Iron John

Wounds need to be expanded into air, lifted up on ideas our ancestors knew, so that the wound ascends through the roof of our parents’ house and we suddenly see how our wound (seemingly so private) fits into a great and impersonal story.

where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the wound appears in our psyches, whether from alcoholic father, shaming mother, shaming father, abusing mother, whether it stems from isolation, disability, or disease, that is precisely the place for which we will give our major gift to the community.

We must repeat that it isn’t the personal mother who imprisons the son—she wants him to be free. It is the possessive or primitive side of the Great Mother that keeps him locked up.

When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, and not his teaching.

Each child lives deep inside his or her own psychic house, or soul castle, and the child deserves the right of sovereignty inside that house. Whenever a parent ignores the child’s sovereignty, and invades, the child feels not only anger, but shame.

Jung remarked that all successful requests to the psyche involve deals. The psyche likes to make deals.

Look for your other half who walks always next to you and tends to be who you aren’t.

Contemporary business life allows competitive relationships only, in which the major emotions are anxiety, tension, loneliness, rivalry, and fear.

The Twisted side of the Great Mother doesn’t want the boy to grow up because if he does he will pass out of her realm.

Only when a man’s interior warriors are strong enough can he go into the joy of display.