Focus Is on Fathers, Initiation

Most guys are more comfortable catching a game at Yogi’s or a wave off Carlsbad than discussing anything deeper than the Padres’ odds for a pennant or what weight of oil to pour into the crankcase.

“Certainly there are men who don’t have time for the men’s movement, or have some fear about opening up,” said Del Mar psychotherapist Jan Berlin.

But what’s to be expected by the progressive 1990s male who conquers his fear and decides it’s time to open up and join a men’s group?

One major theme of the movement is “father hunger.” As articulated by Robert Bly and other writers, this is the idea that men’s fathers abandoned them emotionally, and that many men have grown up without meaningful role models. Socialized as boys to keep their feelings to themselves, men grow up in an arrested state of development, unable to establish personal bonds of any real intimacy with their wives, children, friends and co-workers.

Another tenet of the movement is that a lack of initiation ceremonies leaves men with no training for how to proceed to the next phase of their lives. As a result, young males without positive role models are apt to reach for guns, drugs or other unhealthy ways of demonstrating some false ideal of manhood.

As author Ken Byers puts it: “The major rite of passage in our society today is the right to drink alcohol at age 21, and if that’s the depth of our culture, we are in serious trouble.”

Organizers of men’s support groups are hopeful that men can start to change the way they live--and become less likely to hurt other people, themselves and the earth--simply by talking honestly about their feelings. To men already involved, the benefits of taking part in a support group seem obvious. But it may take some time before others are convinced.

“The men’s group has become a satirized icon, it seems threatening and strange,” Berlin said. “But we always see opposition to a shifting of fundamental roles in society.”