Author: Peter Wright
*This
article
first
published
at
The
Centre
For
Male
Psychology.
At
fifteen
years
of
age
I
left
school
to
start
a
blacksmithing
trade.
It
was
a
physically
demanding
job
but
at
the
same
time
it
was
immensely
creative
and
satisfying
to
learn
about
the
physical
properties
of
metals
and
their
various
states
of
malleability.
When
metal
is
in
a
red
hot
state
it’s
similar
in
consistency
to
potter’s
clay
which
can
be
easily
pushed,
pulled,
stretched,
twisted,
flattened,
or
poured
–
pretty
much
whatever
you
wanted
to
do
with
it.
The
only
limitation
was
knowledge
of
how
to
use
the
hundreds
of
different
grabbing
tools,
pincers,
tongs,
clamps,
and
hammers,
but
like
any
skill
this
would
all
come
in
time,
with
practice
and
with
quality
male
mentorship.
While
on
the
path
of
learning
these
skills
I
noticed
a
subsidiary
layer
of
activity
that
was
always
accompanying
the
work,
a
psychological
layer
of
emotional
processes
that
seemed
to
mysteriously
mingle
with
each
task.
If
I
was
enjoying
life,
I
tended
to
marvel
more
at
the
rainbow
colours
that
would
appear
in
the
metal
when
grinding
or
heating
it
to
varying
degrees,
or
if
I
was
experiencing
frustration,
anxiety
or
anger
about
something,
I
noticed
that
I
was
hammering
a
hot
blade
more
aggressively
than
usual,
generating
a
strange
kind
of
relief
and,
I
discovered,
even
further
relief
if
I
deliberately
hit
the
object
harder
and
with
extra
blows.
Yet
again
I
learned
that
if
my
hammering
was
getting
too
feverish
I
could
at
any
moment
choose
to
“quench”
the
hot
blade
in
cold
water,
bringing
an
altogether
different
kind
of
relief.
“In
fact
not
only
the
tasks
of
blacksmithing,
but
any
physical
activity
soon
revealed
itself
as
a
project
I
would
‘use’
for
a
canvas
to
regulate
emotions”
Even
at
this
young
age
I
was
consciously
aware
of
how
I
was
regulating
my
emotions
via
these
acts,
and
of
how
this
strange
synchronicity
of
tasks
formed
a
compliment.
I
also
learned
to
make
good
use
of
physical
work
to
regulate
my
emotions
when
I
needed
to
establish
any
kind
of
baseline
equilibrium.
This
wasn’t
a
result
of
some
special
genius
or
education,
nor
from
doing
sessions
with
a
psychologist
or
counsellor
–
it
was
my
male
nature
understanding
how
to
regulate
itself.
In
fact
not
only
the
tasks
of
blacksmithing,
but
any
physical
activity
soon
revealed
itself
as
a
project
I
would
‘use’
for
a
canvas
to
regulate
emotions,
and
I
could
equally
choose
which
physical
activity
to
engage
in
based
on
what
my
desired
outcome
was
–
release
of
anger
or
frustration,
to
generate
comfort,
or
perhaps
to
affirm
or
increase
my
enjoyment
of
life.
All
of
this
happened
in
a
natural
way
as
I
engaged
in
work,
various
sports,
and
recreational
activities
(as
it
does
for
so
most
men)
without
need
to
say
a
single
word
about
my
feelings
to
anyone.
Furthermore,
not
only
was
I
able
to
regulate
my
own
emotions
in
this
way,
but
I
found
I
could
equally
use
these
techniques
to
help
regulate
the
emotions
of
friends
and
family;
if
a
friend
was
struggling
in
some
way
I
would
invite
them
on
a
mountain
hike,
camping,
fishing,
or
to
the
cinema
where
they
could
quietly
undergo
the
secret
alchemy
that
I
had
found
so
helpful.
Helping
friends
made
me
feel
good
too…
was
there
anything
I
could
not
do
with
this
wisdom?
As
for
most
young
men
this
made
intuitive
sense,
though
I
would
later
add
a
layer
of
sophistication
to
that
understanding
when
I
studied
the
psychology
of
emotional
processing.
There
I
learned
that
while
people
can
express
emotions
via
physical
acts
and
gestures,
or
alternatively
by
conversing
about
emotional
issues,
men
tend
to
specialise
more
in
action-based
regulation
of
emotion
than
do
women
who
tend
to
specialise
more
in
verbal
regulation
of
emotions.
