The Crippled Masculine: Why Men Fear Women

The early symbiotic bond between mother and infant is profoundly intense. For the boy, the psychological challenge lies in separating from this bond of dependency in order to forge an independent masculine identity. This process is rarely smooth. Throughout childhood and adolescence, a boy is caught between two opposing forces: the call to grow into manhood and the seductive pull of regression.

If a boy is supported by a present and committed father, or initiated through a meaningful rite of passage, he may overcome his regressive yearnings and begin the journey toward mature manhood. But when he lacks cultural support, and when his father is absent and his mother devouring, these regressive yearnings tend to persist in his psyche, follow him into adulthood, and consolidate into what is known as a negative mother complex - the root of imbalanced relationship with the "feminine". 

In the case of a man with a negative mother complex, psychological contents related to his desire to remain dependent on a maternal figure and to regress psychologically, group together in the unconscious and form a secondary personality which prevents him from maturing and developing his masculinity. Or as Anthony Stevens observed:

“A son trapped in this position cannot break free. Psychologically speaking, he is locked in the mother, devoured by his mother complex.” 

Across cultures and epochs, the negative mother complex has been symbolized in myth through the motif of the Terrible Mother. In different myths, the Terrible Mother assumes different forms, yet in all myths she is a destroyer of men. She is the archetypal symbol of the negative mother complex and of the regressive psychological forces that attack and weaken a man from within.

In certain myths, the Terrible Mother destroys men with her devouring womb and castrating vagina. A vivid example is Medusa. With serpents writhing from her head and tusks reminiscent of a wild boar, Medusa embodies the archetype of the vagina dentata – the toothed vagina. The vagina dentata is a universal symbol that is found in stories and myths in tribes and cultures all over the world. The anthropologist David Gilmore described this symbol as “the saw-toothed orifice that waits to mutilate the male” (David Gilmore, The Male Malady).

While repulsive, the universality of this mythological motif points to its importance. For in psychological terms, the vagina dentata and devouring womb of the Terrible Mother are symbolic of the unconscious regressive forces which motivate a man to evade the responsibilities, demands, challenges, sufferings, conflicts and difficulties of life, in favor of a symbolic returning to the womb. In his work, Aion, Carl Jung writes:

“…he hopes to be caught, sucked in, enveloped, and devoured. He seeks, as it were, the protecting, nourishing, charmed circle of the mother, the condition of the infant released from every care…No wonder the real world vanishes from sight!”

Of course, to return to the physical womb is impossible, and so a man with a negative mother complex tries to satiate his regressive yearning via what Erich Fromm called a “symbiotic fixation to the mother”. This involves remaining pathologically dependent on the mother well into adulthood. This may lead one man to live in his mother’s house (a symbolic womb) well into adulthood, intentionally avoiding financial independence so that he can justify his regressive behavior by telling himself, and others, that he is being financially prudent. Another man may leave his mother’s house yet remain close by, so that he can return to his mother for frequent visits and be at her beck and call. Another man may live physically apart from his mother yet still talk to her every day, share all the intimate details of his life with her, and rarely make a decision without first consulting her. 

Regardless of the form it takes, a symbiotic fixation to the mother leads to the same outcome: the man remains stalled in his development, unable to move toward autonomy and mature individuality. Instead, he is pulled backwards into the symbolic womb by the regressive forces of the negative mother complex. And if the mother is of the devouring type, she will actively reinforce her son’s womb-seeking behavior by rewarding it with affection, attention, and financial support.

It is common for a symbiotic fixation to the mother to breed a festering rage. Because it is difficult for a man to confront the reality that his rage stems from his relationship with his mother, he often seeks to suppress it through alcohol, drugs, pornography, sex, or compulsive work. But when these distractions fail, the repressed anger breaks through and is projected onto others – most commonly, onto other women. However, if it is too intense or pent up for too long, the rage that is being caused by a symbiotic fixation to the mother can land on the mother, with sometimes tragic consequences.

