by Eugene Monick

A response paper by Harvey Hall

s a child of about seven, in the early days of the psychosexual period which Freud called latency, I crawled into my parents' bed one summer morning. We had moved to our summer cottage on White Bear Lake, now a suburb of St. Paul but then two hours' journey by back roads from the city. Mother had left the bed to prepare breakfast. Father lay there asleep, naked. I went under the covers to explore. I may have had a flashlight with me, which would indicate an intention to investigate. Or, sensing there was a discovery to be made, I left the darkness of the blankets to find one. In any case, crouched in the darkness next to my father's body, I came upon his genitalia. I focused the light and gazed upon a mystery. How long I remained there I have no idea; the particulars of the experience have faded. There were no words, then or afterward. As far as I know my father was not aware that I was there.

What I do remember is the powerful effect the incident had on me. I think now that I looked upon my father's maleness as a kind of revelation. Certainly at the time I could not articulate what it was: I have difficulty doing that even now. I do know that maleness was unequivocally present before me. There, in those organs, was a picture I had not known before. The picture intimated another world. It was a world I somehow knew existed but until that exposure I had no tangible image to embody my fledgling inner sense. Suddenly in those naked parts, it faced me. (Monick, 13)

I am swept up in the intense deliberateness of the need-to-know young Monick with each fresh reading of this startlingly intimate account. On first reading it prompted in me the memory of a similar but all-but-forgotten incident in my own early life and still today it encourages me to struggle for more perspective on that incident and its power for transformation in my personal life. As time goes by, I find myself less and less unwilling to entertain the idea that certain unsettled and unsettling feelings around my sexuality might be linked in some arcane way to a sidetracked drive to uncover something essential about myself. When I turned to him to teach me how to identify myself as a boy, a male, a potential man, a penis/phallus holder, possessor, owner and operator, my father, equipped with not even the most meager of tools to respond, withdrew. My need to identify with him through loving him and being loved by him in return - he, a male, loving me, a male who loved him, was ignored, pushed aside.

Monick's thesis is that a male approaches the divine through phallos itself - through his phallic nature. It begins with a male's awareness of himself as male through relationship to his own penis/phallos and his identification and relationship with the phallic community of his father and brother males. For each individual male, phallos and its real or potential delivery of semen are both prosaic and poetic. They provide us with a primitive and personal vocabulary grounded in the body. This vocabulary develops to a point where we are able to inform ourselves simultaneously on all three planes: body, mind and spirit, each one capable of speaking with authority not only for itself but also for the others. We are then in a position to respond.

I remember my father's dying catapulting me into a fit of inarticulate rage, depression and panic. In the murk of feeling I floundered in, one thing was perfectly clear, a crushing sense of impending doom. I sensed the imminent loss of the chance for something indispensable that I felt helpless to name. In the sad game of our shared denial, my father and I gave it many names. Even today I find it painful to call it love. As a child, the object of my search was dressed in the person of my father, later in the person of others. Any further analysis of my feeling toward men since has seemed pointless. Recently, however, I have been able to identify and articulate that what I experience are sudden and painful lurches or waves of feeling. These lurches and waves I have come to call yearnings. Connection to my conscious self in the inevitable repetitive and dreamlike sequence that ensues is tenuous. Although, at the time, I see very little room for personal choice, my voluntary participation proves essential to the unfolding. With no engagement on my part, there is no jump-start into what always becomes a relentless chain of events of ever heightening emotional value. I experience a vague feeling of trance, with a dull flatness of affect, bordering on light-headed anesthesia. The fascination I experience may be the state of thrall that Monick identifies as an indication of a numinous experience, an experience of the transpersonal Self. All I am aware of at the time is that the drive to complete the cycle is imperative. Three well known repetitive paradigms come to mind: the child-in-distress response/no response cycle, the addictive cycle and the narcissistic response to narcissistic parenting paradigm. All three share aspects of repetition and a sense of programmed response inside a closed and cyclic mind-set. All three involve emotional isolation with little to no stimulus from without, only from within. This is a state reminiscent of that of a space module that has somehow become disconnected from the mother ship that can do nothing but orbit the ship with no means of communication or connection.

One most striking reference Monick makes in Chapter 2 is his reference to the concept of the homosexual "radical" introduced by the Danish psychoanalyst, Thorkil Vanggaard. Monick agrees with Vanggaard that this radical is present in all males. "Every man has the capacity for some degree of homosexual interest ..." [36] He goes on to say: "How this appears in any one man is a factor of the masculine/feminine balance in his psyche, the configuration of archetypes in his unconscious, the environmental influences, genetic inheritance and the extent to which he has suppressed or repressed his homosexual interest." [ibid]

Monick moves on in the remaining five chapters to deal with the ramifications of what he made implicit reference to in the more personal and anecdotal Chapters One and Two. In Chapter Three, Phallos in Psychoanalysis, he illustrates how both Freud and Jung, as representatives of psychoanalytical thought, attempt to synthesize the prevailing philosophies of the late 19th and early 20th century with their own clinical experience. Like E. Neumann's Double-Phallos Concept and Bachofen's Das Mutterecht; they place the feminine in the ascendancy in regard to psychic value and importance. Monick allows that they do this most likely in compensation for the apparent superiority of the masculine explicit in the patriarchy of the day but he still regards it as a recapitulation on their part of the Christian/Pauline diminishment of the body and sexuality. The male is left with nothing in the psyche of archetypal value equal to the feminine with which to identify. In order to establish his masculine identity, he perceives himself as left with no recourse but to repudiate the feminine with Freud or embark on a hero's journey with Jung. Both scenarios result in the diminishment of both the masculine and the feminine, he says. The masculine is seen as a poor thing in constant danger of being emasculated by the power of the overweening feminine and the feminine, in turn, is seen as antagonistic to the masculine and, therefore, doomed to be belittled or devalued in self-defense. Monick states "...the fact remains that neither [i.e. Freud or Jung - my words] did significant research work on phallos ... this has resulted in a fundamental disservice to the importance of the archetypal masculine, a theoretical imbalance that cries out to be redressed." [56]

Monick now enters into a rigorous re-examination of the fundamental nature of the unconscious. Cultural bias and historical limitation inherent in the positions of Freud, Jung et al, mislead, he asserts, and limit our understanding of the psyche due to a lack of depth and scope. Chapter Four, On the Psychoid Nature of Phallos, begins with a scrupulous revisitation of Neumann's Double-Phallos Theory. Neumann's theory would present Solar Phallos as superior to Chthonic Phallos and the natural goal of all healthy [and good] males. By virtue of its unconscious nature, Chthonic Phallos is relegated to the realm of the feminine by a kind of intellectual slight-of-hand. Guilt-by- [archetypal] association condems Chthonic Phallos to emasculation. If the role of Chthonic Phallos is that of the shadow/enemy of Solar Phallos, a most dangerous second equation must logically result - that of the feminine with evil. According to Bachofen, Neumann, Freud and Jung, it seems we males must not only repudiate the insidious feminine in our hero's quest for sexual identity but must also amputate that very instinctual part of our male nature, Chthonic Phallos. If Matrix is alpha and omega and Phallos has no claim as co-author in creation, to what masculine source does the male relate for support and richness?

In Phallos Protos and the Psychoid Unconscious, Monick claims archetypal equality for both physis and psyche, body and spirit, in the name of balance and psychic health. Jung was the first to define the psychoid feature of the psyche as that aspect which resides in the physical world, its outer manifestation. E = mc2 reveals that energy and matter are two faces of the same coin. For Einstein they are energy and matter, for Jung psyche and matter. Evolution, says Jung begins with separation, differentiation and discrimination but points to synthesis and individuation. Transgressivity and impingement explain that there is a permeable membrane between the physical and the psychic/spiritual through which the two can not only touch and communicate [impingement] but which also allows them to manifest themselves in each other's realm [transgressivity]. These psychoid functions permit the union of two seemingly opposing concepts, psyche and matter. This joining and integration of opposites, coniunctio oppositorum, points to its goal, the Unus Mundus, the Unified World. Sexuality leads and guides. It is hierophant to spirit.

According to Monick, consciousness is surrounded by a psychoid aura; this aura is an indicator of high value and importance, a conveyor of numinosity. It is perceived by an inner sense that transcends the sphere of precise ego function, evoking a mood in the perceiver that serves as a portal to image and symbol. It is through this function of mood that we are able to move to and from ego consciousness.

I sit at our round table within the enclave of the bay window, looking out at "the psychoid aura that surrounds consciousness". At one moment I look into the foreboding darkness. I anticipate death. At another, I await the return of my wife from Scranton; at another, I know that without her I might be catapulted from warmth to coldness, from inside the house to the hostile outside. Even with her return, I am not sure that the cold I look upon outside will not invade the house, making the outside, with its ominous loneliness, an in-the-house reality. [67]

One is certainly reminded at this point of Durkheim's reference to the ability of ego consciousness to become transparent to transcendence.

Monick's Topographical Model of the Psyche serves as a clear and concise visual summary of his understanding of consciousness: Neumann argues that, because phallos is physical, it is derivative of the mother and, consequently, remains contained within the archetype of the feminine. This attitude forces the masculine to require the diminishment of the feminine to ensure his masculine integrity survive intact. With Monick's elucidation of the role of the psychoid nature of consciousness, we are able to move beyond the stasis and circularity found in Neumann's position. Phallos Protos, primordial masculinity, is clearly present in the collective unconscious, he says, and provides a legitimate masculine archetypal authority to effect wholeness in the male. Axis Mundi or Primeval Pivot of the World serves as the perfect icon for Phallos Protos. It establishes primal masculine presence and operates in counterpoint to the maternal uroboros and all round bowl-like symbols of the primal feminine. This balance is "...needed by men today", states Monick, " as they experience the disintegration of the patriarchal Present Consciousness.... There is no need for males to fear females and act out of such fear as tyrant or slave once a primary process inner connection with phallos is engaged and dependably functional." [76]

The opening paragraphs of Chapter Five, Archetypal Images of Phallos, address unconscious patterning. "Each infant", says Monick, " comes into the world with a small but basic set of unlearned instincts. They are 'given'. So also is psychic patterning." [Emphasis mine] [77] The imaginal manifestation of this psychic patterning is the archetype. He goes on to say: " Human experience is entwined at every moment with numinosity and meaning." It would seem that Jung's psychoid unconscious and S. Keleman's sacred physicality [my term] appear to draw very close to one another at this point. For Durkheim, Campbell and Keleman, the sacred is never more at hand than in the act of being completely present in and to our corporeal existence. In the pages that follow, the author presents us with four psychic images/figures that "embody phallic patterning understood as god and hero" [77]: Hermes, Mercurius, Dionysus and Zeus & Ganymede. Of these four, Dionysus is the one I identify with most. He is the wild man, sometimes the crazy man. He's the one whose fate it is to be torn part by the his own ambivalence gone amok and the one whose job it becomes to create balance so he can survive and even thrive in the real world. He is physical, sensual and frankly sexual. In a very personal way, it is a great relief to me to see Dionysus in the company of what are considered legitimate male archetypal role models. For so many of us in our Solar-oriented/dominated western culture, anything but Apollo is too often seen as second-best masculinity.

In Chapter Six, Monick makes it very clear that Shadow is a property of both Solar and Chthonic Phallos not just of the latter as our western culture would imply. He points out once more what Chthonic Phallos is not. It is not the shadow of Solar Phallos and it is not what we call evil. To the contrary, it is " how a man moves through ego limitation to ecstatic merger with the archetypal world of sexuality. It is the numinous side of his being as a male."[95] And again, "It is the silent god within, prompting his creative action, standing behind his erectile strength, facilitating the explosion of his fertilizing seed."[ibid] Wisdom is attained, concludes Monick, not by the eradication or subjugation of Chthonic Phallos in order to lead the perfect and oh-so-virtuous Solar life but by the integration of both aspects of phallos within the ego. A man must have it out with both his anima and his shadow; he must come to terms with both the rapist and the castrator in himself. No small task.

The final chapter, Phallos out of the Ordinary, consists of three sections which attempt to pull together some of the loose threads which inevitably get away from one in a discussion of such scope and complexity. The first, Two Dreams of Men, deals with male masturbation and its multi-leveled meaning in his interpretation of the dreams of two male clients. A direct route to ecstasy, Monick demonstrates how male masturbation plays the role of liminal experience in the male psyche i.e. one that serves as an opening to a new experience or a new way of experiencing something old. Ecstasy, he reminds us, is psychopomp of the divine.

The second section, Homosexuality, revisits the question of the implications of phallos in reference to male sexual orientation touched on briefly in Chapter Two. Since patriarchy denies them so much, Monick points out, including not only the inferior status of insiders like women but also even that of outsiders like blacks, homosexuals are relegated to a level of non-existence in which they are allowed neither ego nor Self. In regard to the complex psychosexual issue of sexual orientation and diversity, Monick proposes something of a working hypothesis. He wonders whether the whole issue couldn't be quite simply the following: "If a man is in more need of a father, he is homosexual, more mother, heterosexual, more of both, bisexual" [120] and leaves the issue with us.

The final section, Animus, Phallic Energy in Women, hinges on Jung's perhaps curious choice of the masculine word animus to describe not only the phallic energy in women but indeed the female soul. He alludes to the argument of those such as Irene Claremont de Castillejo who argue that the soul in woman is surely feminine not masculine as animus would imply. Woman's soul, Monick agrees, needs to be seen as independent of the constraints of the negative animus that can devolve into merely "patriarchy in the act of dominating matriarchy." [124] He goes on to say that "a woman who experiences a positive male voice or influence needs to build on that to counteract the negative voices that would tear her to pieces." [125] He ends the section and the chapter, the last of the book, with a disclaimer of sorts explaining that as a male, his view on this matter is of necessity limited and that he looks forward to "further elucidation by women themselves of how females experience phallic energy". [126]

At the very end of his book, in fact after the end of his last chapter, Monick makes yet one more stab at clarification in a one page Epilogue. He brings four things to our attention in his conviction that phallos protos or patrix is essential to the future psychic health of humanity. First he reiterates the compelling importance of the legitimate religious role phallos plays. Secondly, he underscores the significance of phallos in its newly recognized position in the conscious aspect of psyche as co-equal and co-original with the feminine principle. Third, he expresses hope for a now more self-aware psychoanalysis, less likely to veer in a patriarchal direction. Lastly, he points out the inevitable realization of psychic evolution thanks to the new balance achieved through a fresh understanding of the importance of phallos.

Monick's is a candidly personal yet learned treatment of a neglected and complex issue. There is something in the structure of this book that suggests to me that, despite its scholarly nature and sophisticated patina, this is a work in progress. It's as if he has poked his head up above the waves from the depths of the sea to establish exactly where he is and to share his findings with us. In so doing, there is an exciting two-way relationship established between his readers and himself that enriches and encourages both.