Forming and Living Out the Dream

During the novice phase of early adulthood a man is exploring the adult world, developing adult interests and values, making important choices with regard to work, marriage and family, and forming an adult identity. The process of exploration and choice is strongly shaped by the influences of family, class, subculture and social institutions. It is affected by his own active striving, competence and rational consideration of alternatives. It is both facilitated and hindered by various aspects of his personality: motives, values, talents, anxieties and life goals. In the course of our study, we have discovered another factor that plays a powerful and pervasive role in early adulthood. This factor, often portrayed in mythology and literature, is rarely considered in academic research. We call it “the Dream.” …

In everyday language, we say that someone “succeeded beyond his wildest dreams,” or that he “dreamed of a world he could never have.” These are neither night dreams nor casual daydreams. A “dream” of this kind is more formed than a pure fantasy, yet less articulated than a fully thought-out plan. It is the central issue in Martin Luther King’s historic “I have a dream” speech. It is the meaning Delmore Schwartz intended with the title of his story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.” Many young men have a Dream of the kind of life they want to lead as adults. The vicissitudes and fate of the Dream have fundamental consequences for adult development.

In its primordial form, the Dream is a vague sense of self-in-adult-world. It has the quality of a vision, an imagined possibility that generates excitement and vitality. At the start it is poorly articulated and only tenuously connected to reality, although it may contain concrete images such as winning the Nobel Prize or making the all-star team. It may take a dramatic form as in the myth of the hero: the great artist, business tycoon, athletic or intellectual superstar performing magnificent feats and receiving special honors. It may take mundane forms that are yet inspiring and sustaining: the excellent craftsman, the husband-father in a certain kind of family, the highly respected member of one’s community.

Whatever the nature of his Dream, a young man has the developmental task of giving it greater definition and finding ways to live it out. It a great difference in his growth whether his initial life structure is consonant with and infused by the Dream, or opposed to it. If the Dream remains unconnected to his life it may simply die, and with it his sense of aliveness and purpose.

Many young men develop a conflict between a life direction expressing the Dream and another that is quite different. A man may be pushed in the latter direction by his parents, by various external constraints, such as lack of money or opportunity, and by various aspects of his personality, such as guilt, passivity, competitiveness and special talents. He may thus succeed in an occupation that holds no interest for him. The conflict may extend over many years, evolving through various forms. Those who betray the Dream in their twenties will have to deal later with the consequences. Those who build a life structure around the Dream in early adulthood have a better chance for personal fulfillment, though years of struggle may be required to maintain the commitment and work toward its realization. During the Mid-life Transition they will have to reappraise the magical aspects of the Dream and modify its place in their middle adult lives.

Our conception of transitions in adult development, and especially of the Dream in early adulthood, have been strongly influenced by Donald W. Winnicott’s views regarding “transitional phenomena” in early childhood. In a transitional period, says Winnicott, the child imagines various possibilities of his self and world in the future. He enacts these imaginings in daydreams, play and other “make-believe” explorations. Does the child believe that he is truly the person he has created in his play? Winnicott’s answer: Yes and no; and the ambiguity is the nub of it. The child’s play occurs on the boundary between reality and illusion, between the clearly “me” and the “not-me,” between what “is” and what “might be.” The play world is a boundary region between the concretely objective external reality and the entirely subjective internal image or hope. In play the child can transform imaginings of what might be into illusions of what now is, in preparation for the hard work of making the illusions more real in the external world. He can create, experiment with, and slowly actualize a new self-in-world that is just starting to take shape.

A crucial aspect of mothering, according to Winnicott, is to provide a supportive context for the child’s play. Winnicott offers a conception of the “good enough” mother—not a tyrannizing ideal, yet adequate for the complex purposes of mothering. The “good enough” mother helps to generate a space between herself and the child where he can play creatively—can play, that is, without having to worry about the distinction between reality and illusion. We can thus speak of a boundary region between child and mother, in which he feels safe from external and internal dangers. In this space he can gradually define and test out a newly emerging self, and he can gain the mother’s blessing for what he is trying to become. The “good enough” mother allows the child his playful-serious productions without requiring him to identify them as either “me” or “not-me.” She does not question or disparage his playful illusions.

This relationship is produced and sustained by both mother and child. Through it, and the play that can occur within it, the child gains the “I am” feeling, the sense that “I exist in the world.” This feeling underlies his often difficult efforts to explore the world and make a place for himself there. It provides a source of hope, self-esteem and personal integrity. The transitional phenomena serve developmentally as forerunners of later, more realistic and adaptive efforts in the social world. Winnicott draws parallels between the “good enough” mother and the “good enough” therapist, who helps generate a space in which the patient can work-play creatively. He points to truly artistic and religious experiences as transitional (and transformational) phenomena of adult life.

