I could handle Washington University academically, but my emotional maturity lagged behind. (It probably still does relative to most other men my age.) So I had to move back home in December 1979 because of severe depression caused by my feelings about a girl I knew there. (She turned out all right, apparently.)
The psychiatrist my parents sent me to in Tulsa to deal with my depression, the one my father saw to treat his depression a few years previously (apparently dysthymic tendencies run in the family), prescribed Norpramin, which I don't think helped me. I also found him unsympathetic and unhelpful in dealing with my emotional disturbances, so I declined to see him after a few visits and stopped taking the medication.
From hindsight I can see exactly the problem I had at age 20, and the aggressive sort of intervention I probably would have benefited from to boost my confidence and morale at such a low point in my life: I needed to acquire the metaphysical membership card in the Man Club, something which I still don't have this late in life.
But the counseling professions 30 years ago apparently didn't see things that way. They assumed that the Man Club initiation would happen "organically," without the need for interventions.
By contrast, psychologist Brian Gilmartin expresses an alternative view in this video clip and this one. As Gilmartin points out, dismissing the problem as a "passing phase" can result in the problem's duration until the sufferer himself passes out of existence.
So I continue to feel intrigued by the story I heard about a cryonicist in a polyamorous household who arranged for his older teen son's initiation into the Man Club with his concubine. I see a lot of value in this sort of arrangement, especially as a rite of passage, instead of just expecting that it will happen regardless as part of a boy's organic development.
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