Iron John

The Destructive Father does not give energy to those in his family but draws it out of them into some black hole he shelters in himself. He draws it out steadily, as the great tyrants we know of draw it from their citizens.

Exuberance in a child is bad, and at the first sign of it, parents should be severe. Exuberance implies that the wild boy or girl is no longer locked up.

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

that accepting an initiatory task is more important than succeeding or failing at it.

When a person chooses the one thing most precious, it is a serious act. Choosing ends well, but not for the rejected divinities.

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

We need people to remind men again and again how difficult it is to become a conscious father, and people to remind women how difficult it is to be a conscious mother.

Shame, it is said, is the sense that you are an utterly inadequate person on this planet, and probably nothing can be done about it. Guilt is the sense that you have done one thing wrong, and you can atone for it.

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.

If we choose “the one precious thing”—the object of our desire—then, according to the alchemists, the inner King in us that has been asleep for so many years wakes up.