Similarly, a Dream of adult life arises as a transitional phenomenon in the Early Adult Transition and Entering the Adult World. As a boy-man begins his entry into adulthood, he, imagines exciting possibilities for his adult life and struggles to attain the “I am” feeling in this dreamed-of self and world. His Dream of adulthood is initially as fragile as that of the small child. Though it has origins in childhood and adolescence, the Dream is a distinctively adult phenomenon: it takes shape in the Early Adult Transition and is gradually integrated within (or, in many cases, is excluded from) an adult life structure over the course of early adulthood. The novice phase is the crucial time for establishing the Dream in one’s life. As the novice adult tries to separate from his family and pre-adult world, and to enter an adult world, he must form significant relationships with other adults who will facilitate his work on the Dream. Two of the most important figures in this drama are the “mentor” and the “special woman.”

During the period of Becoming One’s Own Man, mentor relationships are likely to be especially stormy and vulnerable. The termination of a close tie with a mentor just now is often a mutually painful, tortuous process. A man in his late thirties is not only giving up his current mentor, he is outgrowing the readiness to be the protégé of any older person. He must reject the mentoring relationship not because it is intrinsically harmful but because it has served its purpose. It has helped him to make a basic developmental advance.

Whereas in pre-adulthood he was a boy-son in relation to a father, in early adulthood he has become a young-man-apprentice in relation to an admired mentor. The mentor in turn has regarded him as a full-fledged but young (junior) adult. In the late thirties a new task arises: a man must move toward becoming a senior adult and full peer of his former mentors, teachers and bosses. He himself must become a mentor, constructive authority, father, and friend of other adults. This developmental achievement is of the essence of adulthood. If a man is to assume responsibility for others and for himself during middle adulthood, he must attain his “seniority.” The formative steps in this process are taken during the time of Becoming One’s Own Man and the Mid-life Transition.

A man’s struggles with his mentor and his hardships in being a protégé are intensified during Becoming One’s Own Man by the renewed struggle with the little boy in himself. The little boy desperately wants the mentor to be a good father in the most childish sense—a father who will make him special, will endow him with magical powers and will not require him to compete or prove himself in relation to would-be rivals. It is also the little boy who anxiously makes the mentor into a bad father—a depriving, dictatorial authority who has no real love and merely uses one for his own needs. The relationship is made untenable by the yearning for the good father, the anxiety over the bad father, and the projection of both of these internal figures onto the mentor, who is then caught in a bind.

Central features of the pre-adult self—involving the boy’s elemental struggles with dependency, sexuality, authority and the like—often come to the fore with special strength during the phase of Becoming One’s Own Man. When severe conflicts and difficulties occur at this time, they must be seen both as a renewal of pre-adult problems and as a reflection of the developmental work of becoming more fully adult. The overthrow of the mentor is not just an irrational re-enactment of boyish Oedipal revolt. Even more, it is part of the developmental process by which a young man becomes an adult and mentor. This process cannot evolve along purely rational lines. Many persons in early adulthood have the skill to be excellent teachers and advisers. But the developmental work of Becoming One’s Own Man is essential in moving further and acquiring the maturity to be a wise mentor.

One of our novelists, Allen Perry, presented us with a vivid example of a significant mentor relationship. At 44, he recalls the story as if it had happened yesterday. In his early twenties, after college and military service, Perry went to New York with the single aim of becoming a writer. He took an extension course taught by Calvin Randall, who was then an editor at a leading publishing house. They immediately formed a close bond:

Randall gave me tremendous support and encouragement. I was very close to this man—enormously, deeply committed to him in fact. He had a wonderful quality, but I later realized that this quality was good only if you were very young, and once you became a man yourself it almost became a matter of competition. I had to break, and it was too bad because there was a lack of insight on his part, I think.

But the break occurred some years later. The relationship flowered in Perry’s mid-twenties, during the writing and publication of his first novel. The book was a commercial and critical success and established him as a writer of promise. For the next several years he traveled a good deal and wrote a few minor pieces, but was not able to complete the novel he had in mind. Although the relationship with Randall continued, they were not in close contact.