Instead of developing a symbiotic fixation to the mother, some men with a negative mother complex fall prey to unconscious regressive forces which breed a pathological dependency on a surrogate mother – be it a lover, girlfriend, or wife. Men who become enslaved to women fall into what is known as the Don Juan Syndrome. Don Juan, a legendary fictional figure, devotes his life to the pursuit of women. Each woman he desires is idealized, placed on a pedestal, and imagined as the one who will finally deliver him into lasting happiness and paradisal bliss. But once he wins her affection, the illusion quickly fades. He sees not a goddess, but an ordinary, flawed human being. Disillusioned, he discards her and soon transfers his idealization to another woman, repeating the cycle endlessly.

The man trapped in the Don Juan pattern is not enslaved to any individual woman, but to “Women” in general. Without realizing it, his pursuit of one lover after another is driven by a deep longing to find the perfect partner who can recreate the unconditional love and nurturing he experienced in infancy with his mother.

In other cases, rather than idealizing one woman after another, a man projects his longing for a mother-goddess onto a single woman – whom he takes as his partner or wife. Rather than forming a bond between two independent adults, such a relationship comes to resemble that of a mother and her dependent son. Driven by a deep, unconscious craving to be mothered, the man regresses, relinquishing control over nearly every aspect of his life. His wife dictates what he can and cannot do, whom he is permitted to see, when he may go out, and what time he must return. Some men in such marriages feel suffocated and may even become aware of the fact they are acting like a child and ceding control of their lives to their wives. But the prospect of leaving threatens to awaken primal fears of abandonment – so they remain, trapped in a domestic prison they cannot bear to leave. You may hear such men, when asked the secret to a long marriage, glance nervously at their wife and reply with a sheepish grin, “My wife is always right.” But this so-called joke is no joke, but a veiled confession and a desperate cry for help.

In more extreme cases, a man does not merely submit to domestic enslavement – he actively pursues it. Gripped by a profound fear of independence, some men with a negative mother complex crave a surrogate mother so intensely that they adopt a posture of helplessness and passivity. Such a man’s infantile nature emanates from him like a pheromone, attracting women who resemble female demons – predatory figures who feed on the energies of weak men.

In Greek Mythology, after Hercules kills King Theiodamas in battle, he takes Hylas, the dead King’s son, under his wing and makes him an Argonaut of his ship, the Argo. On one of their journeys, the Argonauts encounter the nymphs of the spring of Pegae in Mysia. This harem of young, beautiful, and naked women become so enamoured with Hylas that they fall in love with him and seduce him. Hylas is unable to resist. Possessed by lust, he sits at the edge of the spring and remains passive as the nymphs grab his arm and pull him underwater. Hylas is never seen again. Some retellings of this myth report that in his last moment above water, Hylas let out an agonizing scream. John William Waterhouse’s 1896 painting Hylas and the Nymphs is a stunning artistic depiction of this myth. 

Nymphs symbolize the unconscious erotic forces that possess the man afflicted with a negative mother complex and lead him to compulsively pursue sexual gratification at the expense of his masculinity. In the Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann writes:

“The nymphs…are simply aphrodisiac forces in personalized form.”

Before the rise of the internet, a man possessed by the nymphs might have been a frequent visitor to brothels, a relentless pursuer of one-night stands, or an obsessive consumer of pornographic magazines and videotapes. Today, he is most often addicted to internet pornography. This addiction does not merely reflect an inability to control his lust – it reflects a deeper wound: a sexual drive distorted by an emotionally incestuous attachment to his mother.

In a man’s psyche, the emotional and the erotic are deeply intertwined. To be able to form healthy sexual and romantic relationships, a man must first sever his emotional dependence on the mother. If this break does not occur, his erotic energy remains entangled in his emotionally incestuous bond with the mother. Contrary to Freud’s view, this does not mean he harbors sexual desires for his mother. Rather, it means his sexual impulses are burdened by emotional conflicts. He may feel that loving another woman is a betrayal of maternal loyalty, or intimacy with another woman may stimulate anxiety and the fear of being smothered or controlled – echoing the emotional suffocation his mother imposed on him throughout his life.

