{"id":151250,"date":"2024-11-16T17:12:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-16T15:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/espirited.com\/jesper-yul-on-the-new-fathers\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T14:41:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T12:41:30","slug":"jesper-yul-on-the-new-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/espirited.com\/en\/jesper-yul-on-the-new-fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesper Juul on the “new fathers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The challenges in the spiritual development of women and men are both the same and different. Now I would like to address the difference in men by presenting the ideas of two male psychologists, Jesper Juul, a systemic psychotherapist and author of the book Being a Man and a Father, and James Hillman, the creator of archetypal psychology, which is sometimes called “acorn theory.”<\/a> Both comment on the challenges which the modern man face in changing role models in the family, and in dealing with the psychic legacy of“absent fathers<\/em>.” On the surface the written by them differs, but at its core it is the same thing viewed from a different angle. That’s why it’s valuable.<\/p>\n

I’ll start with Jesper Juul.<\/p>\n

As is evident from the term itself,“absentee father<\/em>” is a role related to the way the man participates in the family. In this case, not participating. And he doesn’t participate not so much because he is not physically present, but because something else is missing. What’s missing is his ability to be in touch with his emotional nature (his “feminine” half) and through that to exhibit a different kind of connectedness with the people he loves. It is an absence that is felt even in his presence because he seems distant, cold, and detached.<\/p>\n

“Absentee fathers” – so the lonely patriarchs at the top of the family structure were called in generations. They tried to be fathers by taking the lead role at home and making the decisions, yet they were almost invisible because they were emotionally unavailable and almost always absent. For this reason, the new generation of fathers born in the sixties had no example to follow.” <\/em><\/p>\n

Jesper Juul, “Being a husband and father”*<\/em><\/p>\n

From the above stem the problems of the newer generation of fathers, who find it difficult to create a different pattern of communication since they lack the example of their own fathers. However, according to Jesper Juul, imitating women does not work for them because women’s way of emotional communication is very different from men’s and leads to the loss of their specifically masculine role. It breeds weakness, which becomes another form of absence – the absence of masculine strength.<\/p>\n

“What happened with my generation was this: we, who considered ourselves “new fathers”, did not want to repeat the behaviour of our fathers under any circumstances, yet we never tried to create an independent role for ourselves in the family and motivate it, but simply started to imitate our mothers. We felt like doing what they did, so suddenly we were faced with tasks that were completely unfamiliar – we started bathing our children and feeding them, changing their diapers, holding them on our laps and rocking them, playing and walking with them. Everything we did was under the watchful eyes of our mothers.” <\/em><\/p>\n

Jesper Juul*<\/em><\/p>\n

You can imagine how a father feels, doing something under the “Watchful Eye” of a mother, and he were not meant to be a mother. It doesn’t feel good at all. So Juul suggests an unexpected alternative to get out of this situation – children should become their fathers’ teachers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“We were also the first men to understand that we can’t just copy someone else’s behavior, that we can’t become fathers by imitating women – we can only learn from other men… <\/em><\/p>\n

The driving force in the practice of fatherhood is the children themselves; their unconditional love and boundless trust allow fathers to unleash their fathering abilities in direct communication with their children<\/strong>. The challenge for men today is not only to reinvent and redefine fatherhood, but also to find their own position in a partnership in which responsibility and power are shared equally between women and men; a partnership that is guided primarily by feminine values.”<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Jesper Juul*<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a very valuable distinction – between the female way of parenting and practicing female values.<\/strong> Because value itself is something different than the specific way it is practiced in life, including through the role. I believe that knowing this distinction is equally important for both men and women, who are constantly stumbling in their efforts at inner wholeness. Women trying to integrate the masculine part of themselves by playing it masculine. And men, trying to integrate the feminine part in themselves by acting it out in a feminine way. Confusing a value with a way of embodying that value results in women behaving assertively and aggressively, in a way that Jung would describe as“obsession by the negative animus<\/em>.” As well as to men whose contact with their emotional side leads to tearful sentimentality, indecisiveness, moodiness, and weakness (the“negative anima”<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Being emotionally intelligent and sensitive to the needs of others is a feminine value because communicating with another requires receptivity, and receptivity is a feminine quality. If you are a man, applying this value does not mean giving up your masculine strength and presence. It simply means opening space to hear and see the other, and then allowing that hearing and seeing to change you. But the same applies to women. There are so many women who surpass men in their assertiveness and “breakthrough power” that one has to wonder where their innate feminine softness and capacity for empathy has gone.<\/p>\n

According to Jesper Juul, children have the ability to teach their fathers the new model of fatherhood, not only because they love them unconditionally, but also because of their innate wisdom. In his bookThe Competent Child<\/em>, he writes that a child is competent because it instinctively responds to the undercurrents in the family by materializing them through a problem in his behavior. In this case, the challenge for the parent is to understand exactly what the child is telling him when he behaves in one way or another.<\/p>\n

“… by the age of eleven or twelve, every child thinks they have the best parents in the world.<\/strong> No child questions his mother’s or father’s ability to love him or the behavior expressing that love. Children only ever test themselves: if your father displays destructive behaviour, you as a child will not criticise him, but blame yourself and ask where you went wrong for him to behave like that. In this way a sense of guilt accumulates in every child: ‘My father is doing this or that because I am a bad child’. <\/em><\/p>\n

Jesper Juul<\/em><\/p>\n

As usual, what heals us is unconditional love, and we usually associate it with the mother. What is original about Juul’s approach is that he sees the source of this love in the child. And, since such a view contains the danger of a parent turning his child into the source of the love he himself hasn’t received in his childhood (and that is very sick!), it is well to make another distinction. It concerns the goal.<\/p>\n

The purpose of this relationship is not to rely on our child to make up for the lacks we ourselves experienced in our childhood. The purpose is to allow the one who gives us his unconditional love, the child, to become our teacher. His unconditional love makes us open to the feedback he sends us and try to understand exactly what he is trying to tell us. In other words, our task is to turn the“unconscious competence<\/em>” that our child has into“conscious competence<\/em>“, and the source of this awareness is us, the adults.<\/p>\n

“The only means of counteracting this early imprint is the formation of a warm, responsible and conscious attitude towards the child. And where as a father can you learn such a thing? Very simply: by turning to your child and looking at the signals it gives you. You will not be able to avoid repeating your father’s behaviour by using your own will alone; you will only be able to do so if you are inspired by your child – in this way you will gradually free yourself from the damaging influence of your own father and develop other behaviour that suits you and your child. And in this case your partner and the mother of your child cannot help you; even if she sees that your behaviour is destructive and harmful to the child, she will unfortunately not be able to influence you much – it’s always very difficult for a man to accept a corrective female point of view; it’s easier when the alternative behaviour is suggested by another man.”
\nJesper Juul<\/em><\/p>\n

I think of Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, who also commented on the fact that men have an innate hostility to the feminine principle, because they associate it with the mother complex, the fear of the unconscious, and the ambivalence of the anima. It is understandable that even emotionally mature women would be met with suspicion by their men if the men had an unresolved mother complex.<\/p>\n

And here comes something more I wish to add from my own experience. I believe that the challenge with the new kind of fatherhood can still be supported by women\/mothers if they themselves also deal with the challenge of the “new kind” of motherhood. Because women also have to make serious updates in the way they raise their children, i.e. in the pattern of motherhood. They also have a generational inherited problem with emotional intelligence, albeit in a different way. Perhaps this difference between men and women in making the connection between the mind and feelings can be described thus – one’s are captives to emotions that lack reason, objectivity and neutrality (women) and the others are captives to reason that cannot understand emotions (men).<\/p>\n

For men, a broken relationship with feelings can be even more damaging because emotions are the direct link to the soul, of which the child is a symbol. Our inner child. I understand why Jesper Juul speaks of children becoming teachers to their fathers. The arrival of a child in the family is such a huge challenge, precisely because it puts the relationship with our inner child to the test. If we have unresolved childhood issues, our child will help us resolve them by simply poking at our weak spots. It will do this in a competent way because it is orchestrated by the unconscious.<\/p>\n

“In many relationships today, there are expectations on an emotional level placed on men by women. Many women are deeply frustrated that they are not getting the closeness they seek or the desired emotional response from their partner. And they’re obsessed with the idea that men are hiding something from them, that they’re not letting them touch their inner world – they take everything personally<\/strong>. My experience with men, metaphorically speaking, is this: everything that can be bought in the men’s “store” is displayed on the shelf. Women, however, often suspect that they are not allowed into the hidden from the eye “warehouse”. <\/em><\/p>\n

In reality, however, such a warehouse doesn’t exists.<\/strong> Or in other words, nowaday’s man, who is ready to reinvent himself as a partner and a father needs to dig deep inside to find what women and children expect of him. In this sense, fatherhood can be seen as both a true gift and a challenge.” <\/em><\/p>\n

Jesper Juul, “Being a husband and father”*<\/em><\/p>\n

I find these words of Jesper Yuul very important. However, I would add to what he said that the digging and discovering in question is hard inner work and creating in its essence. To continue the warehouse metaphor, there is a warehouse after all. However, there are highly flammable explosives in it. They are called emotions. For their explosive energy to be used to generate consciousness, man needs a mind that understands them. And this mind is not found in the warehouse, it is created. The shelves are empty because the commodity called emotional intelligence was not yet on the market until recently.<\/p>\n

Kameliya Hadzhiyska<\/p>\n

\n

*all quotations above are direct translation from Bulgarian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The challenges in the spiritual development of women and men are both the same and different. Now I would like to address the difference in men by presenting the ideas of two male psychologists, Jesper Juul, a systemic psychotherapist and author of the book Being a Man and a Father, and James Hillman, the creator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":150424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[648],"tags":[707,649],"class_list":["post-151250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emotional-intelligence","tag-parents-and-children","tag-relationships"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t