The next chapter began when Perry was 35. He had just completed the second novel and taken it to his mentor. By this time Randall was editor-in-chief and a nationally known figure, “due partly to his connection with my work.” It took him two weeks to get around to the manuscript. And, when they finally met, it was a great disappointment:

I realized that he wasn’t interested in my work so much as his own career. If there was ever a person who demonstrated the sad effects of the sin of hubris, it’s him. He really lost touch with his protégés, myself included. I’d come to discuss a manuscript and he’d spend two or three hours describing his great publishing plans. When he moved to another firm, he asked me to shift with him. If the relationship had remained as it was, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Instead, I decided to give him up. I still remember distinctly the letter I wrote him almost ten years ago. These are close to the actual words: “To go with you now, even including the fact that I admire you so much, would be an admission that you are absolutely essential to my development, when in fact you must be aware that this is not true. It’s no insult to you, your credentials or your talent, but it would have been demeaning to my integrity as a writer.”

I learned later from someone who was there that he burst into tears when he read the letter. He was hurt for a long time and felt that I had betrayed him. For me, however, it was an act of liberation. It’s nice to have a sympathetic person to ricochet things off, but there comes a point when we’re no longer dependent on those figures. I realize now that 35 is really a very vulnerable period. I can remember when I was in my twenties thinking that when I was 35 I’d be the jauntiest, most debonair, free individual on earth, but in reality I wasn’t at all. Breaking with Calvin Randall was just the beginning of some liberating process.

Allen Perry’s bitterness did not destroy his attachment to Randall. His son, born at the time of the break, was named after the mentor. The relationship is now amicable but reserved—perhaps as good as it can be.

I’m very thankful at this moment that we’ve patched it all up. I’m a grown man, you know, and not his boy. I have an excellent editor now. We are friendly, but it's not the kind of passionate relationship I had with Randall. I don’t think I’ll ever have that again, or want it. Now it’s my turn to give that help to others, though I’ll never have Calvin’s interest or skill at it.

Men rarely have mentors after about 40. A man may have valued relationships with family, friends, counselors and co-workers, but the mentor relationship in its developed form is rare. It is surrendered, with other things, as part of Becoming One’s Own Man. One result is a greater ability and interest in being a mentor to others.

Mid-life Individuation: Young/Old, the Major Polarity

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, individuation is a process in all developmental transitions. In the Mid-life Transition, individuation creates a link between the ending of early adulthood and the start of middle adulthood. It provides a basis upon which the life structure of the Settling Down period is modified and a new life structure is created. In Chapter 16 I shall discuss some of the specific changes made in the life structure during the Mid-life Transition. In this chapter and the next, I want to focus upon the more underlying process of individuation.

We have identified four primary tasks in the individuation process. Each task involves the reintegration of a fundamental polarity in the character of living. The polarity has sources within the self and in society. The four polarities, already briefly described, are Young/Old, Destruction/Creation, Masculine/Feminine and Attachment/Separateness. The one that is most central to all developmental change is the Young/Old polarity. This chapter will deal with it, the next with the remaining three polarities.

In common parlance, children are young, the elderly are old, and the rest of us are in between. But our language is ambiguous. The term “old” sometimes refers to an age category: those who are elderly or aged. At other times it refers to a process of aging or decline, as when a man of forty says, “I am getting too old for this sort of thing,” and is told, “You’re only as old as you feel.”

In their fullest meaning, the terms “young” and “old” are not tied to specific age levels. They are symbols that refer to basic psychological, biological and social qualities of human life at every age. We are both young and old at every age. We start becoming old at birth, just as we remain young in certain respects during old age.

Ultimately, “young” is an archetypal symbol with many meanings. It represents birth, growth, possibility, initiation, openness, energy, potential. It colors the meaning we give to many concrete images: infant, sunrise, the New Year, the seed, the blossoms and rites of spring, the newcomer, the promise, the vision of things to come. We are young at any age to the extent that these associations color our psychological, biological and social functioning.

Conversely, “old” is a symbol representing termination, fruition, stability, structure, completion, death. Its images include Father Time, the Grim Reaper, the Rock of Ages, the Wise Old Man, the dotard, winter, midnight. The immovable object of age confronts the irresistible force of youth. I use the terms “young” and “old” in this symbolic sense, and I use other terms in referring to a particular age level or the process of aging.

Being Young, like being Old, has advantages and disadvantages, strengths and limitations. Each state can be given positive as well as negative meanings. To be Young is to be lively, growing, heroic, full of possibilities; but it is also to be fragile, imperfectly developed, impulsive, lacking in experience and solidity. Similarly, the Old person (whatever his age) may be seen as wise, powerful, accomplished, “able to hear the dictates of heaven” (Confucius)—but also as senile, tyrannical, impotent, unconnected to the life around him.

