In the last podcast, we talked about the man who gets stuck at the adolescent stage of development. We explained how absent fathers, fathers in man-child mode, combined with an overreaching mother, and the lack of initiation that separates boyhood from manhood.

How these initiations separate the boy from the mother tie, putting the boy into initiations that require self-reliance, where the boy must face his fears, self-doubts, and insecurities about surviving and has no mother present to save him from himself.

The lack of all this leads to men in body but with a boy mind. This is what Carl Jung called the mother complex. Those afflicted still desire to go out into the world, gain success, power, and interdependence, stand up for themselves, overcome their fears, self-doubts, and insecurities. But they often show up with several emotional, mental patterns of behaviour that we will now investigate.

The first mental, emotional pattern of the man child we will investigate is dreaming and scheming. The man child seeks refuge in their mind, fantasising and dreaming of what they will do. The dreaming and fantasising appear to keep them sensing that they are doing the thing.

They may even start the thing they dream of, keeping it in the creative, playful stage. But there will be an avoidance of commitment, of doing the thing deeply, so the person is pushed up against every shred of self-doubt, every fear, every limitation.

The ability to persevere in pain, uncomfortable surroundings and uncomfortable feelings is diminished. Remember, mom in the mother complex didn't want you to feel pain; her job, in her mind, was to help you feel comfortable. The next emotional, mental pattern is the shiny light chaser, the person looking for that thing that comes easily, that opportunity that is magical.

When one thing gets hard, meaning it is not falling in their lap and is now bringing them up against their deep fears and insecurities, the avoidance desire drives them to abandon what is hard for the pursuit of the next opportunity.

The next emotional, mental pattern is the grand sense of time held by the man-child. The man child acts as though there is time and lots of it. As they dream, fantasise and scheme, or chase shiny objects, they feel it will all work out alright.

The next emotional, mental pattern is one of the idealists, who now projects their boyhood experience with the loving mother, the easy to get nurturing, the calming of pains into the world, into their ideal world view.

They start to see what is wrong with the world based on their ideal motherland projection, which is not perfect according to their ideals. This is akin to the hunter who is angry that winter is destroying their ability to hunt instead of accepting winter and strategically plotting to avoid the downfalls of winter.

This mental-emotional pattern leads to idealistic fantasy and is not conducive to gaining the goal for survival. This projection of idealist fantasies is at an all-time high at the moment, 2021 to be precise and can be considered the shadow side of woke culture and post-truth societies.

The person in any of these scenarios is driven unconsciously by the memory, in the deeply hidden recesses of his mind, the ease of his success in gaining his mothers love, his nurturing reward just for being alive, his survival met through the glow of his mothers smile and kitchen table.

This memory betrays the requirement for grit and perseverance in the sometimes stubborn and challenging world. This memory of having every frustration soothed by his loving mother, a warm bed and cuddle when he was frightened sets up a false fantasy world for the adult man without the initiations required to confront and go past the actual world of the boy with the protective mother.

Combined with the mother complex metaphor expressed elsewhere, unemployment benefits, social services, modern-day comforts, work that provides but is not challenging, nor helps you evolve, some form of socialism are all mother complex metaphor examples that provide comfort and undermine the initiation process required for the man child to evolve into a man.

What is required for anyone stuck in man-child and, to be honest, we mostly all are, to one degree or other, meaning there are always areas of our lives to clean up, areas of ourselves, personas to take out of boyhood and into manhood; is to consciously take ourselves through our initiation process, where we deeply commit to a goal, persevere, while we face our inner demons, in response to outer challenges.

This confrontation with the outer and our inner worlds will transform us one way or another. But it requires one to leave past shores behind. This is one of the reasons we participate in men's groups or why I do my work personally with clients - holding them true to the initiation process.

In the next podcast, we will continue to discuss how the man child can overcome his problems and transform himself into a more independent, confident and successful individual.