Psychoanalysis: The forgotten grandparent of The ManKind Project
by Joe Jeral, MD
Psychoanalysis is the father of psychotherapy as we know it today. Every form of therapy, even an overtly non-therapeutic personal growth experience like MKP, owes its existence to Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In the nine years since my first MKP weekend in 2001, I’ve noticed that few people know about the forgotten psychoanalytic “grandparents” of MKP.
Actually, the emotional, psychological and spiritual work in MKP borrows significantly from Freud and his intellectual descendants. I’d like to introduce some of these grandparents and some of the ideas that we have borrowed.
Freud’s most important idea was that people have an unconscious. The unconscious is everything that happens in the mind of which we are not aware.
Freud divided the mind into three different functions. The source of our desires was the “Id.” The source of urges to contain our desires was the “Superego.” The third function, the “Ego,” mediates between the other two, so we can function in society.
We generally are not aware of the conflicts between these aspects of the mind. These conflicts arise in maladaptive behaviors, such as unbridled aggression, addiction, depression, or anxiety. Thus, every time a man engages in transformational growth work in MKP, which allows him to learn something new about his emotional world, he engages in a bit of psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis, in its most narrow definition, is an intensive form of psychotherapy in which the therapist (analyst) and the patient meet 3-5 times per week. The patient typically reclines on a couch and says whatever comes into his head. The therapist is positioned behind the head of the couch, outside of the patient’s visual field. The frequency and positioning are elements of the treatment that make it a regressive experience for the patient.
In psychoanalysis, the patient is likely to have emotional echoes of outside relationships intrude upon his experience of the therapy relationship — an intrusion that presents an opportunity for growth. Sometimes this relationship feels more nurturing than the relationships in which emotional wounds occurred. Consequently, the therapy relationship may become a healing experience for the patient. Sometimes the therapy relationship brings up negative emotional reactions, in which case therapy may help the patient understand past emotional experiences and to heal through insight into these.
To Freud, healing occurred when a person became aware of conflict that had previously been unconscious. The central feature of MKP growth work is that it gives the man an opportunity to become aware of something that had previously been unconscious. MKP’s mission overlaps significantly with the mission of psychoanalysis.MKP uses tools made possible by a century of psychoanalytic thinking and practice.
Let’s take a look at a few other analysts whose work enhanced Freud’s concepts and have contributed greatly to the work we do in MKP.
Carl Jung was a psychoanalyst and a disciple of Freud until their relationship ruptured over differences in theory and philosophy. One of Jung’s important concepts is the idea of the “shadow,” The shadow is Jung’s way of talking about an aspect of self that that Freud called the Id. During the MKP training, men are given an opportunity to touch their shadow — the part of themselves they hide, suppress or deny — as a step toward personal and spiritual growth.
Melanie Klein was a British analyst who founded a sub-school within the psychoanalytic tradition called “object relations.” From this point of view, people form their personalities as children by taking in emotional images of important others, especially parents.
Imagine a man named Tom who can’t control his rage at his wife. In his work during the New Warrior weekend, as his digs into his life story, he may discover that he’s re-enacting his father raging at his mother or at him.
From the Kleinian perspective, when Tom was a boy, his raging father was a “bad object.” Tom “internalized” this “object” and made it part of himself. Thirty years later, after he gets married. for unconscious reasons, Tom rages at his wife about things too insignificant to account for the intensity of his emotions. During his weekend, Tom gains insight about his inner workings, his wounds, the perpetuation of pain from the past. He has a healing emotional experience.
Wilfred Bion was a British analyst who was analyzed by Melanie Klein. Bion is best known for his writings on group dynamics, which influenced all subsequent group psychotherapy and personal growth groups like MKP.
Bion also wrote about the function of “containing,” which occurs in groups and individuals. A “container” is a place or situation in which previously unbearable emotions are experienced as bearable. In a safe container, a man can allow himself to experience his feelings and gain insight about the emotions and their triggers. We serve as our own containers when we talk ourselves down from panic, anxiety, and fear.
Finally, we come to Donald Winnicott, a British physician and psychoanalyst who also was analyzed by Melanie Klein. Winnicott is best known for his writing about the true and false selves. In MKP, we try to gain access to our true selves, the part of us that is most authentic and emotionally engaged.
Winnicott also wrote about the “holding” that a mother does of her infant. It’s an emotional and physical experience of safety for the child. An important part of the concept is that the mother — if she’s emotionally healthy — knows instinctively that she needs to let go of her emotional and physical “holding” as her child grows, so the child learns independence. Holding is perilous. If the mother doesn’t “hold” the child, he can get one type of wound, yet if she can’t relax her “hold” later, he can get another type of wound.
Winnicott’s idea of “holding” reminds us of the important maternal-feminine-nurturing aspect of what happens when MKP members “hold the space” for other men in training weekends and NKMP’s ongoing integration support groups, called “I-groups.” When the ground rules to create emotional safety are not clearly followed withing an I-group, for instance, I’ve seen men unable to proceed because the container did not feel safe enough for them to be vulnerable.
One way of taking responsibility for our work within MKP is to cultivate a deeper understanding of the ideas that were integrated into our organization’s culture, rituals and practices. Therefore, I’d like to thank the forgotten psychoanalytic grandfathers and grandmothers who devoted their lives and energies to healing people. They indirectly gave us the tools with which we do our most powerful growth work.
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Joseph Jeral is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, DC. H completed his training as a psychoanalyst at the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. |
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