The Young/Old polarity—the splitting of Young and Old, and the effort to reintegrate them—is the polarity of human development. It is the basic polarity to be worked on in every developmental transition. The symbolization of being both Old and Young—of death and rebirth, destructuring and restructuring, mortality and immortality—is inherent in the very nature of a developmental transition. We feel Old in that a phase in our lives is coming to an end and must be permitted to pass. Yet we also feel Young, since the potential for a new period carries with it the qualities of rejuvenation and growth.

A major developmental task of the Mid-life Transition is to confront the Young and the Old within oneself and seek new ways of being Young/Old. A man must give up certain of his former youthful qualities—some with regret, some with relief or satisfaction—while retaining and transforming other qualities that he can integrate into his new life. And he must find positive meanings of being “older.”

For Jung, an archetype is an elemental image that has been established over thousands of generations in human evolution. It has come to exist in every human mind. To understand its function, consider how we employ psychic or instinctual energy. We are born with a pool of such energy that is transformed, over the course of development, into a variety of more specific drives and impulses relating to aggression, sexuality, dependence, power, creativeness. The potential for complex motives and feelings is there from the start. How it develops, and what forms it takes in the individual life, depends on specific circumstances and experiences.

Similarly, an archetype is a potential for further development. It evolves in the individual psyche from an initial, undifferentiated image into an increasingly complex “internal figure.” It becomes a person in one’s head, a being with whom one has an ongoing relationship—loving, fighting, admiring, depreciating—much as one does with a person in the external world. We have archetypes for the bad self and the good self, the mother (not just my particular mother, but a maternal figure who helps and threatens me in numerous ways), God, devil, authority, healer, muse. The archetypes exist within us as organizing factors that shape and are shaped by our experience over the life course. In each person, some develop to a high degree, others remain dormant.

In Jungian theory, the Puer is the archetype of being Young—a child, a youth, a person of any age who is at the start of a developmental process. In childhood, this archetype evolves as the child experiences its own growth, brings plans and possibilities into realization, and observes the growth of animals, flowers, projects, relationships. With “good enough” development (in Winnicott’s sense), the child forms an internal figure of himself as Puer: a budding person with remarkable potentials in a world full of opportunities and dangers.

The Senex in Jungian theory is the archetype of being Old—elderly, senescent, a person of any age who is at the end of a developmental process. Starting in childhood, we form a sense of what it means to be aging, declining, suffering a loss of our former powers, dying. Many experiences contribute to this process. People around the child get sick, infirm, conspicuously old; they die. So do pets, plants and other living things. Toys and other objects are destroyed and exist no more. The child may get sick or hurt in some way that arouses his own and others’ anxiety. Not yet understanding the nature of aging and death, he develops primitive fantasies that give meaning to these symbols. He tries to grasp the distinction between “living” and “dead” beings, and between animate beings and inanimate objects.

Just as the experience of being Young can, under favorable conditions, continue through old age, so does the experience of getting old begin in childhood. The child’s experience of his own and others’ aging contributes to the formation of an internal figure of himself as Senex: a person in decline, no longer full of promise but having to relinquish the powers so essential to the Puer.

In every transitional period, throughout the life cycle, the internal figures of Young and Old—what Jung called Puer and Senex—are modified and placed in a new balance. The end of the preceding period stimulates Old thoughts and feelings about being in a rut, rotting, coming to the brink of death. The start of the new period stimulates Young thoughts and feelings about being reborn, making a fresh start, discovering fresh possibilities in the self and new vistas in the world. The task in every transition is to create a new Young/Old integration appropriate to that time of life. Especially with the change in eras, there is normally an increase in the old qualities of maturity, judgment, self-awareness, magnanimity, integrated structure, breadth of perspective. But these qualities are of value only if they continue to be vitalized by the Young’s energy, imagination, wonderment, capacity for foolishness and fancy. The Young/Old connection must be sustained.

It is not easy to maintain the balance. A person of any age may become prematurely old and lacking in youthful qualities. A child of six may have been so deprived that he loses all sense of excitement, play, anticipation of the future. He is emotionally a withered old man, fighting a futile battle against emptiness and decline. An adolescent may be so weighted down by a morally constraining family, or by having prematurely to take on heavy adult responsibilities, that his youthful passions are stifled and he cannot sustain the dreams on which early adulthood is built. A man of 40 or 50 may be so in the grip of the Old that he is stagnant, dry, hardly connected to the world around him or to anything he can value in himself, having little to give others or to receive from them. It is as though the Young had been totally extinguished.

At the other extreme, a man may become so anxious about aging and dying that he denies these concerns altogether and attempts to remain the perpetual Young. We see this in the man of twenty-five who remains tied to the family or who leads a transient life without serious attachments and responsibilities. He is, as it were, poised between boyhood and early adulthood, unable to complete the Early Adult Transition and make the commitments on which a first adult life structure can be formed. He is terrified at the thought of becoming an adult, yet he can no longer remain a child. Living in a kind of limbo, he acts very “adolescent” but feels lost and unattached.

We also see this clinging to the Young in the man of 40 to 50 who insists on remaining youthful in the early adult sense, trying to have now the good times that he earlier missed. His problem is not that he wishes to be youthful, but that he remains stuck in an early adult conception of Young and Old. His developmental task is to become older than he was—that is, middle-aged. To do this, he has to make more use of the Old qualities than before, while finding age-appropriate forms through which to express his youthful qualities as well.

Throughout the life cycle, the archetypal Young and Old coexist within us. The internal Young has great energy and capacity for further development in many directions. The internal Old has attained a high degree of structure, has gone as far as he can in realizing his potential, and can now develop no further. Every era has its characteristic Young/Old balance. In pre-adulthood the Young is normally predominant, the Old just taking shape. In early adulthood, the balance is more even but the Young is normally stronger. Middle adulthood should be the time of optimal Young/Old balance: a man have a firmer structure with which to use his considerable energy, imagination and capacity for change. Middle adulthood is, in this sense, the-center of the life cycle. In late adulthood the structure becomes heavier and the internal resources more limited, though the possibilities for vital action and development continue.

The Masculine/Feminine Polarity

The distinctions between male and female, masculine and feminine, are “obvious” and yet often unclear. Let me briefly state their meanings as I will use them. The terms “male” and “female” refer to biological genders. A male is a boy in pre-adulthood, a man in adulthood. A female is a girl and then a woman. With few exceptions, every human being starts life with the biological potential to be a male or a female, but not both. A male fetus will develop a reproductive system, musculature, and other biological features that distinguish men from women.

The terms “masculine” and “feminine” refer to the meanings of gender. They go beyond the purely biological to the social and psychological differences between male and female. In the course of our lives, all of us receive powerful messages regarding the fundamental differences between boys and girls, men and women. Images of the masculine and the feminine are contained in all religions, political ideologies, family patterns and social institutions. The imagery exists in every society, though its specific content varies.

Every male selectively draws upon and adopts the gender images of his culture. Gender plays an important part in his relationships with mother and father, brothers and sisters, male and female friends, teachers, lovers, and other figures who exist in reality or in his imagination. Through the experience with his mother, for example, a boy develops powerful feelings, fantasies and conceptions regarding the feminine: the nurturing, good mother; the depriving, destructive mother; the erotic, seductive mother, likewise for father, siblings and others. Out of these relationships he generates an internal cast of characters who represent the forms of masculinity and femininity that have significance for him. He develops attitudes, wishes and fantasies about the masculine and feminine in himself and about his relationships with other men and women. Feelings about masculinity and femininity enter into a man’s gender identity—his sense of who he is as a man, who he wants to be, and who he is terrified of being.

In most societies, there has been a splitting along gender lines: men are masculine, women are feminine, and no one can be both. The integration of masculinity and femininity has been advocated as a spiritual goal by certain religions and philosophies, such as Buddhism, but with rare success. (Even here, the integration was seen as achievable only by a small elite, chiefly upper-class or monastic males, and only after years of struggle.) In the lives of most persons, and in the social institutions of almost all societies, the splitting of masculine and feminine has prevailed. Two antithetical principles—variously identified as masculine and feminine, light and dark, Yang and Yin—distinguish male from female.

During the last several hundred years, there has been a slow reduction in the ancient gender distinctions. There is a greater recognition that women are not categorically different from men, that they have much the same desires as men and can develop much the same skills. Women are now allowed to be more “masculine” and to engage in certain traditionally masculine pursuits, while men are permitted to be more “feminine.” Nonetheless, a considerable splitting between masculine and feminine still exists in our social institutions and our individual lives. Scientists have not yet clearly established the degree to which the various social-psychological meanings of gender coincide with basic biological differences between males and females.

The Masculine/Feminine polarity was of great importance to all the men in our study, though the specific content and conflicts varied enormously. Every man has his own gender identity. It is plain from their lives that the effort to attain one’s manhood is at its peak in early adulthood. As a young man starts making his way in the adult world, he wants to live in accord with the images, motives and values that are most central to his sense of masculinity, and he tends to neglect or repress the feminine aspects of his self. Any part of the self that he regards as feminine is experienced as dangerous. A young man struggling to sustain his manliness is frightened by feelings and interests that seem womanly. One result of this anxiety is that much of the self cannot be lived out or even experienced in early adulthood.

What does it mean to be masculine or feminine? What personal qualities are included within the Masculine/Feminine polarity?

• One meaning of femininity in a man is homosexuality—the desire for a sexual relationship with another man. This is the form of femininity that elicits the most anxiety and moral outrage. Indeed, one of the main reasons that other forms are so tabooed is that they are considered “signs” of unconscious or unadmitted homosexuality. Actually, femininity and homosexuality are far from identical. Many homosexuals have strong masculine identifications and personal qualities, and many men who are strongly heterosexual in their love lives have intense interests, traits and feelings deriving from feminine aspects of the self.
  
  Five of our forty men—two biologists and three novelists—discussed their homosexual activities or concerns. It seems likely that a few others had had homosexual experiences or interests but were not ready to talk about them, and still others had homosexual feelings at a more unconscious level. One biologist had had a period of extensive homosexual activity in his youth. When he was in graduate school the homosexuality was discovered by the university authorities. They allowed him to continue his career only after he agreed to give it up and enter psychotherapy. Over the next ten years he had several heterosexual love affairs and was married for a year at age 29 to 30. When we last saw him, at 39, he had not remarried and his love life was still problematic. Another biologist entered a gay world in his twenties, through his interest in art and theater. During a severe age thirty crisis, he decided on his own to obtain psychotherapy and work on his relationships with men and women, his fears of his own creativity and his commitment to biology as an occupation. By his late thirties he had formed a satisfying marriage, started a family, and entered a highly creative phase in his work.


• Another set of qualities often associated with manliness is bodily prowess and toughness—the stamina to undertake long, grueling work and endure severe bodily stress without “quitting.” As opposed to this meaning of masculinity, the feminine is conceived of as frail, weak, vulnerable to attack, not having the bodily resources needed to sustain a persistent effort toward valued goals. Masculinity in this sense is often symbolized by the marine, the wrestler and the surgeon; we found many other forms in the various occupations. As we have seen, this image of masculinity was of great importance to Jim Tracy as athletic boy, youthful military officer and rising young executive. The biologist John Barnes … was expressing a similar imagery in his involvement in hockey, skiing and sailing, and in his sense of himself as the indefatigable scientist who could spend endless hours in the laboratory without complaining or giving up.
  
  The novelists were more aware of the sides of themselves they considered feminine, but they could draw upon it only with considerable conflict. They were by no means free of the “machismo” masculinity usually attributed to other occupations. Six of our ten novelists had a strong concern with bodily endurance and prowess. Some of these had served in the military, trying desperately to prove themselves as men in combat and having to overcome fears which they regarded as cowardly, shameful—and feminine. Many had a lifelong interest, as participants and spectators, in competitive sports such as football, basketball and boxing. It was hard to say whether they were more attracted by the competitive aspect or by the bodily skill, endurance and power.


• A related meaning of masculinity involves achievement and ambition. It is portrayed by the heroic man on a quest for a treasure, be it the Holy Grail, the Nobel Prize, the Great American Novel or the Executive Suite. This theme is related to the traditional division of labor in the family. The woman has been primarily responsible for raising the children, managing the household and other work that keeps her within the domestic orbit. The man, on the other hand, has been the primary link between family and community. He has had the ultimate authority. His primary responsibility, carried out through his occupation, is to provide for the family’s material well-being and community standing. In the last few centuries, with the increasing separation of family and occupation, a man’s work has become steadily more important as the basis for his contribution to the family and for his self-esteem as husband, father and person.
  
  The division of labor between husband and wife intensifies another aspect of the Masculine/Feminine polarity. The qualities regarded as masculine involve success in work, getting ahead, earning one’s fortune for the sake of self and family. The qualities regarded as feminine involve building the nest and ministering to the multiple needs of husband and children. The feminine woman is the devoted wife who tries to further her husband’s advancement. If she has a job, it is as an unmarried woman seeking a husband, or in an occupation such as teaching or nursing where she is appropriately maternal, subordinate and non-competitive with men. To the extent that a man has these “feminine” qualities or engages in these kinds of work, he must deal with his own and others’ feelings that something is missing in him as a man.
  
