
Iron John

When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, and not his teaching.
Robert Bly • Iron John
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.
Robert Bly • Iron John
A child has a mood—he or she wants to play, or stay in the room, or be loony. The grownups have bigger moods. The abusive, or depressed, or alcoholic, or workaholic, or crazy parent has an enormous mood, and it is the only mood that counts. The children and the other parent have to adapt to that big mood, serve it, cater to it, sacrifice their mood
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that accepting an initiatory task is more important than succeeding or failing at it.
Robert Bly • Iron John
When a person chooses the one thing most precious, it is a serious act. Choosing ends well, but not for the rejected divinities.
Robert Bly • Iron John
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.
Robert Bly • Iron John
only men can initiate men, as only women can initiate women. Women can change the embryo to a boy, but only men can change the boy to a man. Initiators say that boys need a second birth, this time a birth from men.
Robert Bly • Iron John
Jung remarked that all successful requests to the psyche involve deals. The psyche likes to make deals.
Robert Bly • Iron John
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.