Real Boys

by William Pollack

  “No.” Gabe paused. “Well,” he started again, “I guess the only thing that comes to mind is that first camping trip in the Adirondacks, the summer I was five. It was my first time away from home, my first time in a tent, but my whole family was with me. I remember now. The door of the tent was mosquito netting, and whoever slept next to it had to contend with cold drafts, the buzzing of mosquitoes, and the sounds of animals out in the woods—they sounded like wolves and bats. On our first night, my father slept next to the door. But on the second night my father said that I should sleep next to the door—I should “stand guard” and protect the family from intruders. I didn’t want to. I complained. But they told me I should be the ‘big boy’ of the family and tough it out. I tried to tough it out, but then I heard a noise. I thought it was a bear or something, and I got very upset and started to cry. Dad told me not to be such a ‘wimp’ and act like a man; I think he even told me a story about him and his dad roughing it in the woods.”

  “Were you afraid?” I asked.

  “I guess it was actually pretty safe or they wouldn’t have let me stay out there all alone, but I remember being scared to death for days afterward. A funny thing, though—my mom told me that after that trip I stopped begging her and Dad at bedtime to stay in my room with me, and my dad told her he thought I really had grown from the camping experience. Jesus, I must have been scared shitless and pushed it all away until now.”

  GABE REVISITED: HOW PARENTS CAN HELP EASE THE PAIN OF SEPARATION

  Gabe’s dream—and the memory the dream evoked—are significant in that they reveal a boy who was afraid but was embarrassed to show he had been made to feel ashamed of his feelings at such a young age. While most boys may not have any such clear-cut nightmares nor horrifying memories of camping trips to report, many of them, like Gabe, may harbor unconscious memories of premature separation, of being pushed in a shameful, unexpected way toward pseudo-independence. All three- to five-year-olds suffer somewhat as they begin to spend more time apart from their primary caregiver. But society’s gender stereotypes permit daughters to linger with their mothers, while little boys are urged out of their comfort zones and into a premature separation. When the little boys resist, another set of stereotypes—that boys need to be toughened up—leaves them with an additional burden of inner shame.

  As they grow up and face later challenges to their self-reliance or self-confidence, boys only allow these repressed emotions of early childhood to surface symbolically, as Gabe did when he reported his dream, or symptomatically, as Gabe did when he began to act unusually irritable and tearful, when his feelings of fear, frustration, and sadness became so overwhelming that they punctured his outer psychological armoring. But in most cases, boys hide these feelings behind their masks of “cool.” And as boys grow into men, they continue to hide their feelings, and an ever-intensifying sense of shame and disconnection develops within them.

  ACTING OUT: IS IT ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER—OR LOSS OF CONNECTION?

  For Johnny, Christopher, and Gabe, dealing with the trauma of separation—and with the intense shame they felt about the feelings it produced—meant turning inward, trying to handle their problems quietly and alone. Yet in many cases, boys deal with the pain of separating from their parents and the shame they feel by “acting out,” by using dramatic or disorderly conduct to call for help. I believe that an overwhelming number of elementary school boys diagnosed with conduct disorders or with what is often called attention deficit disorder, or ADD, are misbehaving not because they have a biological imbalance or deficit but because they are seeking attention to replace the void left by their mothers and fathers. Their problems paying attention or regulating impulses may not be “faulty wiring” or “testosterone poisoning,” but simply the result of accumulated emotional wounds and years of paralyzing shame. These desperate last-ditch efforts to assuage the pain or resist the thrust of premature autonomy are frequently misread as symptoms of an illness rather than as a natural part of coping with the trauma of separation. When boys act rambunctious and their activities spiral into aggressiveness and violence, what they are often expressing is far from some sort of macho desire for power or vindication but rather a longing to be nurtured, listened to, and understood, to engage in all of the needy, dependent behaviors they’re being told are girl-like and forbidden.

  Certainly there are boys with significant psychological disorders in need of appropriate diagnosis and treatment. Attention deficit disorder is a real illness (actually a constellation of psychological syndromes housed under one name). In fact, in 1995 more than five million children were classified as “learning disabled,” 25 percent greater than a decade ago. Within these categories of disability, ADD is the fastest-growing illness, with numbers doubling over the last five years.

  Perhaps most shocking, the ratio of boys to girls of such newly diagnosed ADD cases can range as high as 10 to 1.

  But when millions of boys are diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder, and when far fewer girls are given the same diagnosis, I begin to wonder whether this diagnosis is sometimes being applied inappropriately to what are normal episodes of boy behavior. I also wonder whether diagnosing boys as having this disorder reflects society’s tendency to misunderstand how the trauma of separation affects school-age boys. The diagnosis of “hyperactivity” is often made on the basis of a checklist of behaviors that, in reality, could reflect boys’ grief over losing emotional connection—a loss that we have learned cannot be fully expressed or mourned but rather expresses itself through action or anger. In short, a combination of biologically influenced “boy temperament” plus a boy’s resistance to the Boy Code may lead to a diagnosis of ADD.