With
this
acquired
knowledge
about
men’s
emotional
awareness,
imagine
my
surprise
when
I
opened
a
study
booklet
written
by
one-time
APA
president
Ronald
Levant,
published
in
1997,
claiming
most
men
cannot
understand
their
own
nor
other
people’s
feelings:
“One
striking
and
far-reaching
consequence
of
the
male
socialization
ordeal
is
the
inability
to
differentiate
and
identify
their
emotions…
In
its
most
basic
sense,
to
live
detached
from
one’s
emotions
is
to
live
isolated
from
oneself
as
well
as
from
others
–
a
condition
that
precludes
true
intimacy.”1
This
claim
forms
the
basis
of
the
theory
that
most
men
are
severely
lacking
in
emotional
intelligence,
and
that
even
were
they
to
discover
some
fragments
of
emotional
awareness
they
would
not
know
how
to
express
it
in
words,
such
is
the
depth
of
male
handicap.
Levant
refers
to
this
condition
as
a
normative
male
form
of
‘alexithymia’
(a
term
meaning
low
emotional
intelligence)
which
results
in
men
being
unable
to
read
their
emotions,2
and
he
adds:
“Lacking
this
emotional
awareness,
when
asked
to
identify
their
feelings,
they
tend
to
rely
on
cognition
and
try
to
logically
deduce
how
they
should
feel.
They
cannot
do
what
is
automatic
for
most
women
–
simply
sense
inwardly,
feel
the
feeling,
and
let
the
verbal
description
come
to
mind.”
“…a
woman
might
talk
with
her
melancholic
friend
about
what
is
worrying
her
in
order
to
cheer
her
up;
the
man
may
invite
the
same
melancholic
friend
to
the
movies”.
According
to
this
theory,
men’s
lives
are
guided
by
action
empathy,
which
are
said
to
be
an
inadequate
substitute
for
genuine
emotional
empathy,
a
skill
typically
displayed
by
most
women.
Action
empathy
is
defined
as
the
ability
to
see
physical
motivations
from
another
person’s
point
of
view,
and
to
focus
on
which
concrete
actions
those
people
might
perform,
but
that
men
otherwise
do
not
understand
emotional
empathy
in
the
way
women
do
–
women
who
are
able
to
take
another
person’s
perspective
and
know
how
they
feel.
Levant
states,
“Action
empathy
also
differs
from
emotional
empathy
in
terms
of
its
aim.
Emotional
empathy
is
usually
employed
to
help
another
person
and
is
thus
prosocial,
whereas
action
empathy
is
usually
employed
in
the
service
of
the
self.”1
As
a
result
of
men’s
claimed
low
emotional
intelligence,
they
are
said
become
strangers
to
their
own
emotional
life,
unconsciously
transmuting
their
vulnerable
emotions
into
anger
and
aggression,
while
also
tending
to
extrude
their
caring
emotions
through
the
narrow
channel
of
sexuality.3
Far
from
being
evidence
of
low
emotional
intelligence,
however,
men’s
tendency
to
use
action
can
be
better
understood
as
a
form
of
emotional
acumen.
Some
studies
of
emotional
processing
indicate
that
men
and
boys
are
able
to
identify
the
specifics
of
emotional
arousal
in
themselves
and
others
as
well
as
do
women
–
emotions
like
jealousy,
love,
anger,
sadness,
anxiety,
and
so
on.
For
example,
one
study
of
1285
men
and
women
found
that
while
women
were
more
proficient
at
verbalizing
feelings,
men
and
women
were
equally
proficient
at
identifying
feelings,4
and
another
study
by
Fischer
et
al.5
of
more
than
5000
participants’
ability
to
perceive
facial
emotions
found
“no
gender
differences
in
the
perception
of
target
emotions”. Fischer
et
al.
comment
that
this
finding
“diverges
from
various
earlier
reviews
and
meta-analyses
on
gender
differences
in
emotion
accuracy”.5
They
speculate
that
this
difference
might
be
because
earlier
research
tended
to
use student
samples,
whereas
the
participants
in
their
study were from
a
range
of
ages
and
backgrounds.
The
second
observation,
as
outlined
above,
is
that
men
and
boys
may
choose
to
regulate
emotions
not
by
verbalising
them
so
much
(women’s
preferred
method)
but
by
taking
intelligent
action.
By
way
of
example
a
woman
might
talk
with
her
melancholic
friend
about
what
is
worrying
her
in
order
to
cheer
her
up;
the
man
may
invite
the
same
melancholic
friend
to
the
movies;
both
responses
–
talking,
or
acting
–
serve
to
intelligently
modulate
emotions.
“The
two
ways
of
regulating
emotions
have
implications
for
the
field
of
mental
health,
which
relies
predominately
on
talking
therapy
–
in
particular
talking
about
feelings.”
It
is
an
error
to
conflate
these
two
separate
features
of
emotional
processing
as
if
they
were
one
and
the
same:
1.
recognising
emotions,
or
2.
verbalising
feelings.
Men,
like
women,
can
usually
recognise
the
full
range
of
emotional
phenomena
but
they
may
choose
to
respond
to
that
knowledge
in
a
very
different
manner
than
does
the
average
woman.
