The Ninth Street Center Ninth Street Center Journal

This I Beheld
A Psychological Analysis of the Growth of the Masculine Ideal in Civilization, with Application to Selected Writings of Homer, Shakespeare, and Joseph Conrad [1961, unfinished]

by Paul Rosenfels

At the center of all civilized experience stands the figure of the hero. The difference between experience which men value in a civilized way, and experience which is ordinary, mundane, or simply animal-like, lies in the reserve capacity for action inherent in the situation. Having experiences is an end in itself for civilized men; being full of energy is a happy state of being, which fulfils their inner identity. The heroic quality in masculinity is an expression of the resourcefulness in action which never fails. Because there is a constant pressure toward responsible and constructive action, the heroic attitude develops obstacles which were not there before. It seeks to manipulate and organize that which was chaotic before. The more responsibilities a man can accumulate, provided they are based on mastery and not mere duties, the richer is his life of action. In order to deal with the chaotic in a state of self-confidence, hope is essential. Experimental dealing with a new situation on a temporary basis, without established and demonstrable modes of action, requires that the individual feel himself to be contained within a free world favorable to his nature; this must be a world in which he is loved for his heroic qualities.

The masculine readiness for action which civilization cultivates has created the leadership out of which man's military, political, engineering, and industrial development has come. There is within civilization a resource, feminine in type, which responds to masculine qualities on a permanent basis, finding an equal and opposite contentment to match the masculine happiness derived from a high energy charge. This is the feminine self-awareness which is the basis of a life of contemplation in which there is encouraged a responsiveness without limit to subject matters of thought. This capacity for intuitive self-effacement is a tension-holding phenomenon. The feminine elements within civilization have developed man's religious, philosophical, and scientific depth. The security that men need to penetrate the unknown, holding their capacity for responsiveness through the long periods of waiting for insight, derives from faith; this comes to them in a world created for them by protecting power which needs their wisdom.

Power, the attitude of unlimited readiness for action, finds social value in a world where love appreciates and needs its protection; love, the feeling of eternal responsiveness, takes on its social meaning where power exploits its nurturing qualities. Power and love are social creations of man. In the animal world, power is the product of the arousal of surplus energies in the mated male; love comes from the surplus capacity for tension bearing in the mated female. Masculine power establishes the domain in which the young are reared, and feminine love provides the nurture which the immaturity of the young requires. Civilized human beings carry a surplus of adaptive potential which has no guaranteed or established outlet. Man proceeds on a basis of faith in the meaning of love, and hope for the value of power. If love cannot find an ideal worth serving, or power cannot find a reality worth exploiting, the surplus adaptive capacities lead only to mental ill-health or behavioral deviations from established patterns of social conformity. Why does civilization leave the destiny of the individual, especially at the level of his creative capacities, so much in his individual hands? This is primarily because the exploration of the unknown, and the experimentation with the chaotic, on which psychological growth and social progress depend, reach for truth and right which have not yet been identified or established. If men were only willing to start a journey on the basis of a recognized destination, they would not develop the undying patience or uncompromising tolerance which have led to the crossing of so many apparently impossible barriers. It is love and its handmaiden, faith, which make it possible to uncover problems without limit without losing the oriented security which insight alone can bring; it is power and its lieutenant, hope, which make it possible to multiply obstacles without limit without losing the organized freedom which mastery alone can bring.

A man cannot live a life of both power and love. He must choose one or the other. The capacity for unlimited tension-holding must be learned through many years of sympathetic family training. If a man is to have a deep character, only the family which rears him can give it to him. Energy accumulation comes through following family leadership in many developmental situations, and leads to the formation of a character founded in vigor. There are many temptations which threaten character maintenance, rewarding a man in temporary or partial ways for accepting corruption or weakening of his character identity. The understanding which love produces can be used for power of the push-button type; such automatic and efficient power has social value only when its use is confined to the service which love seeks to perform in the world. The capacity for responsibility which power creates can be used to arouse sentimental love and dogmatic adherence to principle; feelings taken for granted in this way have social meaning only when they unite people who are cooperating already in the exploitation of genuine opportunities. Aggressive power is derived from love which turns selfish and loses its sense of service; knowledge then becomes a tool of irresponsible willfulness. Passive love, on the other hand, is derived from power which turns toward vanity and loses its capacity for seeking genuine opportunity; ability then becomes a play-thing of ignorant self-consciousness.

Because men who explore the unknown dwell in a world of ideas, always seeking to increase their sensitivity and sense of harmony with their world, and because men who engage the chaotic participate in a world of methods and techniques, always seeking to increase their spontaneity and sense of self-confident ownership of their world, there is a constant tendency toward a retreat from the world in men of ideas, and an equal tendency toward an enlistment among men of action, setting up purposes separate from those of the whole society but worthy of men of heroic posture.

The retreat facilitates the surrender of willfulness, putting the individual in a secure place by himself or with others governed by autocratic authority. The enlistment facilitates the surrender of self-consciousness, establishing the individual in a gregarious relationship with others where he is automatically loyal to a set of laws and principles.

In the retreat, contemplation of life leads into the religious viewpoint, which then spreads through society as a whole when the need for the religious spirit manifests itself. The enlistment, which is the formation of a band of brothers in the manner of an adolescent gang, leads into military potential and becomes incorporated into social institutions as the purposes of men are advanced thereby. Religion is the keeper of the magical spirit of love; military and political institutions are the embodiment of the miraculous quality of power.

