Real men.,
I’ve struggled with depression since childhood. I’ve read volume after volume on the subject. Most of it, however earnest, just blows smoke.
This one’s different. Real is the only therapist I’ve read who captures the anger behind depression–dammit, harm has been done to innocent people, and the pain they suffer is unrecognised, devalued or morally stigmatised becuse the sufferers happen to be male.
The rage they feel against the perpetrator(s)never gets a focus. After all, it would be focussed on the people who cared for you as you grew. What does one do if the hand that beats you is the hand that feeds you? You do what you need to survive the moment. You stay fed. Only later do you fail to thrive.
Terrence Real focusses his own rage on this injustice–and rage, indeed, he does. He suffered the abuse that leads to depression, and now helps men face it squarely.
Like an ugly scab, healing ain’t always pretty. If you never properly clean and dress a wound, grotesque scars disfigure you. Real tells the stories of men who have put the time, effort and care into healing. It ain’t easy. But having done so, their scars heal clean, and a happier life begins.
Other so-called self-help books (the „inner-child” movement springs to mind) seem to argue that learning to love your scars is the road to happiness. Poppycock.
(I might also add that this is less a self-help book than a political and moral treatise. If sufferers find it helpful, that’s a by-product.)
Personally, I think Real lets women off the hook too easily in this book. Having endured the female-dominated „caring professions” to effect my own cure, I think Real ought to empahsise the complicity of women in the patriarchy (which he rightly labels as damaging to both sexes).
Even quite enlightened women patronise men who try to be strong and scorn them when they allow themselves to be weak. In their effort to stamp out male aggression, they demean male strength–a strength which women who wish to heal might well wish they had.
Real is the first scholar I’ve read to point out that the patriarchy actually harms men more than it harms women. It certainly proves fatal more often.
He is the first therapist I know to make a case that men are MORE emotional than women; not the insensitive droogs of feminist caricature.
Against a background of shallow, ineffectual, touchy-feely self-help gurus, Real stands out as a straight talker. To borrow a phrase from the patriarchy, he’s results-oriented. And that ain’t a bad thing.
Real? An aptly named author.
