Robert Bly: It occurred to me that one reason many American men don’t grieve is shame. Perhaps we are too ashamed to grieve. We imagine that if our own head was cut off, it was our fault.

In the United States, men are only allowed to grieve when they go to a funeral. The part of us that we have never grieved for is the part Gershen has been talking about. I mean the small boy who receives so much shame early on that he just can’t take it any more, just can’t live anymore.

I’d guess my little shame boy died long ago. What we need to mourn for are those little children inside of us who died. We don’t mourn for them. Is that right? We just go “mmmmm, I’ll make it through. I’ll get a Ph.D.”

Audience: Will you clarify? In what sense does this shamed boy die?

RB: Well, you know fairy stories say that witches or giants die, but they’re not really dead. The next year you throw a log on the fire, and they jump back out again. So in the psyche nothing dies, but it goes dormant and cannot grow any further. If a little boy or girl gets completely blocked in there, they stop taking in anything from the outer world. And when you’re 30, neither are very good in conversations or arguments, because they don’t know anything. They’re naive and very hurt. And blaming – they also blame a lot, these little ones. Why not? So as an adult, one can stand there and watch them ruin a whole conversation (laughter). Moreover, if you’re talking with a woman then, when your little shamed boy contributes a few words, you’ll probably evoke in her the little shamed girl… When the two of them control the conversation, it’s hopeless! (laughter). They’ll make a mess that won’t be solved for six days. When those two get going, blame gets added onto shame. Jung remarked that the clichés spoken in such arguments haven’t changed since the Egyptians. “You always do this to me (laughter); you never hear what I’m saying.” To say the shamed boy or girl “dies” is a kind of metaphor. But I like it because it implies that “a death” is something we need to mourn for.

Audience: That process for me is just a little different. I find that I’m getting back in touch now with my little boy, and he’s been reborn.

RB: That’s lovely; that’s the next step we want to talk about. How does that feel? Or how did it happen?

Audience: Well, for me it started with getting in touch with the fact my father was extremely abusive on many levels. I was never in touch with that before, and I realized that I was talking to my little boy. I didn’t know those words at the time; the process has taken me there. I am realizing that the little boy never died. He’s just under water and trying to swim up. And 30 years later he got to the surface.

RB: That’s beautiful. Let’s say he was under the water trying to swim up. But we never gave him a chance to swim all the way up, because we never got back to those times when he was so deeply shamed. We lived in denial, as they say in AA. The shame we felt was deeper than we were able to handle at the time. As we get older and a little stronger, we can begin to relive the experience. Every man can choose at some time to dive down into the water, where he’ll find the boy under the surface.

One has to choose to dive. And one must say that if you don’t choose, the psyche may give you an accident, an illness, or a serious addiction. That acts as a way to get you down.

You know, in my mother’s generation, a parent might die suddenly – say, in a flu epidemic – and no provision was given to the child to mourn. No one would say, “Are you angry about your mother dying?” Relatives would say, “Well, you’ll live with Aunt Margaret now; it will be all right.” And no one asked, “Do you think your mother abandoned you? How do you feel about that?” No one asked any of these good psychological questions. And sometimes the development of the child stopped right there. It’s a great blessing the work that psychologists have been doing recently in helping with mourning. But most of us in our 50s and 60s didn’t get much of that help early on.

Audience: You got me thinking of my story. I had a real significant experience. There’s a process called Rebirthing, which I’ve been involved in for about a year. In the middle of one of my sessions, an image came to me from the movie, Wings of Desire. I cried during the whole thing because of this image of an angel coming down and setting his hand on the shoulder. That really struck me.

RB: Was that connected with your Rebirthing experience?

Audience: Yeah. I became that angel that went back to the little boy, that little 4-year old lying in his bed all alone in his room crying. Something awful had happened, and I was alone. All I wanted was for somebody to just sit there with me and put their hand on my shoulder, and say it was okay. I know that sounds kind of mystical, but it works.

RB: It’s just common sense actually.

Audience: I got to be the man who went back and said, “Michael, it’s okay.”

RB: Wonderful! If you’re working with that boy, you might ask him if there’s a place in your current house that he likes. Ask him where he wants to be. And then for a month or so, you bring him a flower every day to that place. And don’t let anyone know what you are doing either. If they ask, “Who’s that flower for?” say, “It’s for my dead Grandmother.” You lie all the time... (laughter). Because this little boy wants to be able to establish a connection with you in which he doesn’t have to be overly adult, and yet you’re not going to beat him up either. You are just going to honor him. And you need to have a real container for just the two of you, one that is secret and protected. Then I think he’ll change, become in life again, and grow.

It’s a long process, isn’t it? Two or three years at least. But give him gifts. Do you know how much little boys want gifts? They want whistles. They want little bits of candy. You could eat them later yourself (laughter). But he’d appreciate it. He’ll eat the smoke from the candy.