Routledge, 2019
“I’m broken.”
When a boy or man says this, he is expressing deep alienation from himself and the world. Something’s wrong, and he usually cannot begin to explain why. What brings boys and men into psychotherapy or analysis?
Many of them struggle with access to their inner worlds. Experiences of alienation can lead to destructive and self-destructive behaviors, including addiction and violence. Male Alienation at the Crossroads of Identity, Culture and Cyberspace explores the reasons for this and considers why boys and men seek professional help. How do psychotherapists and analysts engage them when they often protest that they want to be left alone?
“Here at last is an invaluable resource for therapists, teachers, and professionals in pastoral care—one of the few contemporary contributions to the topic of treating young men in the troubling years of transition to adulthood.”
—Susanna Wright, Jungian analyst
“Dr. Tyminski’s questions to his patients are what I could do better with asking myself. Finding the words to answer those questions can be difficult to muster for many men, and that difficulty with expressing emotion is a key focus in Dr. Tyminski’s book.”
—Amazon customer
What happens when the inner world of boys and men is thoroughly disregarded and devalued and, subsequently, they choose to live externally oriented lives and seek out crime, mayhem, and destruction? Clearly, not all boys and men who struggle with their internal psychology do such things. Still, most murders, wars, acts of domestic violence, terrorism, and suicides are done by boys and men. The Economist, in an article titled “Men Adrift,” notes that 93 percent of prisoners in the United States are male; 79 percent of murder victims worldwide are male; and 66 percent of suicides worldwide are male (The Economist, May 30, 2015, 21–6). What circumstances might lead some boys and men to identify with these malevolent tendencies, resulting in violent behaviors gratifying their destructive and self-destructive impulses?
The word apocalypse is frequently used to describe some of the effects of male violence, for instance, in mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and gang violence. The word comes to us from ancient Greek. Apocalypsis (αποκάλυψις) means something quite different in its original sense, namely, uncovering or unveiling. It referred to the revealing of knowledge. In the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, John describes the ultimate fight between good and evil, and it is this meaning of apocalypse that is now more commonly associated with an end-of-time scenario.
The etymology of apocalypse with its dual meanings captures an inner-outer dichotomy that can apply to the male psyche when trying to understand how outside becomes preferred to inside and what follows when this occurs. Apocalypse is an extreme state of alienation, with everything falling apart into destructive chaos. This alienation can be linked to a breakdown in revealing what is inside the psyche and in accepting self-knowledge. Turning away from the complexities of what goes on inside their minds, a particular group of psychologically vulnerable boys and men may live out a form of violence as a solution to their alienation. Of course, not all alienated boys and men will do this, but those who lack the presence of older men and fathers to identify with, those who have themselves been victimized by other men, those who are culturally dislocated, those who give in to various kinds of addiction, and those who fall behind economically, socially, and educationally—all may be at greater risk for behaving destructively and coming under the grip of apocalypse as an omnipotent expression of doom.