Dan J. Brennan

Mothers Say No to Freud: Reclaiming Closeness with Sons 2

Kate Stone Lombardi and I have something in common.

We have both explored this question in our books: Is there a healthy love between the opposite sexes which is passionate, deep, tender, close, vulnerable, and physically affectionate which is not sexual?

In a Freudian world, there is no such love.

To answer the question with a yes is to go against our sexualized world and the sexualized evangelical sub-culture.  Those of you who are regular readers of my blog know this territory. Page by page, as I read Lombardi courageously exploring the deep connection between gender, sexuality, and closeness, my respect and admiration toward her grew. She argues that mother-son closeness is healthy in her book, The Mama's Boy Myth. The book is getting some good press. 

Just like the conventional wisdom via thru Freudian prohibition, says it is wise to avoid close cross-gender friendships, cw also says raising a mama’s boy is never a good thing. Lombardi and I both challenge the conventional wisdom of Freud.

Mothers Say No to Freud: Reclaiming Closeness with Sons

"The only cultural image we ever see of mother-son closeness is a negative one" observed Kate Stone Lombardi. She has written a throught-provoking book, The Mama's Boy Myth: Why Keeping Our Sons Close makes Them Stronger. It is getting a lot of press. CBS here. NPR reviewed it.  New York Times also provided some space toward it. 

This book drew my attention because I have developed a passion for researching emotional closeness between men and women. The winds are blowing. Even though Freud is in the air, men and women in the twenty-first century are gaining some distance from a man who has inspired so much anxiety about closeness. 

Since Freud sexualized closeness in imaginations of the Western world (including evangelicals who ironically stresss we are not to be conformed to this world) the romantic relationship is the only relationship where you could not freak out or be uncomfortable about expressing mutual deep tenderness. Of course, for many contemporary evangelicals, Freud holds sway. 

The transformation from Freud for evangelicals is not going to happen overnight but it's happening in mother-son closeness and cross-gender friendships. Freud has so much power in the evangelical community and inspired much discomfort and anxiety over closeness. 

But God is raising up men and women from a variety of places to debunk Freud.

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

"I wish I could say I am motivated by love totally and entirely.  I love Jesus, yes but I also fear him.  I fear his return for Judgment Day, when he will come like a thief in the night, when I most likely will be found not ready, and I will shoot straight to hell, my soul boring through the bedrock and limestone straight to the fires.  I can't quite get my literalistic mind around how I can burn for eternity, so I settle on being stung by hornets, and that is bad enough.  That, and the shame I imagine in my parent's eyes as I trudge off behind the devil.  The sermons I half-listened to on Sunday morning, Sunday Evening, and Wednesday evening all carry with them cautionary tales of not being ready, and how awful that would be, and how disappointed God.  And we know not when it will happen. "

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl.

The Social Psychology of Gender

The Social Psychology of Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations by Laurie Rudman and Peter Glick is a secular textbook that I want to blog on this next week

 

Alice Eagly from Northwestern University says this book is, "The best text I've seen to date on how gender influences social interaction." 

Top Ten Cross-Gender Friendship Books

I haven't done this in a while and I have discovered more resources since I last did one.  Here is my current list.  These books are in my top ten because of their their contribution to the subject.  I do not rank them in any significant order.

Communion and Friendship: The Privilege of Love

One book that has caught my attention recently is The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality.  These chapters are written by different authors who have been shaped by the Camaldolese Benedictine spirituality.

Living Spirituality

Greg Laughery's book, Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path is a book born out of his experience at the L'Abri Fellowship community in Switzerland. 

 

The Blue Parakeet

I am beginning to read Scot McKnight's, The Blue Parakeet. 

I think for those of you who have read my manuscript, you'll agree that Scot and I connect on the large aspects of God's story: story, women, oneness, and discernment.  Not surprisingly, Scot's themes, of God's story, women, and oneness fit very much into my own manuscript. 

Without a doubt, Scot has honed his writing skills and has produced another accessible book on a complicated subject.    We need more theologians like Scot.  Christians are served well when theologians write accessible books like this.  This is a very good book.

What you will get here, that I don't think you will get anywhere else in the blogosphere, are my particular comments on The Blue Parakeet with oneness and cross-gender friendship in mind.

I found this particular comment illuminating:

Books I am Reading

Books which have my razor thin rulers in them:

Love is Where it Falls: A Passionate Cross-Gender Friendship

I don't think I have looked at this book here before.  If I have, I've only mentioned it.  Simon Callow's book, Love is Where it Falls, is a powerful, passionate portrayal of a cross-gender friendship where sex was not involved.  Simon was 30 years old when he met Margaret Ramsay in 1980.  She was seventy.  He was gay.  He was involved in a serious relationship with another man.  Their story intrigues me.  Their nongenital but very passionate friendship for 11 years is indeed a powerful story of love and friendship--some would say over the top.