Sustaining an erection: brotherhood, manhood, and psychotherapy

Abstract

Men have yet to see through a social revolution paralleling the feminist revolution. Lacking rite of passages, and still oscillating between primal kinship and effeminized emotionality, men today often find themselves struggling to discover masculinity that is connected both to emotions and to manhood. The author describes his own yearning for such brotherhood in his personal and professional life. But what happens when such a man appears as a client? This case study discusses Milton's fascinating journey into manhood, which includes mourning the position he assumed in his family, recognizing the deep narcissistic wound and committing to a different relationship with himself and others around him. The paper challenges the classical emphasis on the mother‐baby attachment and proposes to include within it the necessity of the triadic‐self, and the familial challenge of severing the parental‐dyad to make space for the child without breaking it.All the while this paper describes the impossible connection between two men – client and therapist – who learn to love one another, transferentially and even more so – as two men; who struggle with the implications of such love and allow it to transform them both. Shame, self‐love, and questions of reality and transference all emerge when client and therapist struggle with the forces of needs, desire, and brotherhood that bring them together through waves ruptures and repairs.