Religion becomes a resource to the political man, putting social cohesion and the basic ideas on which it rests outside the reach of social institutions. It is only in a world made good by the spirit of religion that men can dare to act to the full limits of their creative capacities. Without the backing of religious meaning, creative inventive skill loses its social attachment, deteriorating into criminal vanity.

The political life embodied in the state becomes an ideal to the man of religion, putting social cooperation and the basic institutions which express it outside the scope of lasting social principles. It is only in a world enlivened by political pride that men can find the security for a full-scale creative preoccupation with ideas. Without the environment brought into being by political values, creative reflective understanding loses its social meaning, deteriorating into paranoid self-indulgence.

Whatever new power comes into the civilized world from the minds of thinkers is a surplus phenomenon and belongs in the hands of the political leadership. Whatever new capacity for human empathy and mutual attachment comes from the cooperative accomplishments of the life of action is also surplus and belongs to the sphere of religious feeling and teaching. It is when thinkers take power for selfish purposes that aggression comes into the civilized world; the aggressive spirit always weakens the objective strength of political institutions. It is when men of action make attachments and accept beliefs which flatter their vanity that the passive way of life enters civilization; the passive mode of living always undermines the universal quality of religious wisdom.

Civilization rests on the accumulation of comprehension and talent which is passed on from generation to generation, in the form of communicated insights and demonstrated mastery. The insights begin in the minds of single individuals as creative thinking, and end as commonly held beliefs or social ideas. Mastery begins in activity of an inventive and separate nature, and enters the sphere of established institutionalized modes of accomplishing ends. Socially communicable insight goes to make up what is known as truth, and socially demonstrable mastery makes up what men call the right. The difference between individual insight and socially validated truth lies in the consequences which flow from truth. Truth expands the freedom of men to act. Truth is the natural servant of the right; as long as the body of truth is growing, opportunity for action is increasing in the world. Right similarly extends the security of men to feel and think. Right is the natural claimant to ownership of the truth; as long as the right is growing in the world, that idealization which is a necessity to deep feeling will be increasing also.

Men find truth in its own terms and without regard for its practical applications, but truth itself must have meaning in a society if the truth-seeker is to maintain his social adequacy and his mental health; men also find right for its own sake, but right must be rewarded socially if the man who reaches for the right is to maintain his social identity and his conformity to social patterns of behavior.

Men find the truth; if this truth sets other men free the truth-seeker feels secure in society. Men attain the right; if this right makes a home for others in the world, the searcher for the right finds freedom through this experience. Truth and right have a reciprocal and social relationship; truth idealizes right, finding beauty; right exploits the truth, finding goodness. Individual insight and mastery come out of private and separate creative processes, but they create an expanding social store of truth and right which become essential possessions of civilization. Yesterday's surplus is today's necessity.

Love and creative thought arise from the same yielding tendencies in individuals; only a lifetime of devotion to thought can develop those problems and answers by which the knowledge of mankind grows. Power and creative action arise from the same assertive tendencies in individuals; only a lifetime of adherence to constructive action can develop those obstacles and techniques of overcoming them by which the ability of mankind grows.

Love and power must be imbedded in the character of individuals, and a man must be one or the other. The love, or yielding, character is introspective or schizoid. The power, or assertive character, is extrovertive or cyclothymic. Schizoid is a psychiatric term based on the tendency of yielding individuals to withdraw into a world of thoughts; cyclothymic refers to the mood swings common in assertive persons. A man cannot develop a depth or vigor in response to an adaptive need to solve a problem or overcome an obstacle. It is then too late, because adaptive needs are pressing and develop emergency implications. A man becomes deep or vigorous as a way of having an identity, or soul, and finds problems and obstacles as a form of self-fulfillment. Only then can he acquire that faith and hope which are necessary to dealing with problems which have no apparent answers and obstacles which offer no palpable opportunity for control.

A person who sees life with the eyes of love wants to find truth which is socially useful. If he is confined in his love feelings to family preoccupations, in which his understanding is useful only to himself and his own kind, his position remains selfish even though he is devoted to the building of the security of others. A person who takes hold of life with the hands of power wants to establish right which is socially meaningful. If he is confined in his power attitudes to family matters, in which his capacity for responsibility involves only his own kind, his function remains egotistical even though he is developing family welfare and the freedom of action of others.

Universal love of the Christian variety is equivalent to human truth; objective power of the democratic variety is equivalent to human right. It is very difficult for love to maintain itself in the world at any given time, because feelings with one's fellow men become so easily involved with adaptive problems, thus cutting off creative thinking. Men have learned to withdraw from practical problems when finding truth in areas such as mathematics and physics, but when they similarly withdraw in the human field they must run the gamut of many dangers, including disorientation with phobic consequences (neurosis), loss of moral sense through attachment to a sub-group within society of similar personalities (aggression), or loss of social attachment entirely (psychosis). It is also difficult for power to maintain its full expression within the individual because when social attitudes become involved with obstacles which are adaptively important, creative experimental action is impossible. Men have accepted an indifference of feeling which separates the experimental from the adaptive in the concrete areas of engineering and industry, but a similar indifference in the human field must avoid many difficulties, including disorganization with hysterical components (delinquency), loss of genuine feeling and motivation for accomplishment through acceptance of empathy with a sub-group within society of similar personalities (passivity, in the sense of voluntary submission for secondary gains), or loss of social attachment entirely (psychosis, or criminality, depending on social factors).