  RUSTY: SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE

  Rusty was my first “fire setter.” Children who start fires frighten psychologists even more than extremely violent children, because the impulse is poorly understood and may lead to serious harm to large numbers of people. But this didn’t seem to jibe with little Rusty’s sad eyes, meek demeanor, and sudden outbursts of tearfulness when he was confronted with his “crime.”

  Sent to a locked psychiatric unit after he had induced two older boys to pour some lighter fluid on a pile of old wood behind his housing project and to light a fire, Rusty, age seven, did not deny his actions. He didn’t show remorse either. Rather, Rusty seemed to be in a dreamlike state, disconnected from the seriousness of the events. People began to throw around diagnoses and suggestions for treatment, and it was determined that Rusty’s conduct disorders could involve ADD as well.

  Rusty’s parents were of little help, as his mother felt that Rusty was “too clingy,” being the “baby” of the family, so she had pushed him to spend more time at school and Little League. Rusty’s father had divorced his mother when Rusty was five, and he rarely, if ever, visited.

  I made a request: that we bring Rusty together in one room with his mother and father and talk about this boy’s pain. Arranging the meeting wasn’t easy, but it did finally take place. As might be expected, Rusty clung to his mother as soon as she entered, with her gently trying to redirect his attention. Then his father arrived. Rusty’s whole face appeared to change in structure: he beamed as he ran to embrace his father. Rusty’s dad was wearing some kind of badge—no surprise, as we had been told he worked as an investigator for the police department. All of a sudden I got one of those hunches you just can’t easily explain. “Mr. McDonnell, what kind of work do you do exactly?” I asked.

  “Didn’t Rusty tell you,” he replied, “I investigate fires of suspicious origin for the city. Gee, I’m surprised Rusty didn’t talk about it—I’d often take him along when he was a small boy. I think it fascinated him.”

  No victim of ADD, no veteran “fire setter,” Rusty was a sad little boy who had lost his emotional bonds with mother and father and was calling out through conduct and action—typical boy approaches—for love and response. Luckily most boys diagnosed with conduct or activity disorders don’t light fire
s. But perhaps by acting out, these boys are attempting through the language of behavior to light a fire under us, to give us a wake-up call to their pain and desperation, feelings that will not be cured with medications or behavior modification.

  THE SLOW POISON OF PREMATURE SEPARATION: BOYS AND MEN STILL LONGING FOR CONNECTION

  As the boys’ voices I’ve shared reflect, the trauma of separation manifests itself in myriad ways. In many cases the loss boys feel causes them to experience diminished or rocky self-esteem. They may become unhappy and disaffected, much in the way that Gabe did. In some cases, they may actually become clinically depressed, as Christopher did. Sometimes they may manifest psychosomatic diseases such as the vomiting and crying spells that little Johnny endured. And sometimes, like Rusty, they may seek reconnection by acting out, behavior that may lead us, in the first instance, to diagnose them as “hyperactive” or as having “attention deficit disorder.” But perhaps most often, boys give the impression that everything is going just fine by effectively hiding behind the mask of an invulnerable personality. For years they may suppress the angst they feel, and in many cases, boys become so skilled at pushing this trauma out of their memories that it is not until years later, as adults, that they remember what they went through.

  Many of the adult male patients I see still grapple with the aftermath of the trauma of separation. Many men still unconsciously long for connection with mother and the nurturing “holding” environment she once provided.

  For example, when Paul, a thirty-five-year-old man, recently lost his mother to cancer, he told me that even though he hadn’t felt dependent on his mother as an adult, his mother’s death made him feel terrible about himself. His mother, who lived in Italy, where Paul was born, had never received a college education and in many ways was not a central figure in Paul’s daily life as an adult. Despite all this, Paul reported a sense of incredible loss. “I feel as though my only anchor in life is gone,” he told me, explaining that after his mother’s death he had lost the energy to make love with his wife and felt little motivation to go to work. As we spent more time talking, it emerged that the pain Paul felt was linked less to any recent experiences he had had with his mother than to his memories of how she had nurtured him as a very young child. The warm, loving environment she had once created for him was now forever beyond his reach. As I discussed with Paul what I had learned about the trauma of separation and how this trauma continued to affect boys and men throughout their lives, Paul said, “Dr. Pollack, you just hit the nail on the head. I can’t believe this. I’ve actually been dealing with these problems for years and only now realize how much it had to do with my mother. I forgot how painful it was when my father first separated me from her to send me off to school. I never would have thought any of that could still matter now.”

  While Paul’s response to the trauma of separation was to feel a lack of sexual drive and to experience the early symptoms of depression, other adult patients of mine have experienced far more severe responses.

  For example, David, a forty-year-old client of mine, was hospitalized when, after years of “normal” mental health, he attempted to commit suicide by consuming sedatives and an entire bottle of aspirin. As we worked together in therapy sessions, David recounted the acute pain he felt when Helen, his live-in girlfriend of three years, decided she “couldn’t take him anymore.” David described how in all his relationships with women he inevitably reached a point where he felt something was missing. “There’s always at least one thing about each girlfriend,” he explained, “that just really gets in my way of continuing the relationship.”

  “Was it you who initiated breaking up with Helen?” I asked.

  “No,” he whispered, his voice beginning to crack, “And for the first time, it wasn’t me. Helen left me and I don’t know how I’ll live without her.”

  As our sessions progressed, David shared details about his relationships with women and what went wrong in each relationship. Each of these friendships ended, he confessed, because he always found at least one critically important trait missing in the women he dated. One woman he found too independent and self-absorbed; another was somewhat guarded in the affection she gave David; and with Helen, he felt, she just wasn’t as interested in starting a family as David was—she wanted at most one child, while he hoped to have many. As we pieced together the qualities David found missing in these relationships, he himself realized that the qualities he was seeking were in fact those he associated with his idealized mother.

  “In some ways,” he explained, “I always hold up my girlfriends to the image I have of my mother and they just never seem to hit the mark.”

  As I began to explain to David the trauma of separation and how the wound it leaves can affect us throughout our lives, he injected angrily, “I’m not interested in marrying my mother! I just want to be with somebody who will be as warm, caring, and loving as she was—someone like Helen!”

  EMOTIONAL SHAPING IN A MOTHER’S REACTIONS: INFANTS BEING FITTED FOR THE FIRST GENDER STRAITJACKET

  I believe the trauma of separation is one of the earliest and most acute developmental experiences boys endure, an experience that plays a large role in the hardening process through which society shames boys into suppressing their empathic and vulnerable sides. What few people realize is that this shame-based hardening process begins as early as the first months of a little boy’s life as a narrowing of emotional expressiveness and then continues during early childhood, following boys right through adolescence and manhood. It is, in other words, a lifelong process.

  Research on interactions between mothers and their babies illustrates how the process begins, revealing that, totally unaware of their actions’ consequences, genuinely loving caretakers prematurely dampen their sons’ sensitive emotive sides. Boy infants, at birth and for months afterward, are much more expressive emotionally than girls—they startle, excite, cry, and fuss more than girls—though caretakers sometimes believe this infant emotionality is a sign of “fragility” or a lack of self-control, rather than an enhanced communication of feelings. Haviland and Malatesta, in studies conducted at Rutgers University, found that in order to keep their sons’ more volatile emotions in check, mothers tend unwittingly to mimic and overly reinforce smiling in boys while discouraging more unhappy emotions. Hence without realizing it, in their attempt to be “soothing,” mothers are participating in the earliest phases of emotional straitjacketing in boys—they are teaching them to smile when they may not feel like it. Even infant boys are subject to the Boy Code!

  In general, the researchers found, mothers were far less likely to mirror their infants’ unhappy feelings; but when mothers were interacting with infant boys, the mothers were particularly resistant to recognizing their sons’ negative emotional states. When girl infants expressed painful states, mothers responded only 22 percent of the time, but when their sons showed negative feelings, they ignored them altogether. Haviland and Malatesta concluded that when mothers notice their baby boys showing greater emotionality, many of them fear their sons are psychologically off-balance or unwell. To calm their sons, therefore, many of these mothers, often without realizing it, take steps that squelch their young sons’ emotional expressiveness.

  While this difference between how mothers respond to the emotions of their infant sons and daughters is startling, I feel it is very important not to misinterpret these findings. The mothers studied, in my opinion, were not insensitive or indifferent to their sons’ feelings. They were not neglecting their young sons’ pain. Quite to the contrary, these mothers, based on cultural imperatives about boys and masculinity, were struggling to do what they felt was best, manifesting a knee-jerk reaction to their sons’ expressions of distress. They were trying to smooth over their boys’ emotions not out of callousness or a lack of caring but out of empathy, because they loved their sons and wanted to see them happy and fulfilled. Far from being unsympathetic or neglectful, these mothers were concerned that if they let a b
oy express too much grief, pain, or vulnerability, somehow he would become something less than a “real,” fully functional boy, in accordance with our society’s rigid code.

  The study conducted by Professors Haviland and Malatesta also investigated how mothers respond to their babies’ expressions of “surprise” or “special interest.” Here mothers more exactly “mirrored” their sons’ feeling states by making surprised or excited faces whenever their sons made these kinds of faces. Hence, when a boy raised his eyebrows in surprise, so did his mother. When he acted startled, so did she. In other words, she kept the situation comfortably neutral and provided no additional stimulus of any kind. By contrast, mothers responded to their daughters’ expressions of surprise or interest in ways that did not exactly mimic those of their daughters. In doing so, these mothers led their daughters to experience joyful stimulation, broadening and deepening the range of these girls’ emotional responsiveness and experience. Again researchers understood this difference, not as a maternal deprivation of boys, but as a struggle on mothers’ part to “go to great lengths to ensure that their sons remain contented.” In other words, just as mothers ignore their infant sons’ sad faces in the hope their sons will simply “snap out of it” and feel happier, mothers try to closely mimic their young sons’ expressions of surprise or special interest simply to avoid pushing their boys toward more distressing emotions such as embarrassment, sadness, or fear.