The Ninth Street Center What People Say About Us

Review of Dean Hannotte's
We Knew Paul:
Conversations with Friends and Students of Paul Rosenfels
by Walter Godsoe

Over the course of two years Dean Hannotte held a series of interviews with students, friends and relatives of Paul Rosenfels. These interviews have become "We Knew Paul." For those of us who didn't know him but have been influenced by his work, read his books, or worked with Paul's students, they offer an intimate view of the these men and of Paul as a man. During the interviews the broad psychological vistas Paul made available in his writings become the sinew, flesh and sweat of men's lives. The material Paul left as his legacy is demonstrated as working tools and insights in the lives of men we come to know.

Love and power become more than concepts or words diminished by banality and cynicism when these ordinary men surrender to them and struggle with them -- as they make them central to how they choose to live their lives. Dean Hannotte and the men and woman interviewed are such individuals. Their discussions range from the ordinary moments they shared with Paul and each other, to polarity and all it's ramifications. I knew some of these men. At least I thought so.

Not having known Paul I was always curious as to how this man had come into his own, come to work on the Lower East Side, come to his homosexuality, come to a vision. And how the hell did he get such a diverse group of men to become his students, friends and lovers? I had read all his work, tried to understand it and make it my own. As a man who had never known a father, I always had a nasty black hole filled with nothing but questions which would never be answered. And not personally knowing Paul pissed me off. Why was I denied yet another mentor, a man who might fill in the void?

Originally I came to Paul's work in desperation. In a Village bookshop I spotted "Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process". I picked it up, read the first few pages and there in those pages of Paul's work I was born, a birth marked with a rage and humiliation. Why had no one -- no friend, doctor, teacher nor priest -- simply said this is why we are? Those first words fired my heart and soul. But still I didn't know him at a personal level which could be embraced. There were only glimpses of him, perhaps something shared by one of his students, but I was hungry for the details of "yes, but what kind of man is he?". For me "We Knew Paul" provides some of that and more.

I had explored the enneagram work of Sufis, Jesuits, Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo in the early 70's. Intuitively I was aware that gender- based identity was absurd. It's failure could easily be seen in my own life and in those around me. Choking on this shit called "being a man," the enneagram provided some freedom from the rigor of what I was supposed to be. It revealed a non-gender view of being and personality. For me it was a beginning.

These interviews reveal that others were exploring ideas which were the gestations of psychological polarity between introverts and extroverts, or in Paul's terms "feminines" and "masculines." Jung and Socrates each had alluded to notions of polarity. While at the Center I had kept my earlier and subsequent attempts to understand -- why we are here, what is this life for, and why is there emptiness -- because I didn't want to come off as a dilitante. I wanted to be taken seriously. I regret that posture now. My view of those men, was too small, though I was convinced otherwise.

Being interviewed at the personal levels which took place requires trust, the product of a relationship built on mutual respect. And out of the trust we are presented with men who succeed and fail. They grant themselves the right to do both, and when possible with equanimity.

Placing oneself in what amounts to an genuine experiment presupposes success and failure. In Frank's candid disclosure the failure is evident, but more importantly his understanding is of what it means to love another. The conventional view would have held up indignation, helplessness,anger, etc., as appropriate responses. Frank, on the contrary, acknowledges "shame," for not having the understanding and self control in the midst of an experiment where he himself is also the subject.

During the course of the interviews Dean comes through as direct,powerful,playful and challenging. A perplexing problem in talking about power/- masculinity modalities for a thinker/feminine like myself is the weakness of language to convey adequately that which must be directly experienced. The skillful writer can describe the details we may recognize, yet it fails at levels of psychological access or understanding.

The interview with Larry Wheelock for me is the most rewarding in revealing what it is responsibility and power are about, as the two men explore issues and personal incidents from that common ground they shared. The immediacy of the Larry Wheelock interview, the stream of "Aha!" moments between Dean and Larry, left me wanting more.

The voice of authority speaks best in it's own language, and when these two men speak to one another, power, caring and responsibility are demonstrated and the ditch of what each word means is stepped over. These issues have been discussed, addressed, philosophized, dramatized and reduced to the nothingness of the common currency. Here we have two men, may I add heroic men, who live the issues, work with them every day of their lives, as an integral part of their lives.

The work of Paul addresses something fundamental in the human spirit, and it is revolutionary in ways that theories of enneagrams and earlier polarity observations were not. His view does not stop at this is how it is, or even at the gates of human or spiritual development. No, he invites men to take responsibility for the lives they lead, to take part in an experiment of immense portions and consequence, to set aside a mentality of the biggest bang for buck -- that it will be all handed down by some divine power or the authorities of the know it all -- and instead to surrender to the truth, champion the right, to discover and to build lives of their own making. Ordinary men's lives are the workshop of humanity. It is from those ordinary lives that the bread of revelation is shared. The moments Dean and Larry share with us demonstrates the kind of courage Paul Rosenfels would have recognized.

The beauty of "We Knew Paul" is in that it "works." The fragments of Paul's life revealed made this book worth reading, but for me its power is in seeing how men are doing the work in the laboratory of their own lives. Men that I have had the privilege of knowing.

Read Bill Boushka's memoir of the early days of the Ninth Street Center