Religion contains the view of life in which man is a truth seeker; the political man embodies the way of life in which he reaches for the right. The first and only meaningful subject matter of religion is human understanding; the primary and essential area of operation of politics is in the sphere of human responsibility. Because religion maintained its depth only in the security of a retreat, losing its access to faith in human nature when it became a living part of the social life of its time, it failed to grow into that full scale understanding of human nature which is its natural destiny. Because political institutions attained vigor only in the freedom of an enlistment in military undertakings, losing access to hope in human affairs when dealing with the everyday social difficulties of man, they failed to grow into that full scale assumption of responsibility which is their natural goal.

Men become disoriented in the presence of unlimited depth of feeling toward their own kind; they become disorganized by an acceptance of vigor without boundaries in their attitudes toward each other. Depth of feeling toward other persons enters the area of sexuality; vigor of attitude enters the scope of the celebrative or euphoric mood.

Because sensitivity in the character enriches all the feeling potential, including the sexual, a character built on love must handle a great deal of sexual feeling without loss of the devotion to the creative goals of love. Because an enlivened character adds to the energy of all the personality attitudes, including the celebrative, a character built on power must handle a great deal of celebrative attitude without loss of interest in the creative goals of power.

In a state of nature, sex is an overflow phenomenon which comes to an end in favor of the rearing of the young. Among civilized personalities of the yielding type, sexuality is a constant component of the character. The celebrative mood is that overflow state which establishes the domain, leading one male to fight off all others, or any enemy with which he can deal, and develops into the fixed homemaking which provides security for the young. Among civilized personalities of the assertive type, celebration is a constant component of the character. Men of thought dream and men of action play. In the dreams of thinkers there is a strong tendency toward sexualization; this accounts for their disorientation. In the play of men of action there is a celebrative element; this accounts for their disorganization.

The history of civilization psychologically speaking is the story of the struggle of deep men with wasteful sexuality and vigorous men with meaningless celebration. If men attempt to solve their sexual problems by giving up the depth in their own natures, mankind suffers because without progress in human understanding faith in human nature itself is destroyed. If men attempt to bypass their celebrative difficulties by abandoning the vigor in their natures, mankind is the loser because without progress in human responsibility hope disappears from human affairs, impoverishing the life of action.

Civilization maintains itself by assuring a continual flow of new knowledge and new ability; with out progress, civilization loses its capacity to assure the mental health and social conformity of its members. Civilization promotes the masculine spirit in its leaders, and protects in an equal and opposite way the feminine quality of its teachers. The superman quality of the heroic leader is matched by the supersensitive and feminine quality of the teacher who embodies goodness. Personal growth must bring the individual to the outer limits of his capacity to express masculinity or femininity, courage or honesty, strength or wisdom, in his individual life; then the truth and right which his personal feelings and experiences have brought into being are applied for the benefit of civilization itself. During any personal growth phase, the individual shows adolescent-like qualities, quite separate from his actual biological adolescence, and this is a period of intensification of sexuality and the celebrative spirit. Where individuals never reach the endpoint of insight or mastery which they seek, they spend a lifetime with adolescent characteristics. Such individuals show neurotic and delinquent difficulties.

The euphoric or celebrative spirit is established where a surplus of energy is suddenly released through the revelation of total possession, that is, everything within the scope of the individual belongs to him. This totalization of the self is related to a limitation of the world in the form of the domain. The response of the female is the force that limits the male world. Everything she feels for has meaning; the rest lies outside. The love of the female releases the celebrative spirit in the male.

Sexual feeling is attached to a mate where a surplus capacity for tension is sympathetically shared through sexual excitement, the sexual sharing being limited in time to the coital act. The sexual response of the male is the source of feeling which limits sexual excitement in time, and leads to an idealization of the male as a source of stimulation. Everything the male does has value; everything else is forgotten. The personal power of the male releases continual sexual feeling in the female.

A male in a celebrative state will enter sexuality only in the temporary form which the sex act channels. A female in a state of sexual feeling will enter a celebrative mood only through partial participation which the celebrative release of the male makes possible. It is through the phallus and its potential for sexual discharge that the male becomes sexual; it is only through the female's social capacity for altruistic surrender to the male that the female becomes celebrative.

Sexual feeling is feminine in nature; the male enters sexuality as if it were a trap, and only on the basis of a time limited experience, from which deliverance is guaranteed by the orgasm. The celebrative attitude is masculine in nature; the female enters celebration hesitantly as if she were stepping into a strange world, accepting the masculine euphoria only within the spatial limits established by her needs. The release of the male into a world of unlimited willfulness is her triumph. The sex act ends in the orgasm; the celebrative state begins in the feminine release, or feminine triumph. At the social level among men the celebrative release is established by the accumulation of worldly indulgences in excess, such as food and drink, for a gregarious sharing of the euphoric mood. The giving of a party contains the feminine celebrative triumph.

All depth of personality enters the area of sexuality; all vigor in the personality involves celebrative attitudes. Sexuality does not imply the sex act, however, nor does the celebrative attitude require expression in a socially established way. Sexuality which is in surplus is utilized in relationships between the sexes where both partners have the same yielding personality and neither is a true ideal to the other. Celebrative attitudes which are in surplus are utilized in marriage where both partners have the same assertive personalities and neither is capable of altruistic surrender to the other. The basic security of yielding personalities leaves them with a surplus of feeling which can readily flow into sexuality; the basic freedom of assertive personalities endows them with a surplus of energy which can readily become celebrative in quality. The sexuality of assertive personalities, which is never in surplus under healthy conditions, comes when encouraged under conventional conditions and is confined to the sex act itself. The celebrative tendencies of yielding personalities, which are also never in surplus when the individual is living in a socially harmonious fashion, comes when socially encouraged and is confined to the act of giving a party itself.

The celebrative event is a holiday within a limited time dimension, with an unlimited motility shared gregariously. It takes place in a euphoric mood, which is characterized by an unqualified and unbounded energy investment. It is released in a triumphant fashion through surplus created by feminine productivity. It goes of its own momentum until the surplus is consumed.

The sexual act opens the organism to unlimited feeling, within a particular spatial area, and is private in nature. It takes place with autistic feeling, which is characteristic of an unqualified and unlimited tension holding capacity. It ends orgastically through an intensification created by masculine persistence in accepting a mounting sexual feeling. It is self-perpetuating until orgastic release.

Neither the sex act nor the celebrative event have maintained their primitive mated quality in the psychology of civilized people. Sexuality is intensified in all yielding personalities, and is utilized as a source of pleasure in psychologically unmated ways. The emergence of sexual feeling in love and in the creative applications of love in social relationships has compromised men's capacities for human understanding. The celebrative attitude is aroused in all assertive personalities, and is utilized as a source of enjoyment in psychologically unmated ways. The emergence of the celebrative attitude in power relationships and in the creative outlets for power has diminished men's attachment to responsibility in human affairs.

The attempt to control sex and celebration, keeping them in the channels where they belong, tells the fundamental story of the psychological growth of civilized man and the progress of civilization itself. Universal love of the Christian variety is an expression of creative love which operates outside the sexual sphere and is an essential element of human maturity. Objective power of the democratic variety is an expression of creative power which operates outside the celebrative sphere and is another essential element of human maturity.

One way to gain access to the historical facts of man's struggle with sex and celebration lies in the analysis of epic stories of the heroes of civilization as recorded in literature. Literary material can substitute for case material to which the student no longer has access, thus providing insights into civilization's progress. Stories of the vicissitudes of heroic action give expression both to the nature of the masculine ideal at the time and to the nature of the opportunity available to masculinity.

In this work, the ancient Greek world will be seen through the eyes of Homer in his story of the masculine aspirations of Odysseus; this world will stand in contrast to the renaissance world of Shakespeare as seen in The Tempest and Hamlet; and finally come the beginnings of modernity as revealed in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim and Nostromo.

In the story of Odysseus' wanderings, Homer presents a psychological picture of the struggles of masculinity to make a home for itself in the civilized world. This is the highly developed masculinity which civilization alone can create; no animal, however much he is the master of all he surveys within his own domain, can rival the super-man status of the hero which civilized life produces. The civilized hero has a self-confidence which survives unmanageable chaos and defeat; his strength resides in the social value of his posture, since he is always a leader of men and sure that he will be admired for it. Odysseus' story contains the beginnings of political life; in the background, the religious spirit on which his freedom rests is sometimes richly useful to him and at other times a source of betrayal.

In its early phases, politics must deal primarily with the criminal tendencies of man; the accumulation of masculine energy tends to establish a domain for itself, separate from the totality of society, so that a group or gang sets up a set of standards which lack universality. An equal and comparable problem exists in religion, which in its early phases must deal with the paranoid tendencies of civilized personalities. Once thinkers develop a deep capacity for holding tension in a reflective way, there is a tendency to substitute fragments for wholes, thus taking beliefs that are essentially private and establishing them as social ideas through authoritarian command.

One of the characteristics of the criminal dissipation of energy is the intrusion of the celebrative tendency into social institutions. Behind the great sweep of the misplaced celebrative impulses hides all the symptoms of man's social disorders, including revolution, international warfare, and established social injustice. One of the characteristics of the paranoid displacement of tension-bearing is the replacement of creative love by sexual prowess. Behind the false idol of misplaced sexual possessiveness hides all the symptoms of man's self-indulgent worship of pleasure, including perversity, neurotic symptoms, and the loss of meaning in mental processes, which abandons creative thinking to weightless dreaming.

The Odyssey opens with the double intervention of Athene, the goddess of wisdom, in the stalemate of Odysseus' long entrapment by the nymph Calypso, and the arousal of hope for Odysseus' return in the spirit of his son Telemachus. Although Odysseus refused to accept a life of sexual love with Calypso, he could not, out of his own strength and personal resources, escape the attraction which she exerted over him. Since her hold over him created a relationship without enjoyment and without practical advantages for him, it may be concluded that some tendency alien to his character was at work, namely, a superficial feminine tendency in Odysseus himself. His tenure with Calypso had an obsessive ruminative quality, filled with suffering. Only genuine wisdom, based on a true femininity of creative quality, could set Odysseus free of the helpless femininity which Calypso found as a weakness in his masculinity.

One of the reasons that Odysseus was driven back to a false reliance on his own obsessive feminine tendencies is to be found in the animosity of Poseidon, the God of the Oceans. In the person of Poseidon the ancient Greeks symbolized the aggressive sexual possessiveness which is a corruption of the feminine viewpoint in life. Poseidon partakes in his character of those feminine traits which are inherent in the eternal qualities of the sea, and the power which emerges suddenly in the storms to which the sea is subject. This power is never creative, but has an emergency status and angry quality. In order to assuage this unbridled and senseless anger Poseidon is encouraged to indulge his sensuality. It was Odysseus' misfortune to blind Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, and therefore incur his unrelenting animosity. These gigantic and evil figures represent self-love which cannot reach communication, being built on a private understanding which uses power to spread itself in the world. Poseidon must arouse fear in others as a means of producing a community of common feeling and mutual agreement.

Because Odysseus' masculinity could not find love in the response of an evil giant, symbolic of paranoid thinking, his strength was not equal to the task of liberating himself from the entanglement of Calypso's dependent desires. At the same time, in far off Ithaca, his son Telemachus found himself living in an essentially criminal world where the celebrative spirit usurped the place of responsible political institutions. The essence of the criminal mode of behavior lies in the misidentification of opportunity. The will of the criminal advances wherever it is not opposed; if advantage comes, this is taken to be opportunity without regard to the real nature of the materials which are exploited. What begins in a purely masculine attitude of the enjoyment of a mood ends in an attempt at a practical adaptation to the world. The celebrative experience does not maintain separation from adaptive involvement. Playfulness turns its hand to grim reality, and all the meanings of life are formed out of the advantages of the moment.

When Athene aroused hope in Telemachus for the return of Odysseus he was able to assume the function of master in his own house, thus separating himself from the passive inactivity which had previously paralyzed him. To the degree that the suitors accepted his position, their celebrative activity became dissociated from the social control, returning to the holiday atmosphere appropriate to invited guests.

In the Assembly which debated Telemachus' expedition the tenuous quality of the political institutions of Ithaca is made clear. Leadership depends on the personal strength of the leader. With Odysseus absent, there has been no meeting of the Assembly until now. The encroachment of the suitors on the property and prestige of Odysseus and his family is the sole subject of debate. At the heart of this issue lies the receptivity of Penelope to the suitors; she neither dismisses nor accepts them. This helplessness Telemachus now, for the first time, puts aside and aligns himself with the interests of his absent father, thus precipitating a crisis in his relationship with the suitors. The passivity of Penelope is often misidentified as a truly feminine trait; it is actually a product of weakness which can do no harm as long as it does not actively influence social life. Within the family, passive feelings contribute to the permanence of the family group. It is the helpless tendency of Penelope to include outsiders within the family group that the suitors exploit, and although they present themselves in the light of genuine suitors they are actually a band of celebrant brothers who are taking advantage of Penelope's apparently unwilling but extravagant hospitality.

Masculinity finds opportunity through the responsiveness created by love; it is only in a world enriched by knowledge that power can find a complete outlet for its potential. When masculinity seeks to manifest itself through the vanity of a sexually possessive love, the basis for masculine brotherhood is destroyed. Cooperation in social skills is the basis of politics; this sharing depends on a spontaneous gregariousness among men. Sexual feeling, like any other deep feeling, is universally shared in the community of men and becomes a source of mutual sympathy and social cohesion. If sexuality is distorted into an expression of power where one man's sexual life shuts out another's in a competitive pattern, sexuality becomes a seduction which destroys masculine responsibility and turns the assertive attitude into antisocial criminality.

Universal love, and the non-sexual creative products of its understanding, creates opportunity for experience without limit; truth is eternal and available to all. Exploitation by one does not bar exploitation by another; the more truth is used, the more useful it becomes. Objective power is non-celebrative; it deals with situations in a total way without compromise. Under the influence of the discipline of war-making, the Argive Greeks attained a high maturity in their social institutions. With the corrupting effect of victory, however, the patronage of the gods was withdrawn. The cooperation inherent in military life creates the masculine ideal in civilization; the soldier is the embodiment of the highest human capacity for responsibility, just as the priest's life gives meaning to the reality inherent in human understanding. In contrast to the great attainments of the human discipline in the Trojan War, the story of the seduction of Queen Clytaemnestra gives expression to the criminal displacement of human pride when it is contaminated by sexuality. Aegisthus, who became the murderer of Agamemnon, was himself killed by Orestes, Agamemnon's son. Orestes thus took the posture of the hero without any true exploitation of human resources, acting out of the emergency need to control criminality. Orestes' attainment, like the criminal act which provoked it, was a unique event tied to a particular set of circumstances in a passive way. It was the situation, not the man, that willed the act; it was a private submission to an inevitable fate, not an autonomous undertaking of social mastery in the community of men. Such heroism becomes the victim of chance and as often as not leads down a criminal path itself.

Menelaus embodies the ancient Greek ideal of the leader. He possesses great riches but he is not content to feel his power through either material ownership nor through possession of the beautiful Helen, daughter of the God Zeus. He counts his true possessions in terms of human attachments, feeling the love which comes to men out of a brotherhood of mutually shared responsibility. He tells Telemachus and Nestor's son: "How happy I could be, here in my house, with even a third of my former estate, if those friends of mine were still alive who died long ago on the broad plains of Troy, so far from Argos where the horses graze!" (1)

Although Menelaus' wife, Helen, whose abduction by Paris began the Trojan War, is herself a practitioner of magic, this influence is kept dissociated from the world of masculine responsibility. Helen's magic is a contribution to celebrative relief from the cares of life, consisting of a drug which temporarily banishes painful memories, thus insuring a happy mood. Such a drug performs a function which underlies all addictions, namely, encouraging dissociation through breaking up the sense of continuity, enabling individuals to live wholly in the present. The story of Menelaus' successful struggle with Proteus of Egypt, the Old Man of the Sea, presents him in the role of a conqueror of magic, wherein he triumphs over a god because he will not be influenced by magical transformation. The god is thus forced to tell Menelaus the truth about his inability to leave Egypt, and although this information leads to an arduous trip to make the necessary sacrifices, Menelaus does not hesitate to undertake it. When men accept magic because the truth is inaccessible to them, they become the potential victims of fate, since behind magic lies always the unseen will of another, whereas truth is eternal and is available for all. Magic contains understanding brought into being because there is a desire for it, not because it is true. When leadership puts magic aside it becomes dependent on sources of truth which lie outside itself. The great undertakings out of which leadership takes its being call for deep comprehension; these insights must come from a non-political source, and it is in religion that these insights take their origin. Progress in civilization is always two-fold; political life cannot develop without reliable insights into human affairs, nor can religious life develop without a living ideal of mastery in human interaction. In a paranoid world, political life remains a tool of immature opportunism; in a criminal world, religious life fails to find the unity in idealism on which meaning rests.

The ending of Odysseus' imprisonment in Calypso's home expresses the triumph over seduction and its inherent passivity. Love is masculinity's greatest resource; sexuality, a potential prison to the aspirations of the man of action. Love creates understanding which becomes a permanent possession of society; sexuality is private in nature and endows experience with meaning only in terms of momentary pleasure. Because sexual feeling is deep and without limit it has a permanent quality, like truth itself, but it has no social consequences. The power that comes from the possession of the means to pleasure is a passive power, because it avoids obstacles, being a product of vanity. Objective power takes its being in the growth that comes from overcoming chaos; passive power is always complete, being intolerant of the guilt which motivates new responsibility. Passivity cannot be inspired; it makes a false withdrawal into a sensual and sentimentally romantic world.

Calypso offers Odysseus immortality, which is an expression of the eternal quality of love, but Odysseus rejects this temptation, retaining his attachment to the total involvement in experience. Calypso's offer constitutes an invitation to live a feminine life; Odysseus remains loyal to his own masculine personality, retaining a character based on power. In civilized character development, men must accept the specialization of their natures; there is nothing biologically automatic about it. If a man counted on his biological tendency to be masculine in order to reach a truly assertive character, he could only end with a criminal personality. On the other hand, the feminine yielding personality must renounce the biologically assertive tendencies which do exist. Every assertive person must learn to renounce his passive longings for seeming immortality; every yielding person must accept a surrender of his aggressive readiness for apparent wholeness in the experiential participation in life.

Odysseus renounced the false sexual love of Calypso, but could not separate himself from her. "He had to sleep with her under the roof of the cavern, cold lover with an ardent dame." (2) Only the genuine love of Athene could set the forces of his liberation in motion. He departed in a ship built by himself, having "neither gods nor men to help him," (3) supported only by the faith of the goddess of wisdom.

In entering the country of the Phaeacians, Odysseus brings to an end the misery of his inner conflict with passive needs and his struggles with the hateful opposition of Poseidon. In the great physical effort of survival he uses all his energy; he enters the land of the Phaeacians naked and with no resource save his moral strength and the love of the gods. Alcinous is the grandson of Poseidon; although the mating of Poseidon and the Nymph Thoosa produced a Cyclops, Polyphemus, who symbolizes brute aggression, the mating with Periboea, the loveliest woman of her time, gave issue to a noble line of kings who built an idyllic country, industrious, efficient, and wise, in which philosophical depth underlay all political institutions. In Alcinous' kingdom the hateful spirit of Poseidon has dissolved, being replaced by a universal human understanding. There is a remoteness in the land of Scheria, where the Phaeacians live; it is off the track of ordinary travel and the city is surrounded by high battlements. The practice of giving aid to any traveler is connected with this remoteness. The withdrawal inherent in creative thinking is made possible to the Phaeacians by their geographical location. Their ability as seamen makes social intercourse available to them in their own terms. In rescuing Odysseus, however, their universality of feeling must come to an end. Poseidon's wrath is aroused. King Alcinous feels impelled to abandon his humanitarian policy in order to save the city from becoming landlocked in revenge.

In speaking to the Phaeacians, Odysseus makes clear that he gave his heart neither to Calypso nor to Circe, the Aegean witch, but has retained his single-minded intention to return home. The return to Ithaca involves the determination to fulfil his own masculine character through the establishment of mature leadership rather than through the sense of power inherent in sensual gratification. Leadership implies a lifetime of growth; the addiction to sensuality brings a sense of meaning which obviates the need for growth. The first step away from Ilium on his journey home is reported by Odysseus to be the sacking of the city of Cicones. The rich plunder, including the wives of the destroyed men of the city, was divided equally among his men. Once exposed to the corruption of this rich living, so markedly in contrast to the previously disciplined army life, his men refused to listen to Odysseus' desire to leave, but remained on the shore drinking and butchering sheep and fatted cattle. In consequence, Odysseus' men were exposed to a surprise counterattack which broke the Achaean ranks. Having lost six men from each ship, the Greeks departed with heavy hearts; unfavorable winds now sent them to the country of the Lotus-eaters. Some of his men fell victim to the Lotus appetite, which brought forgetfulness of home; Odysseus used force to separate them from their addiction.

Odysseus and his men next came to the land of the Cyclopes, "a fierce, uncivilized people, who never lift a hand to plant or plough but put their trust in Providence." (4) The Cyclopes express the reliance on aggressive force in human relationships, a corruption of power arising from the strength inherent in numbers and size. Aggression is based on the control of group feeling and social ideas; the selfish willfulness of the aggressive person is shared among a group of individuals who think alike and cooperate for their mutually shared supremacy. Aggression does not accumulate skill or develop resources; it must triumph without dealing with obstacles, releasing celebrative attitudes, or fail, in which case the group cohesion is lost. Behind aggression lies the paranoid viewpoint. Although paranoid concepts are essentially private, being intuitive impressions elevated to the status of insight, the aggressive community overcomes this privacy by a group sharing of ideas, choosing those ideas which put power in the hands of all the members. This power is useless unless it leads directly to the celebrative attitude. Whereas masculinity is subject to the seduction inherent in addicting sensuality, especially sexuality, femininity is subject to the intimidation inherent in corrupting power, especially the celebrative attitude, which results in a compulsion toward action in aggressive persons. If they do not consistently have their own way, they are subject to disorienting fear. Passive masculinity which is deprived of sensual gratification is subject to rage.

Polyphemus is depicted as a "lonely shepherd of sequestered flocks, who had no truck with others of his kind but lived aloof in his own lawless way." (5) This separateness was the product of alien qualities; "No one," says Odysseus, "would have taken him for a man who ate bread like ourselves." (6) Polyphemus inspired fear in Odysseus and his men; he lacked elemental social feeling, ignoring the fundamental laws by which men live. His answer to Odysseus' appeal for recognition of the rights of travelers was the cannibalistic destruction of two of Odysseus' men. The means to the Cyclops' undoing lay in the special wine which Odysseus was given by a priest of Apollo whom Odysseus protected, in an accidental meeting. Because of Odysseus' responsible attitude toward the priest and his family he was rewarded by a gift of a wonderful secret wine whose fumes were irresistible, even when diluted twenty times. When this wine was offered, "abstinence could have no charms." (7) This wine represents the cohesive effect of human love, coming from those secret sources where depth of understanding lies. This secrecy produces a communicable social asset, insight, in contrast to the privacy of paranoid thinking which is forever cut off from attachment to others. Odysseus now finds the means to so isolate Polyphemus as to protect himself from the menace he embodies. He uses the wine to draw Polyphemus into a momentary social empathy, and through over-indulgence to put him to sleep. He and his men then destroy the sight of the Cyclops' single eye. Through the exercise of the greatest ingenuity Odysseus makes his escape from the cave and later from the shore. Odysseus made the mistake of attempting to communicate with the Cyclops and almost lost his ship in the process. The hatred of which the Cyclops was capable is expressed in his prayer to the Lord Poseidon to undo the manhood of Odysseus.

The next landfall of the wandering Odysseus was on the floating island of Aeolia, surrounded by a wall of bronze. This place was occupied exclusively by one family, whose sons and daughters were joined in incestuous union; "Of luxuries they have a never failing store. All day long the house is fragrant with the roasting of meat." (8) The head of the family, being warden of the gales, provided Odysseus with a pouch in which the boisterous energies of all the winds were confined. The exercise of this arbitrary authority over the winds could not provide the necessary freedom for Odysseus' attainment of his goal, because such magical methods aroused the miraculous tendencies in Odysseus' comrades, and the pouch was opened in the belief that it contained great riches. When the fleet had been blown from the shores of Ithaca back to the Aeolian Isle, Aeolus was implacable in his denunciation of Odysseus, thus clearly establishing the lack of continuity in his feeling for Odysseus' task. As long as Odysseus' progress reflected credit on the arbitrary power of Aeolus, based on corruption and immorality, it was freely offered, but there was no permanent love for Odysseus' masculine aspirations.

The same theme of betrayal by an apparent receptivity which becomes brutality is repeated in the land of the Laestrygonians. Odysseus' ships tied up in sheltered waters of an idyllic harbor, easy of access but so protected as never to be exposed even to a moderate sea. Without warning, huge creatures appear, more like giants than men, who pelt the ships with great lumps of rock and harpoon the dying sailors, carrying them off for cannibalistic purposes. The only rescue for those still alive lay in making a quick retreat.

