Robert Bly - Thought and The Men's Movement

Thought and The Men's Movement

Much of Bly's writing focuses on what he perceived as the deeply troubled situation in which most men find themselves in western societies today. This he understood to be a result of, among other things, the decline of the father's role in the modern family. He claimed that whereas women are helped by their own bodies along the stages of maturity, men are an "experimental species" and have to be taught what it is to be a man. Older cultures had elaborate myths activated by rites of passage, which helped men along this path, and "men's societie", where older men would teach young boys on these gender-specific issues. He argues that such learning is as important to humans as instincts are to animals, but no longer worked for young men as fathers became increasingly absent from the house during and after the industrial revolution. According to Bly, many of the phenomena of depression, juvenile delinquency and lack of leadership in business and politics have their roots in these problems.

Bly therefore sees today's men as half adults, trapped somewhere between childhood and maturity, a state in which they find it hard to become responsible leaders, carers and fathers, which in turn leads to the passing down of that immaturity through the generations. In his book The Sibling Society (1997), Bly argues that a society formed mainly by half adults is extremely problematic as it lacks in leadership, daring initiative, creativity and a deep care about others. The image of weak men, he argues, is further enhanced by popular media and Hollywood films which often present fathers as overweight and emotionally co-dependent. Women, according to Bly, rushed to fill the gap during the 1960s, infusing men with an enhanced emotional sensitivity which in itself was good to the extent that it helped men to better understand women and start feeling their age old pain of repression, but also led to the creation of "soft males" which lacked the outwardly directed strength to revitalize the community with assertiveness and a certain warrior strength.

In Bly's view, one solution lies in the rediscovery of the meanings hidden in traditional mythology, which should be passed down to us but are in danger of being forgotten. He researched and collected myths that concern male maturity, and published them in various books, Iron John being the most notable example; many (including "Iron John") were from Grimms' Fairy Tales. Descent is a theme in many of these myths, variously presented as the hero going underground to pass a period of solitude in a bestial mode. He often used κατάβασης, the Greek term for descent, to describe the maturing process for men, in contrast with the continual pursuit of achievement that today's culture teaches.

Bly was also influenced by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who developed the theory archetypes, the discrete psychic structures, perceived as images, that exist within the human Psyche. The Powerful King, the Evil Witch and the Beautiful Maiden are, according to Jung, images imprinted in the collective unconscious that Robert Bly wrote extensively about. As an example, he considered the Witch to be that part of the male psyche upon which all the negative and destructive side of women is imprinted, first developed to store his own mother's imperfections. As a consequence, the Witch's symbols are essentially inverted motherly symbols, where cooking becomes brewing evil potions, weaving takes the form of spider's web and feeding is reversed, with the child now in danger of being eaten rather than fed. In that respect, the Witch is a mark of arrested development on the part of the man and has yet to be incorporated in the man's psyche to form a coherent and healthy whole. Many fairy tales describe the psychic battle of incorporation in physical terms, with the hero saving his future bride by killing a witch, as in "The Drummer" (Grimms tale 193). These concepts are expounded in Bly's 1989 talk "The Human Shadow" and the book it presented.