Because of these conflicts, a man with a negative mother complex finds healthy romantic relationships with other women problematic. But his sexual energies need satisfying. One way to satisfy them is to become a compulsive seducer of women. But many men with a negative mother complex are too timid to approach women and risk rejection. Furthermore, even one night stands require some degree of intimacy, which can stimulate emotional conflicts. A much easier option for a man with a negative mother complex is to watch pornography and satisfy his urges in isolation.

Pornography is so appealing to a man with a negative mother complex for several reasons. Firstly, when watching pornography, a man achieves the feeling of masculine vigour he otherwise lacks in everyday life. Pornography creates the illusion that the women on the screen desire him, and the absence of any pressure to perform, coupled with the practically infinite supply of women at his disposal, makes him feel very potent in the moment.

Another reason pornography is the sexual outlet of choice for a man with a negative mother complex is that it grants him the illusion of freedom to counteract the lack of freedom he feels in his relationship to his mother and other women in the flesh and blood. Pornography allows him to satisfy his sexual urges without the emotional baggage that accompanies intimacy with another woman, and it provides him the freedom to explore his sexual interests without judgment or restraint. Needless to say, this feeling of freedom is fleeting; for once he achieves orgasm and loses an erection, he is overcome by guilt, shame, and despair. The freedom attained when using pornography is not a true freedom that endures, but an illusion – a trap set by the Terrible Mother under the guise of the nymphs. It is not a coincidence that pornographic women on the screen share an alluring ethereality with the mythological nymphs, for a man who is addicted to pornography suffers the same fate as Hylas; his masculine potentials become lost in the depths of the unconscious – the realm of the Terrible Mother – sometimes forever. 

Whether afflicted with a symbiotic fixation to the mother, passively dependent on a girlfriend or wife, or addicted to pornography, all men with a negative mother complex suffer from what is known as psychological castration. In traditional cultures, strengthening the ego was one of the most important outcomes of a rite of passage. Through trials involving suffering, solitude, and encounters with fear and uncertainty, a boy was forced to develop willpower and to master his regressive impulses and anxieties. Through these difficulties he forged a strong ego and placed himself on the path to manhood.

But when a boy is not subjected to a rite of passage, and when his father is absent and mother devouring, he risks crossing the bridge from adolescence to adulthood with an impotent ego. He becomes a man who is psychologically castrated and hence unable to resist the seductive pull of the regressive unconscious forces that assail him from within.

The psychologically castrated man lives what the psychologist H.G. Baynes called a “provisional life”. The word provisional means “arranged or existing for the present, possibly to be changed later”. And one of the defining traits of the psychologically castrated man is that he leaves himself an easy exit out of any and all goals, projects, commitments, relationships, and plans. In lacking a strong ego, he lacks the will power to override laziness, plow through obstacles, bounce back from setbacks, and persist through failures, and so whenever he encounters difficulties he gives up what he is doing and convinces himself he would be happier if he committed himself to something else. He engages in what Marie-Louise von Franz called “everlasting switching” – he jumps from one life-plan, relationship, and project to the next, but he never settles on one long enough to achieve any semblance of success.

The psychologically castrated man lives a frustrating and meaningless life. The older he gets, the more he realizes that he has squandered his time, energy, and potential. Surrounded by the emptiness of his unrealized ambitions, his unlived potentials grow toxic, giving rise to bitterness and a deep-seated weariness with the world.

This fate can be avoided – but only if action is taken before it’s too late. The longer a man remains passive and allows the negative mother complex to dominate him, the more likely it is that the Terrible Mother will destroy him – psychologically, spiritually, or even physically. A man may have been the product of a broken home, an absent father, or devouring mother – but none of this absolves him of the responsibility to confront his condition. The path forward begins with owning his fate and taking courageous action. He must symbolically kill the Terrible Mother that is wreaking havoc on his psyche.