The Fractured Male Psyche

With the Boston Marathon bomber we again see the propensity of the fractured male psyche for a hidden, secret life. Friends, family, coaches and those closest to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are completely mystified: no one detected signs that he was capable of such violence. By now we are used to the hidden life: priest pedophiles (but never nun molestors), Opus-Dei-FBI-spies, policemen-criminals, and so forth. My own uncle was in military intellence for most of his life but withheld this information from his closest family members even when he was dying. His spy life was entirely opaque, closed off to and untouched by his family life. All my uncles fought in WWII but they didn't speak about it: it was a different world. We now know that there are morphological, neurological bases for this in the male brain: fewer connecting neurons between brain areas so that the sectors are disconnected from each other, in contrast with the integrated, synthesized, and organically harmonious female brain. But more important than that is the unavoidable, inexorable gender abyss. Boys and girls are both conceived in, born from, nursed by, and raised by mother. The developing female never leaves this world. She imitates, echoes and images her mother and never fully separates. Not so with the boy. By the age of two, he is already spending most of his day in a world entirely incomprehensible and inaccessible to Mom: the terrain of super heros, Jedi knights, pirates, and other aggressive, malicious, combatative villains and heros. Mom has no clue about the nature of this world: she observes benignly, externally, absolutely denied participation and comprehension. Just recently I have been informed by two different, intelligent women that war is always about food: even viewing of The Godfather or Goodfellows is unlikely to illuminate them as their brain seems to be constituionally incapable of understanding the masculine nature of war. School is a continuation of mom's world (alma mater) and we see that girls do much better in that quintessentially feminine ambience. But by adolescence things really heat up for the boys. The dynamics of fist fights, bullying, gangs, competition, sarcasm, and aggression challenge and intimidate and the youngster is on his own: mom, teacher and school are useless on this battleground. Even worse: overwhelming sexual urges erupt from the testosterone volcanoe and with them bring urgent desire, fascination, shame and confusion and an entire drama that must be completely shielded from the eyes of mother. So the adolescent male finds himself alone with an under-devloped intellect and an insecured identity as he navigates three different worlds: the Good Boy" maternal environment of home and school; the battleground of conflict; and the maddening, intoxicating delerium of sexual desire. The last two easily collude to undermine the maternal influence. And so, the typical male is an unstable tri-part system with very weak, loose connections: the superego, the sexual beast, and the embattled combatant in a hostile world which must be fled or fought. Most of us are walking around on the verge of some kind of explosion or breakdown: the right combination of stresses, contradictions, frustrations and opportunities and we fall into violence, quiet despair, or sexual depravity. So how is the young man to confront these threatening worlds that are opaque to each other? How is he to integrate and channel his energies and longings? The key is: the Paternal Presence! I do not say "Father" here because I am referring to three distinct, but interconnected realities: the actual or surrogate Dad; the symbolic, cultural realm which I will designate as "Patriarchy" (to be mischevously anti-feminist); and our heavenly Father himself. Dad and God our Father have a clarity about themselves, but here we will deal with the "Patriarchy" understood in the very best sense. Like Dad and God, the cultural or spiritual patriarchy is a loving, transcendent, personal presence that descends, from a distant, awesome, superior realm, to the young boy to uplift, protect, challenge, discipline, encourage, correct, strengthen, and inspire. Patriarchy is the domain of law, discipline, tradition, authority, hierarchy, instruction, ordination, certification, testing, standards, risk, danger and empowerment. It is distinctively not that warm, nurturing, enclosing, affirming, comforting, inclusive, accepting and unconditionally loving maternal womb from which we emerge and to which we are so stronly drawn. It is the Father (Dad, cultural patrimony, God) who will coach, guide, train, and groom the young man...will elicit his loyalty and within that greater love synthesize all energies and desires...will prepare him for combat and model for him the splendor and tenderness of genuine sexual affection. It is heartbreaking to read that prior to the bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweated: "I miss my father." He needed his own father, he needed the guidance of a genuine paternal culture and religion, he needed to truly know his heavenly Father. But the void of fatherlessness, for the male, will not remain neutral: it will be filled with a surrogate...usually a deathly one.