Men
often
choose
to
respond
to
such
awareness
by
doing
something
pragmatic
instead
of
verbalising
feelings.
Talking
about
doings
The
two
ways
of
regulating
emotions
have
implications
for
the
field
of
mental
health,
which
relies
predominately
on
talking
therapy
–
in
particular
talking
about
feelings.
Does
this
not
suggest
that
there
could
be,
and
perhaps
needs
to
be,
more
emphasis
on
discussing
the
therapeutic
value
of
action?
It
may
not
be
practical
to
conduct
therapy
while
engaged
in
physical
activity
such
as
a
gym
workout
or
while
out
walking
in
the
streets,
but
the
therapeutic
discussion
can
at
least
focus
more
on
the
“doing”
aspects
of
a
man’s
life.
For
example
a
therapist
might
ask
how
did
problem
XYZ
make
a
man
act
out,
along
with
exploring
which
physical
activities
or
responses
might
help
a
him
to
modulate
such
emotions
more
optimally
in
future.
Does
riding
a
Jet
Ski,
or
going
for
a
jog,
or
building
some
wooden
furniture
make
him
feel
better
or
worse?
What
about
creating
art
or
playing
music?
Does
that
difficult
manoeuvre
in
the
video
game
remind
of
difficulties
in
his
relationship
with
his
girlfriend?
Does
the
same
video
game
provide
some
optimism
that
if
he
can
get
past
the
difficult
manoeuvre
within
the
game
then
perhaps
he
can
find
a
way
around
the
impasse
with
his
girlfriend?
Activities
like
these
provide
a
symbolic
canvas
on
which
men
project,
and
then
work
through
various
scenarios
of
real
life,
with
potential
to
shift
affective
resonances
in
the
process.
When
a
man
talks
about
how
he
operated
a
lathe,
did
some
welding,
restored
a
bit
of
discarded
and
broken
furniture,
might
he
be
sharing
a
strategy
of
how
he
successfully
redirected
suicidal
feelings?
Perhaps
we
should
not
be
so
quick
to
shut
down
these
conversations
with
accusations
of
being
work
obsessed,
effectively
stymieing
natural
male
expressions
with
injunctions
to
talk
less
about
activities
and
to
communicate
more
effusively
with
feelings
words.
For
many
men,
activities
are
the
preferred
canvases
on
which
they
can
process
feelings
and
carve
out
some
genuine
psychological
equilibrium.
This
is
probably
a
reason
why
men
talk
so
much
about
work,
sports,
building
things,
computer
games,
recreational
activities
–
it
may
be
their
preferred
way
of
communicating
the
ways
they
wrestle
with
psychological
issues.
Sadly,
the
therapeutic
industry
is
quick
to
chastise
men’s
preference
for
intelligent
actions,
conflating
them
with
pathological
reflexes
such
as
unconscious
acts
of
aggression,
dependence
on
drugs
and
booze,
and
other
destructive
versions
of
“acting-out”
as
they
are
so
often
branded.
Therapies
centred
in
discussion
of
physical
activities,
or
conversely
centred
in
sharing
strings
of
feeling-words,
can
both
serve
as
forms
of
communication.
With
this
in
mind
it’s
perhaps
time
for
therapy
to
free
itself
from
looking
exclusively
into
the
mirror
of
feelings
so
it
can
look
out
of
the
window
at
the
range
of
concrete
activities
that
also
serve
psyche.
The
reaction
of
men
to
this
approach
might
surprise
us
all.
References:
[1]
Ronald
F.
Levant,
Carl
Sherman,
Men
And
Emotions:
a
Psychoeducational
Approach
(Assessment
and
Treatment
of
Psychological
Disorders)
,
pp.
9-10,
Newbridge
Publications
(1997
)
[2]
Pleck,
J.
H.,
Levant,
R.
F.,
&
Pollack,
W.
S.
A
New
Psychology
of
Men.
pp.238-239,
New
York
:
Basic
Books
(1995)
[3]
Levant,
R.
F.
(1996b).
The
new
psychology
of
men.
Professional
psychology:
Research
and
practice
,
27(3),
259
.
[4] Salminen,
J.K.
‘Prevalence
of
alexithymia
and
its
association
with
sociodemographic
variables
in
the
general
population
of
Finland,’
Journal
of
psychosomatic
research,
vol.
46,
no1,
pp.
75-82,
1999
[5]
Fischer,
A.
H.,
Kret,
M.
E.,
&
Broekens,
J.
(2018).
Gender
differences
in
emotion
perception
and
self-reported
emotional
intelligence:
A
test
of
the
emotion
sensitivity
hypothesis.
PloS
one,
13(1),
e0190712.
Original Story on AVFM
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