Book reviews: "The Emotionally Unavailable Man: A Blueprint for Healing" and "The Male Brain"

Reviews by J. Steven Svoboda:

"The Emotionally Unavailable Man: A Blueprint for Healing"

The Emotionally Unavailable Man: A Blueprint for Healing. By Patti Henry. Highland City, Florida: Rainbow Books, Incorporated. 2004. 177 pp. (men's book) + 83 pp. (women's book).www.allbookstores.com. $16.95. