Impotent
Rage And The Myth of Attis
Jim
Moyers, MA, MFT
The Death of Attis - Glanum, St. Rémy, France
A number of years ago, in an
undergraduate class on Hellenistic
religion, I encountered the strange story of Attis. This complex
myth, brought from Asia Minor to ancient Rome, exists in several
differing, and rather bewildering versions. To simplify it, Attis
was a young man with whom the Great Mother goddess,
Cybele, was in love. Ignoring Cybele’s passion for him, Attis
attempted to marry a mortal woman. Enraged by the snub, Cybele
disrupted the wedding, driving Attis into a mad frenzy in which he
castrated himself. His intended bride was killed by Cybele, and
Attis bled to death from his castration. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attis
for more details.)
While most of my classmates regarded
this tale as another bizarre
example of ancient mythology, I was fascinated, although not quite sure
why. Only later did I realize that the myth of Attis represents a
kind of impotent male rage that I knew all too well from first hand
experience. I have also come to realize that this kind of blind,
destructive rage is involved in many instances of domestic violence.
From early in my life, I had periodic
outbursts of uncontrollable anger
that seemed to come from someplace outside myself. In a sort of
possession state, I would feel as if something that was not me had
taken control. Fortunately I never did serious damage during
these outbursts, but they would leave me, and anyone who
happened to be in the vicinity, wondering what had happened.
The outbursts continued into
adulthood. After my marriage my wife
was the often the object of my rage. While I normally felt a
great deal of love for her, when in one of these states I was aware
only of
hatred. I several times came close to physically attacking
her. Neither she nor I had any idea of where this terrible thing
came from or what could be done about it. I only knew that I
seemed to be incapable of controlling it, and was very ashamed of my
inability to do so. If a man was supposed to always be in
control of himself, I clearly was failing to live up to expectations.
In my late twenties I began
psychotherapy. While I didn't go into
therapy with the conscious intention of dealing with my angry
outbursts, they did, of course, come up despite my
resistance to talking about them. With my therapist’s support I
began to explore what I experienced as a shameful aspect of who
myself. After much careful examination of these seeming
possession states, I came to realize that they were triggered by
something, often a critical remark by my wife, that I construed to be
some sort of attack on my competency as a man. I would
desperately try to defend my image of myself relative to the masculine
ideal that I unconsciously believed I should match, denying what I took
to be feminine (because it was not part of my idealized masculine
image) weakness. But since my wife’s critical observations were
generally pretty accurate, refuting them was difficult. Despite
my struggle to stay in control of the situation, my sense of
powerlessness, and panic, only increased, further threatening the
illusion of myself as a strong, competent male, making my attempts to
defend that self-image all the more frantic. Unable to either win
or give up my defense, I would suddenly find “something else” in
control, completely unmanning me.
According to my wife, I would behave
“like a hysterical woman” during
these episodes. This of course did nothing to booster the
masculine self image I was striving to maintain. My refusal to
admit the existence of “feminine weakness” in myself paradoxically made
me into the embodiment of the very traits I was trying my best to
deny. Attis was driven to castrate himself; I was rendered
impotent.
My therapist, who had a Jungian
orientation, introduced me to the idea
of the “anima,” the feminine element within a man’s psyche.
Jung’s ideas about masculine and feminine have been challenged as
sexist and have been modified as social ideas about gender have become
less rigid. But I continue to find Jung’s idea that traits
associated with the opposite sex tend to be unconscious within an
individual’s psyche useful in both my personal experience and my work
with psychotherapy clients. Just as with any aspect of one’s self
which remains unconscious, when a man refuses to acknowledge his
feminine side, it is apt to act as if it were an autonomous entity,
taking control of him against his will. The anima-possessed man,
according to Jung, behaves like a “second rate woman,” unconsciously
acting out the negative characteristics he associates with the feminine
from which he seeeks to distance himself. So I acted the part of
a stereotypal “hysterical woman.” It is interesting to note that
the priests
of Cybele, who followed Attis’ example of self-castration and dressed
as women, were called “counterfeit women.”
In exploring the background for my
rage, I realized that the idealized
image I had been trying to emulate had little correspondence with who I
actually was. My masculine ideal was formed around a childhood
image of the rugged frontiersman who was equal to any task, always knew
what to do and did it without letting his feelings show. There
was no room for “womanly weakness” in such a heroic figure. But I
do have many personality traits, which I have had to learn to recognize
as actually being among my strengths, that are traditionally thought of
as feminine. If I was going to be Davy Crockett (my childhood
hero), I certainly couldn’t put up with such “shortcoming.” In
the service of an unrealistic masculine ideal, I tried to deny who I
was, only to be reminded of my real identity in a most forceful and
unwelcome way.
