Beyond the Hero: The Trickster as Archetype of Men’s Middle Age
In this tumult some men yearn for a simpler time, when heroes were honored by all, and patriarchs ruled over women and nations. Yet deep in their souls, most men know they cannot turn back time, any more than they can believe that the earth is flat or that Apollo and Zeus still live on Olympus.
Without any alternative to the warrior or the king, though, men are tempted to return to old ways, striking back against feminists, pacifists, ecologists, and minorities. Yet the earth is round, and Apollo and Zeus are long gone. This is the importance of the fairy tales in this book: they reveal the path beyond the hero and the patriarch.
Men's tales speak directly from the unconscious in the original voice of the male psyche. This is because the stories were probably told by men privately, among soldiers or in secret male lodges. Without women and children present, men put aside heroic pretenses and reveal their secret fears and dreams.
Men also undoubtedly recounted their tales after much drinking. Such altered states of consciousness foster the spontaneous emergence of unconscious material. So men's tales are like dreams: they bring up issues ignored in conscious life, or suppressed by social convention. Unconscious themes appear in myths, legends, and literature, too, but they have been censored and edited by priests or writers. Men's tales, by contrast, speak in the primordial voice of the male psyche.
Men's stories link the deep masculine specifically with midlife. This is because men traditionally pursue heroic dreams in youth without questioning those ideals. Only in the middle years, after divorce, illness, and career setbacks, do men question the heroic and patriarchal paradigm, and seek something beyond it. So the deep masculine usually becomes an issue at midlife. In today's culture, though, the timing has started to shift.
As feminism takes root, many men reject heroism in youth, not midlife. Young men often grapple with the deep masculine in high school and college, seeking alternatives to the hero. Stories about the deep masculine are not just for men at midlife, but for any man caught in the middle—after the hero dies and the patriarch falls, but before their successor appears.
If men's tales are about men, they are also for women: for wives, mothers, daughters, lovers, and co-workers, bewildered and infuriated by the men around them.
Men's tales help explain the deeper reasons behind stereotypical male behavior, such as men's barbed put-downs of each other or their silence about emotions. The stories also challenge men to move beyond traditional male chauvinism. Yet men's tales do not advocate a gentle, domesticated, "feminized" or "soft" male. The stories portray fierce and passionate men. The tales affirm feminism and celebrate masculine vitality. This is not a "New Age" invention, either, because the stories come from traditional societies across the world. Men's tales reflect the original image of manhood.
Excerpted from Beyond the Hero: Classic Stories of Men in Search of Soul by Allan B. Chinen
➤ Listen to my interview with Allan on the Medicine Path ep.107
