WHEN Robert Bly's international bestseller, Iron John: A Book About Men, was published in 1990, it caused a sensation by selling more than a million copies worldwide.
Sociologists and the media were intrigued by its success. Considered the gender and cultural watershed that gave birth to the "men's movement", it seemed to tap into men's need for a different experience of masculinity. The puzzle was why so many men bought the book, what male needs it met and why was its market so ready to receive it when it did? Later this month Michael Meade, an author, "mythologist" and close associate of Robert Bly, will give what has been billed as a "fiery and challenging" workshop for men in Dublin.
According to Edmund Grace, a Jesuit involved in the organising committee, a growing number of men feel the need to meet and reflect on what it means to be a man. He believes there's a support only men can give to other men and that manhood - contrary to what is often depicted - is a positive value. He says the traditional model for men of the "tough loner" doesn't work and that both the long term unemployed and the successful businessman alike can feel hollow, unsatisfied and lost.
Edmund Grace believes a father cannot initiate his own son into manhood, and that it has to be done as part of a wider male community. He speaks of men's "spirituality" and says: "We have energies inside ourselves, independent of us. They're positive energies, tied up with being male and human. Reflecting on experiences of being male with other men taps in on those energies and leads to a healthy celebration."
Kieran McKeown, an economic research consultant, is married for 17 years and has three children. Deeply in love with his wife, he loves his children but feels there are "massive expectations around the one adult in our lives".
In his small men's group which meets fortnightly they discuss love, money, children, career, insecurity, power struggles in the workplace and intimate relations with their wife or partner. The group of eight men are all university educated, very articulate and "fairly middle class".
Kieran McKeown describes Michael Meade, the man leading the workshop later this month, as an extraordinarily gifted storyteller whose medium is to tell a story and invite the group to talk about, how it reverberates with them. Would this event have been possible 30 years ago?
"Not even five years ago - in my life anyhow. I probably wouldn't have been as open or as capable of reflecting on my experience. It's a very interactive thing. If you've never done this you'll never see it's possible to do this with other men."
Men tend to be their careers - or they're unemployed, he says. "A more energy sapping paradigm is hard to imagine. It's the currency men communicate on. I have a career and a business but we're more than just the workforce."
Ray Smith, a group therapist and community worker, has worked with men's groups over the last 10 years. Usually he works with unemployed men who are concerned to find a job or earn money. Some join men's groups in the hope of getting a job at the end of it; others see the need to change themselves and "trawl through their own difficulties"; more join to work out a relationship or because their wife or partner is making demands on them to change.
Dermot Rooney, a clinical psychotherapist and lecturer in the Marino Institute of Education, says men tend to lack a forum to meet and talk outside work or the pub where the emphasis can be on external things. He attended the first of the men's "gatherings" in Ireland in the early 1990s at which the eminent Jungian psychotherapist, James Hillman, addressed some 100 men.
Dermot Rooney found it profound yet somehow "frightening" and "vaguely intimidating". But it was "absolutely fascinating". Using story telling and poetry, he was stunned by the way men stood up and spoke and he was very taken by the willingness of men to share their insecurities. He sees men as "trying to grapple with the chaos and yet the mystery of why we're here".
Dermot Rooney stresses there's lots of fun and humour at men's gatherings. Speaking of the men's group to which he belongs he adds: "There's zero cultishness about it. There's no leader, no structure. The only boundary is that there's no physical violence. There isn't an agenda. The only agenda is for men to talk. It's a quest."
Catherine Sheehan, an MA student in journalism at DCU, was at the recent "Men and Intimacy" conference at St Patrick's College, Carlow which was attended by some 160 people, almost half of whom were women. She says most men who attended wanted to be better fathers and to break down barriers between themselves and their wives and children.
She was particularly taken by a talk which got "thunderous applause" on fathers and sons presented by Colm O'Connor, a psychologist with postgraduate degrees in Applied and Clinical Psychology. He spoke of men being imprisoned in the patriarchal role and asked what does it mean to be a father? Fathers, he suggested, are often known by their absence, by "shoes on the landing" and the sound of the car driving away in the morning.
HARRY Ferguson, senior lecturer in the department of Applied Social Studies at UCC, believes the Carlow conference was so successful in large part because women were present: "A huge amount of learning took place by men and women. There was a powerful and empowering sense of some kind of common ground being worked out." He says some men only events can lead to the demonising of women and a failure to hear women's voices. However, he believes it is legitimate to have men only events. Single sex events can challenge men to let go of the expectation that women will do the emotional work "which implicitly challenges men's fear of other men". He believes men have an agenda to sort out for themselves and they should not depend on women to sort it out for them.