontrolled anger. Most often a man will learn rage from his father or the patriarchal society around him. He will learn that rage can control those around him and lessen the feeling of powerlesness. He will also learn another patriarchal secret. Rage is actually soothing to the boy inside. It actually takes away the pain.
Most people would judge a raging man as being in great pain. Extreme, negative emotion leads one to believe that something is terrribly wrong within the rager. Yes, there is something wrong, but the enraged man is not feeling it. He is actually, at that moment, medicating his pain.
Bessel Van Der Kolk, a trauma researcher, has shown that the body releases opioid substances, called endorphins, into the system when the "fight or flight"
response is triggered. Rage can trigger this response and release the narcotic-like chemicals that then wash the body. Van Der Kolk hypothesizes that people can get addicted to this cycle of rage and release just as if they found a drug to take. The narcotic release is soothing and numbing.
Most men in our society are taught to use rage for soothing and control. The soothing is physiological, the sense of control a way to handle feelings of impotence. Men then become addicted to the results. The uninitiated man will always see his rage as justified. He will feel righteous in being angry. The dark mother, the mother complex, will convince him he deserves to be angry, while keeping him unconscious of his own part in his problem. He will then have the addiction to treat his pain and the means to rationalize his control. And he will have no motivation to separate.
Rage is similar to the uncontrolled, mercenary samurai warrior who has no lord and no bushido. Anger is the healthy emotion of the good warrior, who uses anger to set boundaries and then experience the pain of initiation. Rage is the emotion of the dark, mercenary warrior who is afraid of initiation and would rather cause pain than experience it.
All men in our culture have been issued an emotional funnel by a patriarchy of dark warriors. This is the only tool issued to deal with painful, powerless, fearful feelings. This tool funnels all these uncomfortable feelings into rage, like the explosion of a bullet is funneled through the barrel of a gun. Since most men are permitted to let their anger move to rage, the country is full of dangerous men.
I have worked with many men who were rageaholics. This spectrum of anger addiction can go from the physically and emotionally abusive to the chronically irritable and depressed. Since this addiction is so widespread and common most men are surprised, sometimes shocked, to hear how loved ones describe their anger.
For example, I talked to one man, Harry, who was married for 25 years. He was mild-mannered in my office, if not depressed. His wife had just left him. In trying to help her husband she called me to describe the reasons she left. She described Harry as being often angry and irritable throughout their marriage. He would spoil most social situations for her, especially with family, because of his short, sarcastic tone. He would often be irritated with the behavior of his children or the lack of order in the house, creating a tense atmosphere in the home.
When I confronted Harry with this feedback he was totally surprised. He had no idea he had been angry most of his life or that it was driving his wife away. He didn't realize that he had been using his anger to medicate his pain and his depression. He didnÕt realize he was in the grips of his mother complex.
Tim
Other men know they are angry but don't know why or what to do about it. Tim, came to counseling because his wife threatened to leave him if he didn't seek professional help. His wife complained about Tim's anger with her and her children. Tim was an executive with a quiet manner and a likable personality. He didn't like his anger.
Tim and Rae came from different towns in a rural area. They met in high school and dated until graduation. After graduation they married. One of their attractions for each other was their shared ambition to rise above the area they lived in and become successes.
Rae supported Tim financially and emotionally as he went through college. Upon graduation they were able to move to a metropolitan area. Tim was proud of a new job in a large corporation. He had made the big time. Rae, who had never seen a dishwasher before, was very happy in a new apartment meeting new, interesting friends.
Rae was then able to go to college, herself, and become a nurse. Since Rae was very religious her new job not only provided financially, but it allowed her to give to others and to show her Christian caring. Tim described a good relationship with this wife, Rae, for the first six years. Each was enjoying their work, their new, cosmopolitan experiences, and each other.
At that point Rae wanted children. Tim was shocked. He was enjoying his life and his wife. He had everything he had ever wanted. He was living his adolescent dreams. He was the star player living the rest of his life with the prettiest cheerleader. Tim was not ready for the idea of fatherhood.
His own father had to give up his professional dreams because of a family death. His father had become stuck in the small town that Tim needed to leave. Tim's father was a depressed and frustrated man because he knew his unused potential. His father was also an angry man, when he didn't withdraw to his newspaper. Tim didn't know it at the time, but Rae's mention of children brought his father's painful life parallel with his own. Tim unconsciously imagined himself trapped by family responsibility into the pale, numbing, depressed life of his father. Tim started to feel the pain of his father wound. He started to feel both the powerlessness and the anger of his own father.
Tim also worried that a child would take Rae's attention away from their relationship. Rae had taken care of him through college. Rae had waited for him to come home from trips. Rae was there for him always. Rae was a mother object in a happy home, as opposed to the depressed mother in the home he grew up in. As happens to a lot of childhood deprived men, a child was a threat to Tim. A child would take away his mother object.
Rae was insistent on a child. Tim finally agreed. He was afraid to alienate Rae by refusing. When the child came the relationship did deteriorate. Rae was a good mother and found much emotional fulfillment there. Tim felt left out. He was no longer the center of Rae's life. He also felt himself resenting their child, Mary, and ignoring her. Rae became angry at Tim for "not being a good father." She did not realize how she had totally identified with the mother archetype, after the birth of their child, and had left little emotion for her husband. With this change in identification, she wanted a father for her children above everything else.
Her anger at his lack of paternal feeling became a major wedge between them. Tim became more and more depressed throughout the marriage, not understanding his feelings of abandonment. The boy inside became more and more angry at the abandonment. Tim started to use his anger to get Rae to agree with him. He threw tantrums to control her and get her attention. Somehow that made him feel closer to her. However, his anger only estranged Rae more.
