From the Glory of Hera to the Wrath of Achilles: Narratives of Second-Wave Masculinity and Beyond

Abstract

Second-wave psychoanalytic feminism understood masculinity through theories that converge in seeing masculinity in mother-son terms. The dread of women, primary femininity, disidentification, father absence, and society without the father all portray an overpowering mother. Men’s reaction is to define masculinity as the not-feminine and as superior, to deny and deprecate femininity in themselves and in women. After Slater, I call these dynamics the “Glory of Hera.” I suggest that they more accurately describe the generic conflicts of men than Freud’s Oedipus. Here, I suggest a third classical narrative. Masculinity is equally, perhaps more basically, understood in terms of the “Wrath of Achilles.” The fundamental developmental and psychic challenge for men is how to be the senior male who humiliates rather than the junior male who feels humiliated and inferior. These dynamics are widespread clinically, and we find them not only in The Iliad but also throughout the literary and operatic canon.

Notes

¹ My contribution here, originally a conference presentation, has been edited lightly and expanded for clarity, but its conversational and occasionally ironic tone, and its restatements that can, in a written text, seem more repetition than elaboration, have been largely preserved.

²2 In his mother-son reading, Shengold (1989) claims that the Oedipus story is about soul murder—physical and sexual child abuse. Jocasta is the original abusive, infanticidal mother, so attached to a perverse sexual relationship with Laius that she is willing to murder her offspring. She, not Laius, gives the basic permission to expose Oedipus. Shengold hypothesizes further that Jocasta knows Oedipus’ origins when she has sex with and marries him. Shengold’s account would suggest that the ordinary developmental story we take from Freud, the little Hans story of wanting to schmeicheln—“coax with,” or, in more recognizable terms, wheedle, cajole, snuggle with, and caress—his mother (my paraphrases here are courtesy Brigid Doherty) is, to borrow from a phrase from second-wave feminism, vanilla compared with the real Oedipus, which is a story of perverse sexual abuse.

³ In Chodorow (1991), I remind readers of Freud’s males, Oedipus, Narcissus, and Moses, and, for women, psychic stories that resonate with Athena, Persephone, Cassandra, and Iphigenia.

⁴ Whereas I found my second-wave narrative in psychoanalytic anthropology and sociology, Jessica Benjamin found hers in Frankfurt theory. Mitscherlich’s Society without the Father (1963) merges the two. Perhaps psychoanalytic anthropology and sociology and Frankfurt theory also borrowed from and contributed to a 1930s–1950s popular culture and psychology wave of blaming the mother and noticing of father absence.

⁵ Those who do not know the time-and-field dated 1930s and 1940s psychological anthropology literature might yet be familiar with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), which renders this same clan and lineage story in literary terms. The narcissistic and angry warrior Okonkwo’s son, Nwoye, is totally uninterested in going off with his father, although he is made to do so. Nwoye wants to stay with his mother in the women’s compound and hear stories about the turtle.

⁶ As I note, this theme runs through much of the psychoanalysis of a particular era as well as in psychoanalytic cultural commentary. A maternal “generation of vipers” (Wylie, 1942) and “maternal overprotection” (Levy, 1943) weakened “our boys” fighting in Europe and Japan.

⁷ For accuracy in the writings of a psychoanalyst who is also a classics scholar and professor, see Simon (1988). Simon (personal communication, 2014) thinks it is reasonable to take Slater’s (1967) account seriously.

⁸ I note also that some of the critique of Glory of Hera second-wave theory—a theory about the overpowering mother—seems to come from writers (e.g., Diamond, 2004) who do not like a theory of masculinity that isn’t primarily about men and men and the bonds—sexual, competitive, and otherwise—that men, including fathers and sons, form.

⁹ We are not the only vulnerable profession or populace here: we can certainly turn to academia and politics, for starters.

¹⁰ Some brave writers have recently looked back on the direct and indirect effects of sexual exploitation of patients and other boundary violations (Burka, 2008; Wallace, 2010; Dimen, 2011). Here, I am pointing us to possible prevalent blind spots (or even countertransference identifications and wishes) in our clinical treatments and theories of masculinity that may lead to such behavior in the first place.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nancy J. Chodorow

Nancy J. Chodorow, Ph.D., is Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Lecturer on Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance.