He: Understanding Masculine Psychology, by Robert A. Johnson (1974)

 

Parsifal and Kundry, from the 1889 Bayreuth production of Wagner's Parsifal

With a title like that, perhaps it was asking for trouble for me to try reading this bookHe was. But I was struck by the idea of using a medieval epic to present views of masculinity. The author, Robert Johsnon, “a Jungian analyst in private practice in San Diego”, proposes to use the Grail myth, interpreted via Jungian psychology, to explain how men behave. Specifically, he uses the Chretien de Troyes version of Parsifal. I couldn’t resist reading about Parsifal, so I sat down to read this short book (just 84 pages, just 25,000 words). I should have realised it was an unlikely achievement. In that short space, Mr Johnson proposed to use Jungian psychology to explain the male psyche via the Grail story, and to do it in a contemporary Christian context (the book originated as a series of lectures at an episcopal church in San Diego in 1969).

I can’t deny, I am fascinated by the medieval tales such as Parsifal. They tell such a simple yet unintelligible story, so that they cry out for an explanation, and

There is no denying, the prose has a kind of comfort about it. As readers, we enjoy being carried along with the author’s argument, when it appears so sensible. One trick is that the author occasionally interjects a common-sense aside, for example, on page 24 he wonders where Parsifal got his sword from “I am very curious. I would very much like to know where Parsifal’s first sword came from.” That seems a very straightforward question, just what we would ask.

Yet this book sold in such astonishing numbers – over 100,000 copies sold, states the cover. How do you sell so many copies? Well, don’t let the reader have any doubt. The Bible, medieval chivalric epics, the nature of the psyche, have multiple interpretations, but despite the multiplicity of subjects tackled in this short book, the author remains sublimely confident that his interpretation is right. His text mixes therapy, Jung, the Christian Bible, and medieval epics, and, do you know, they all have the same message! It’s remarkable. In fact, in reading the book, I was gobsmacked. Have attitudes changed so much in the last 50 years? But let’s go through the book and identify just where my jaw dropped.

Here are some examples of the author’s tone of certainty:

•  “All men are Fisher Kings” (p10)
•  “Read a typical modern novel and you will find that it revolves around the subject of the lostness and the loneliness of the alienated man … We are all wounded and it shows” (p12)
•  “It is an innocent and often foolish thing in a man that will begin the cure for him. A man must consent to this.” [p15]

One imagines Mr Johnson the practising psychiatrist is always right: “In my consulting room a man will sometimes bark at me when I prescribe something strange or difficult for him. ‘What do you think I am? A fool? And I say, ‘Well, it would help.’ For it is an innocent and often foolish thing in a man that will begin the cure for him.” [p15]

And, surprise, Jung is also always right. According to Johnson, every boy goes through a “Fisher King” moment, when he blunders into something that is too big for him. Except, in Jung’s case, his Fisher King moment was not his fault at all – his teacher didn’t believe that Jung could have written the assignment he submitted in class. “There’s one paper here that is by far the best, but it is obviously a forgery.” That’s not a Fisher King moment, that is a piece of hagiography.  This anecdote could have come from the Bible: Jung as Christ.

Everywhere, there is the astounding confidence of the author. He tells us he uses the Chretien version of Parsifal, not the version by Wolfram von Eschenbach, because it “is simpler, more direct, and nearer to the unconscious”. What enables him to make such a judgement?

Another curious technique of the author is to assign unusual meanings to common words. He makes a distinction between “emotion”, “feeling”, and “mood” (which he uses as a synonym for depression). For the author, “enthusiasm”, means “filled with God”. This reassignment of natural language demands a kind of compliance from the reader: if I say it means X, it does so.

But the Parsifal story, you say! It cries out for interpretation. The Fisher King (Amfortas in Wagner’s opera) has been wounded, but his wounds will never heal. He seems to have been wounded sexually – somewhere in the thigh.  His wound will only be healed by the intervention of a fool.

Nonetheless, Johnson’s interpretation of the story is highly questionable. For example, Parsifal covets the Red Knight’s armour and horse, and so he kills the Red Knight. Is this wrong? Certainly not, according to Johnson. “The Red Knight represents that strong, virile, masculine stuff a boy needs so desperately … That is the fierce competitiveness of adolescence and masculinity in general. Almost every boy has to win from somebody else.” [p25]. This is enough to send half or more of the male population into a nosedive because they were not victorious in their last fight.

Even stranger, Johnson mingles the Christian fixation on chastity, with the knightly ideal: “the only proper pursuit for a  knight [is] he must never seduce or be seduced by a woman.” [p28] I seem to remember that the chivalric epics accepted and acknowledge sexual passion – but not in this interpretation. In Johnson’s book, “it is terribly important to make this distinction between the outer, flesh-and-blood woman and a man’s inner feminine quality, and to keep inner laws differentiated from outer laws” [p31]. Whatever that means.

The book is a farrago of “masculine” and “feminine” behaviour. The author repeatedly talks about the need for men to discover their feminine side. To be honest, I’m more interested in identifying my overtly male side and noticing in 2026 how many males seem incapable of relating to other males except by a handful of acceptable male encounters (football, the gym, the  pub).

In the introduction, no fewer than four women are credited with turning the author’s talk into a text for publication. Clearly, the author himself, who presumably wrote some notes for his lecture, couldn’t do the work. He was hard at work writing the sequel to this book, called (inevitably) "She". Or perhaps he was just too busy acknowledging his masculine side to do the feminine work of typing and transcribing.