  This conflict played an important part in the life of Paul Namson … It was hard for him to give up his career as business executive, partly because this work was a vehicle for his masculine strivings. Similarly, his difficulty in giving himself to writing novels stemmed partly from its feminine meanings as a creative, esthetic activity: writing yielded no immediately useful product, it came out of his own painful feelings, and it was considered “queer” in several respects within his family and business world. We find another version of this polarity in Bill Paulsen …, the worker who sought desperately to enter the managerial ranks of industry. Becoming a manager represented in part a validation of his manliness. His self-deceptive “puffery” was a way of handling the anxiety that he did not quite measure up, that he was doomed forever to remain with the “girls” on the shop floor rather than -joining the men who run the show.


• The concern with power and weakness is yet another facet of the Masculine/Feminine polarity. For many men, the essence of masculinity is power: exercising control over others, being (and being recognized as) a person of strong will, a leader who “gets things done.” The opposite pole, symbolized as feminine, is to be weak, submissive, unassertive, subject to victimization by others who have more power and are ready to use it exploitively. This version of the masculine and feminine is the analogue, in terms of social relationships, of the concern with bodily toughness-frailty noted above.
  
  When the splitting of power and weakness takes an extreme form, a man regards any sign of weakness in himself as intolerably feminine and dangerous. He goes to great lengths to deny its existence. His anxiety is heightened by every sign of biological and social decline at mid-life. Perhaps the most marked form of splitting, with excessive overvaluation of the masculine and anxiety about the feminine, is the authoritarian personality. Variations on this theme are to be found, however, in all men.


• Finally, the Masculine/ Feminine polarity is often reflected in the distinction between thinking and feeling. It is often assumed that men are by nature more logical and “reasonable” than women—more analytical and intellectual, cooler, more interested in how things work. Women in turn are supposed to be more emotional and intuitive, more likely to make de cisions on the basis of feelings rather than careful analysis. This definition of masculine and feminine is part of the broader pattern that ties masculinity to skilled work in a specialized occupational structure, femininity to motherhood and caring for the emotional needs of children and husband.
  
  In its extreme form, this polarization requires a man to be a kind of thinking machine. To be truly masculine, he must devote himself to his occupation in a highly impersonal way. He can allow himself a narrow range of “manly” feelings relating to assertiveness, rivalry and task attainment. But he is not permitted feelings that involve dependency, intimacy, grief, sensuality, vulnerability. Such feelings are associated with childishness and femininity.
  
  Within our study, the men who specialized most highly in thinking at the expense of feeling were the biologists. For the most part, they were not involved in the power-seeking, “macho” forms of masculinity. They did not compete for political power or financial success or sexual conquest. But, despite their often gentle manner, they competed fiercely in the realm of the intellect. Trying to establish themselves in the “first rank” of biological science, they showed no mercy to their rivals and felt contempt for everyone, including themselves, who might fail to make it. James Watson, winner of the Nobel Prize for his part in discovering the structure of the DNA molecule, has vividly described the competition in his book The Double Helix. The philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote of his own efforts to get out of this pattern … John Barnes is but one of the biologists in our study whose one-sided commitment to the battle for intellectual supremacy was accompanied by an alienation from feeling and all other aspects of the self that he experienced as feminine. … we shall witness the strength of this polarization in his early adulthood, and the efforts he made to reduce it in the Mid-life Transition.

If we look at the entire set of qualities just described, we discover a multifaceted pattern of masculinity in opposition to a complementary pattern of femininity. A unifying theme in the masculine pattern is a concern with doing, making, having. A man is supposed to get out there and do something: perform, accomplish, produce, bring home the bacon. If his body is a vehicle for demonstrating his masculinity, he tries to acquire special strength, endurance, sexual virility, athletic prowess. If his mind is the preferred vehicle, he uses thought as a weapon in the struggle to win, to outmuscle his rivals, be it in science, art or chess. Whatever the arena, he wants to establish his place in the world of work and of men. He wants to become a productive, independent, responsible, authoritative man who has the mental and bodily capacities needed to attain his goals. The feminine is at the opposite pole. To be feminine is to lack bodily strength and stamina, to be more concerned with feeling than with thought. A woman may be clever in a feminine way, but she can’t be expected to be consistently logical, to stay with a difficult work task, or to analyze a problem without letting her feelings get in the way. In this view, it is the feminine in a man that leads him to be soft and dependent, to accept second best rather than fight for the top. It is feminine of him to experience great depth of feeling, to be “sensitive,” submissive, esthetic.