The next harbor of Odysseus' ships was on the island where the goddess Circe performed her magic. Half of Odysseus' men fell victim to the invitation given by her lovely feminine voice to become her guests; she fed them a mixture of cheese, barley-meal, and yellow honey flavored with Pramnian wine. This dish contained a powerful drug which deprived them of all memory of their native land. When the men had thus come under her influence, she struck them with her wand, converting them to pigs. The leader, Eurylochus, alone escaped to relate the story of the men's plight to Odysseus, and begged him to retreat immediately in order that both might save themselves from a menace which could not be controlled. Odysseus immediately released Eurylochus from responsibility for action, but undertook to rescue his men himself. In this moment of courage and self-confidence, Odysseus is helped by Hermes in the form of a charming adolescent youth. This figure represents a sexually innocent but vigorous and enlivened male personality who has within himself the capacity to avoid seduction. With the power inherent in the herb which Hermes offered, Odysseus could enter the sphere of Circe's influence without being converted to an animal; he was instructed not to refuse even sexual intimacy if he was to gain Circe's cooperation. Through the influence of the masculine ideal embodied in Hermes' adolescent figure, Odysseus was able to eliminate seduction in favor of responsible cooperation, which bred its own kind of gentleness and warmth. Because Circe was forced to respect Odysseus, she gained more in human comradeship, and what started in a sorcerer's hate ended in a great celebrant holiday founded in gregarious feeling, of a year's duration. When Odysseus at last announced to Circe his intention to return to Ithaca, she informed him that the path lay through the Halls of Hades, to consult the soul of Teiresias, the blind Theban prophet, whose understanding alone lived on in a world of death. Thus Homer expresses the dependence of Odysseus on wisdom coming from an outside source.

The menace of Scylla, the six-headed monster, and Charybdis, the sucking whirlpool, express the Greek insight into misplaced sexual and celebrative tendencies. Scylla is the embodiment of willfulness that has no constructive meaning, being purely autocratic, sadistic, and brutal in nature. Such willfulness comes as a release mechanism from an overaccumulation of tension, on a background of frustrated love which finds no harmony with the world of experience. Scylla's actions are compulsive in nature, undertaken as a form of corrupt celebrative play; reason cannot influence such behavior. Scylla is a paranoid figure who must be quarantined so that her private understanding will not influence others. Charybdis embodies a false self-awareness without constructive value, being purely dogmatic, masochistic, and sentimental in nature. Such self-awareness comes as a protection from an overabundance of energy, as a result of frustrated power which finds no opportunity in the world of feeling. Charybdis expresses an obsessive state of preoccupation with principles essentially autistic and sexual in nature; the challenge of group morale cannot influence such a state of thought. Charybdis is a criminal figure whose destructiveness must be controlled by whatever means are appropriate.

The aggressiveness of Scylla's behavior cannot be changed; by not fighting back, Odysseus is able to cut his losses to a minimum. The avoidance of identification with the aggressor makes possible a deep understanding which releases the potential victim from involvement in the paranoid system. The passivity of Charybdis' nature cannot be altered. By not allowing himself to be drawn into this area of influence, Odysseus saves his ship from destruction. The refusal of cooperation with Charybdis makes possible an autonomous sense of responsibility which controls the criminal intent.

Those who take up arms against delusional ideas will be destroyed, because in thus giving meaning to that which is without meaning they abandon themselves to an unknowable world. Those who ignore criminal social behavior will also be destroyed, because they allow value to become attached to patterns of action which should not be rewarded, thus inviting social chaos.

In addition to the route on which Scylla and Charybdis lie, there is one which leads past the sheer cliffs known as the Wandering Rocks. Against these cliffs great breakers thunder in, and even the birds cannot fly by in safety. Only one man has ever successfully made the passage, the celebrated Jason, homeward bound with the Golden Fleece. In this alternate route the ancient Greeks give expression to their awareness of a creative mode of living which avoids the privacy of paranoid thinking and the separateness of criminal behavior. It has not been used by any save the greatest of heroes, but it is there.

Having escaped the perils of the social forces inherent in Scylla, Charybdis, and the Rocks, under Odysseus' leadership, Odysseus' men now are brought to their destruction by a heretical refusal to adhere to the truths that Odysseus received from Teiresias and Circe; they follow an opportunistic and criminal course in slaying the sacred cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion. This indulgence of their appetites operates as an addicting influence, seducing them from their responsibility toward regaining their homeland. In violent and certain reaction to this criminal action, Zeus destroyed Odysseus' ships, carrying all but Odysseus to their death. In being swept along by the great storm which followed, Odysseus was forced once more to run the gauntlet of the dread Charybdis. The turbulent waters flung him high up to where the luxuriant fig tree grew at the top of Charybdis' rock. Odysseus clung there until his mast and keel, on which he rode as a raft, were spewed up by Charybdis. Astride these great logs he drifted for nine days, only to return to Calypso's island. Once more, love had stood between Odysseus and the fate of ordinary men. In the symbolism of the fig tree is contained the rich fruitfulness which feminine depth provides as a terrain for the self-expression of masculinity.

Odysseus arrived in Ithaca alone with the material goods given him by the Phaeacians, filled with ruminative doubts about his welcome in his own land. At this time the counsel of Athene, who came to him first in the form of a delicate young shepherd, changing as they spoke into a tall, beautiful, and accomplished woman, reinforced his self-confidence and inspired his determination to win control of his own house. Athene prepared Odysseus to conceal his identity as he entered his palace, thus gaining the opportunity for observation of the situation, which would permit him to choose the grounds on which his battle would be fought. Odysseus felt that he would have come to the same miserable end as King Agamemnon.

-- reprinted from The Ninth Street Center Journal 6, Autumn 1986