Iron John

The wounded man knows something, or is something. Beatings, slaps in the face, verbal batterings are injuries. Blows that lacerate self-esteem, puncture our sense of grandeur, pollute enthusiasm, poison and desolate confidence, give the soul black-and-blue marks, undermining and degrading the body image . . . these all make a defilement. They damag

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

In our families, we can rise above the shame of having an alcoholic father by adding fuel secretly to our grandiose rocket, pulling away from the family, riding upward on that fuel. Or we can sink down into the shamed child, become him, be no one else, live in our secret unworthiness, lose our king, and become a slave. There is a pleasure in becomi

Ritual space gives something back to the man or woman who, prepared by discipline and quiet, enters it.

Having no soul union with other men can be the most damaging wound of all.

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.

Men are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is shameful. A wound that stops you from continuing to play is a girlish wound. He who is truly a man keeps walking, dragging his guts behind. Our story gives a teaching diametrically opposite. It says that where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the

When the office work and the “information revolution” begin to dominate, the father-son bond disintegrates. If the father inhabits the house only for an hour or two in the evenings, then women’s values, marvelous as they are, will be the only values in the house. One could say that the father now loses his son five minutes after birth.

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