Perhaps the ultimate difference is in the ways of creating. In this imagery, the masculine form of creation is to produce something by making it according to one’s own design: planning, molding, erecting, transforming raw materials into a new product. The specifically masculine form of creation is to build a bridge, invent a mousetrap, improve the design of a car. The feminine form is represented by conceiving and raising children. In a sense, a woman creates an embryo, an infant and an adult. But she does not “make” the child grow. Rather, she enables it to grow, and she does this best when she accommodates to the inner laws of growth that govern its evolution.

Artistic creation is strongly feminine in this respect. The painter, composer or writer often has the experience of starting with a rudimentary image or idea. It is like being pregnant: he has within himself a seed that must be nurtured, given birth to, brought into being. The muses are female. When a youthful artist cannot accept the creative-feminine as part of himself, he may imagine it as a muse inspiring his creative efforts. In middle adulthood he may become more accepting of the feminine, and allow the muse to be an intrinsic part of himself. This is a task of the Mid-life Transition.

As I have said, young men differ widely in the relative predominance of the masculine over the feminine and in the degree to which the feminine must be inhibited or split off from the conscious ego. A man may be almost entirely cut off from the aspects of himself that he considers feminine. He allows himself no intimacy, no awareness of his own weakness or dependency, no deviation from his masculine strivings. He may become a fearless adventurer, a military hero, an ambitious seeker of power or of intellectual accomplishment. No matter what vehicle he fashions, it will be narrowly in accord with his masculine imagery and values, and it will exclude all feminine qualities except those that are expressed unconsciously.

A man who is afflicted with this exaggerated masculinity may be a responsible father, but his children will experience him as unloving, distant and demanding. He will regard women as either maternal or sexual; not both. To him the former are devoted mothers and wives but are sexually unexciting. The latter are good for sexual conquest and fun, but horrifying as mother, wife, sister or daughter. It is not possible for this man to have an intimate, mutual relationship with a woman. He puts very little of himself into any relationship. He is contemptuous of the sexual woman and he puts the virtuous woman on a pedestal, but he is emotionally close to neither. He cannot have a friendship with a woman. He does not wish to know any woman well because he is afraid to know himself well—especially the less masculine aspects of himself.

Of course, the splitting is usually not so severe. A man and his wife or lover often work out a psychological “division of labor” in their relationship. The man is primarily responsible for certain interests and feelings, the woman for others. They establish a modus operandi in which the strengths of one complement the weaknesses of the other. Usually, his special functions involve the qualities considered masculine, hers, feminine. There may also be interesting reversals, as when he has an interest in cooking or the sharing of feelings, or when she is more involved than he in occupation.

A complementarity of this kind is a source of both strength and weakness. While each partner is lacking in some respects, between them they cover a wide range of skills, feelings and modes of living. Together, they form a whole person. A man may thus derive from his wife many of the feminine qualities he cannot nourish in himself. With time, and a good relationship, he may come to accept and develop these qualities. As long as he relies on her to supply them, however, he remains incomplete and one-sided. The same is true for her.

Although there are variations in degree, the gender distinctions operate with great force in contemporary society. The great majority of men in early adulthood form an identity suffused with “masculine” images, desires and values. No matter how much a young man wants to grow beyond the traditionally narrow view of masculinity, the idea of manliness is still of great importance to him. He strives to take his place in the world as a male adult. In doing so, he must feel some anxiety about the feminine and must control or repress it to some degree. He must give greater priority to the masculine as he understands it. He can make room for the feminine, but he cannot fully integrate the two.

The difficulty in integrating the masculine and feminine in early adulthood has many sources. It stems partly from cultural traditions, partly from personal immaturity. A young man in his twenties is just barely out of adolescence; he is not developmentally ready to resolve all his pre-adult conflicts and achieve a highly integrated personality. He has to “go with what he’s got,” which means building a first adult life structure that reflects and sustains his inner conflicts. The difficulty in integration stems also from the magnitude of his evolving life tasks. In the twenties and thirties his energies are devoted to forming an occupation and a family. Ordinarily he must meet heavy financial demands, pursue his goals, and face the stresses of day-to-day living. There are also biological reasons for the usual predominance of the masculine over the feminine among men in early adulthood.

In short, a man normally works out a partial integration of the masculine and feminine in the late teens and early twenties, at the start of early adulthood. He may resolve the conflicts further during the Age Thirty Transition. During the phase of Becoming One’s Own Man, in his late thirties, there is a surge of masculine strivings, an intense effort to achieve a more senior, “manly” position in the world and to reduce the strength of the “little boy” in the self. Most men get to the late thirties with roughly the same balance of masculine and feminine they had in the early twenties. The Mid-life Transition is the next major developmental opportunity to reintegrate the Masculine/Feminine polarity.