As I learned to more consciously
acknowledge my other, feminine, side,
the “anima attacks” became less frequent, eventually virtually
disappearing. When I stopped attacking my inner woman as it were,
she stopped attacking me. We became partners instead of
opponents. Giving up my need to live up to an idealized and
unrealistic male image, I actually became more of a real man, in
contrast to the illusionary ideal I had been trying to preserve against
all evidence to the contrary. I was better able to use both my
masculine and feminine sides without being overpowered by either.
Conscious recognition of the feminine
is not the same thing as
unthinking surrender (as men so often seem to fear) to the power it
represents. Attis’ mistake was not one of refusing Cybele’s
demands; it was rather a failure to consciously deal with them.
The myth seems to indicate that he didn’t say “no.” He just tried
to ignore her, with tragic results. If one is to truly become a
man, free from unconscious control by the anima, he must make an active
decision to face and deal with the demands made on him by the feminine,
especially those of the Mother, in both her personal (in the form of
his actual mother) and archetypal forms.
All boys first encounter the feminine
via their mothers. Attis’
father was unknown to him. This is often the case in myths of the
hero (Attis is a type of failed hero). Men tend to form
their identity as men more in relation to their mothers than their
fathers. In order for a boy to identify himself as male, he must
first realize that he differs in some radical ways from his
mother. At the same time, it is often his mother who tells him in
so many ways spoken and unspoken what he must do to be her “little man.”
In order to be a “real man” then, a
boy must somehow form an identity
for himself as someone distinctly different from his mother while at
the same time winning her approval by living up to her image of the
ideal male, something his father, being only human, may well have
failed to do. A mother overly involved with her son may elevate
him to a sort of semi-divine status, a danger reflected in myths of the
divine son-lover (such as Attis) who never achieves full manhood.
Caught between the need to be distinguish themselves from mother while
also needing her approval, it is no wonder so many men are confused
about their relation to the feminine, both within their own psyches and
as represented by the women in their lives.
In the Grimms’ tale of “Iron Hans”
(see my "From
Wildman to King") a little boy
frees a caged wild man with a key
that had been placed for safe keeping under his mother’s pillow.
As the fairy tale indicates, the key to unlocking primal male energy
often comes through some sort of transgression of the mother’s
authority.
It was very important for me to be a
“good boy” for my mother. I
was told that I should “be like Jesus” (another divine son-lover
figure), an impossible ideal if there ever was one. I thought I
had escaped this demand when I married someone from a very different
religious background with whom I could and did do things my mother’s
“good boy” would never do. But at times I still heard my mother’s
disapproving voice, often mistakenly thinking it came from my wife.
I discovered that I had never
consciously faced and dealt with my
mother’s expectations of me. I tried to ignore them as Attis
tried to ignore Cybele. But, again like Attis, I found myself
overwhelmed and reduced to impotence, helpless before the power of the
unacknowledged mother whose voice I continued to hear.
Cybele was the Great Mother goddess,
an archetypal, non-human
entity. We often make our mothers into goddesses (and goddesses
are not always benevolent beings!), giving them an importance and power
which does not belong to the human beings they really are. If we
are to reclaim the power we have thus given away, we must see through
the image of the Great Mother, in both her nurturing and devouring
aspects, that we have projected onto our mothers as well as other women
in our lives. It is impossible for a mere mortal man to have a
sense of his own power if he believes that he is in a relationship with
a goddess.
As I struggled with my mother issues,
much to my surprise I discovered
that she was actually quite different from the image I had formed of
her. She really did not demand that I remain forever under her
power, threatening to withhold her love if I do not do so. She
was simply another human being, with good and bad points like all other
human beings. I must admit that I still do not always see it this
way, but these days I manage to more often see through my
projections than I used to.
I often projected the critical
maternal voice, the trigger for my
rages, onto my wife. But I also hear that voice less often.
Anger I may feel towards her now tends to be more clearly related to
what is actually happening between us than with what I used to imagine
was happening. As I withdraw my image of the archetypal mother
from my real mother, I also withdraw it from other women in my
life. My relationship with my wife, a relation Attis was unable
to establish, is more real. In taking back the power I had given
up in an unequal relationship with the archetypal Great Mother, I am
able to have a fulfilling relationship as a real man with a real woman
who is my equal.
© 2008 James Moyers
May be reproduced with source credited.
An earlier version was published in
the Men’s
Journal, Summer 1986 and
reprinted in Yevrah Ornstein, editor, From
the Hearts of Men (Woodacre,
CA: Harmonia Press, 1991).
Jim Moyers, MFT
2424 Dwight Way #1
Berkeley, CA 94704
email: jimmoyers@mac.com
Home Page: http://www.jimmoyers.com