He became angry at both Rae and Mary, and eventually a new son, without knowing why. He couldn't understand why his feelings funneled into anger. He did have feelings of love for all three. He knew he enjoyed some parts of family life. He was also doing very well in his career and was proud of it.
The couple spent most of the rest of their marriage living parallel lives, Rae as mother and Tim as father-provider. As the children grew older Rae spent more time doing good works with her church, as well as working and keeping a household. Tim continued to feel left out even as the children needed less of Rae's time. As Tim said during counseling, "I get angry at Rae because she gives attention to everything else but me."
Tim was desperately frustrated by a mother object. He was unaware of that need. He yearned for nurturing as his only hope for happiness. He could see no way out, no other way to happiness. He felt powerless to get the happiness he wanted.Tim used anger, as well as work, to numb himself. He also used anger to get Rae to do his bidding and respect his wishes. Then he would feel some connection to her. Tim used anger in a way he learned from his father. It did help to numb, at times. It did help to control, at times, and make him feel more powerful. It didn't help him to find any other way to connect to Rae.
He was stuck in his father's tragic way, behind a wall, behind the newspaper. Tim did not like being seen as angry. He did not want to be an angry man. He wanted a cure for his anger. He wanted some peace in his personal life and in his family life. I started to talk to him of mother objects, numbing, separation, boundaries, and the father wound. He was desparate. He started to listen.
Tim is an example of those men who are depressed and controlling. They mostly withdraw with occasional outbursts of rage and verbal abuse. They are on the less destructive side of rageful men, though their rage does sometimes spill over into violence. They are often open to the idea of counseling if it is portrayed properly. They are ashamed of their behavior and need the guidance to find other ways to funnel their anger. They need to find ways to separate from their mother needs and their father's scripts.
Pit Bulls
Other men use rage consistently to bully. They are on the most destructive side of the spectrum of rageful men. They learn rage as a way of keeping a mother object close and pliable. They rage or threaten rage as a means of control. These are abusive men who threaten physical violence when a loved one is not totally absorbed in them. They will systematically cut off their spouse from any meaningful relationship outside the connection to them. They must either feel physically close or be able to know their loved one is at home.
I have few stories about them because they rarely come to counseling voluntarily. They are usually ordered to counseling by the court system. John Gottman, a research psychologist, has studied a sample of spouse batterers for ten years. In the process he has monitored the physiological responses of these men as they got into controlled, nonviolent arguments with their spouses in their lab.
First of all he found that a sizable number of couples, identified as violent, were like Tim and Rae. The men were not consistently domineering and the women were not cowering under their domination. There were occasional outbursts that included pushing and shoving that didn't escalate into violence. These couples were considered good candidates for counseling.
However, the rest of the group were composed of men whom Gottman felt were dangerous. He felt they should not be involved in couples counseling. In measuring their physiological responses he found that 80% of these men exprienced the physiological arousal associated with anger: faster heart rate, increased perspiration, higher blood pressure. These were men accustomed to rage.
He labeled these men Pit Bulls because of their over attachment to their spouses. Gottman found that Pit Bulls "are strongly atached to their partners, albeit in overly dependent and controlling ways, and use violence to prevent abandonment." These men did feel shame about what they have done to their partners, after the fact. But even after separation, they could become violent again if attempts at reconciliation were thwarted. These men consistently used violence, or the threat of violence, to keep their spouse close and controlled. These desperate men could not face mother separation.
Pit bulls are little boys in men's bodies, who use their masculine muscle to keep from feeling like an orphan. These men use their rage to keep from feeling the pain of aloneness and neglect. Few people realize how desperately these men need to rage to keep from feeling the deep pain of the lost, powerless child. These men rage to numb on a consistent basis. They are terrified of separation. They are society's most destructive addicts. They are society's most dangerous men.
More Mothering?
Some psychologists would say that these men, as well as other rageaholics, need more mothering to heal their deep wounds. They would insist that these men are not ready for separation or donÕt need separation at all.
Yet, most of these men are already attached to women who are understanding and nurturing. Most abusive men will choose dependent, nurturing women as spouses. These spouses will put up with most anything to keep the relationship going. They will give till it hurts. They will keep going back to be hurt. They overmother like the dark mother. And their husbands stay emotional little boys, or High Chair Tyrants, as Moore and Gillette put it.
Gottman says it is dangerous to the woman to be in counseling with many serious rageaholics and batterers. Trying for understanding will be counterproductive. The only hope for these men is for someone to empower their wives to stop mothering. Empowerment will give a mother object the strength to stop being a mother object. The resulting separation will either force a man to deal with his emotional crisis, through fathering and eldering, or force him to retreat to another mother object. Either way, at least the empowered woman will be safe. And the man will be given his best shot at healing and maturity.
A man who separates psychologically from a mother object moves to the world of the father. Here, too, he will be tempted to rage as a way of dealing with his powerless feelings in the marketplace. However, his mother separation will provide a strong foundation for dealing with these feelings. Fathering and eldering will then lead him to the place of initiation, where he will learn initiatory humility as the answer to his questions about power.
The crisis of mother separation is the only way out for men stuck in their rage. For the man who does move to another mother object, his path is often a deeper retreat behind walls. This is often the retreat to a substance, a mother object that will never get empowered and leave.
Larry Pesavento and MENSIGHT ask you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.
Larry Pesavento ©2004
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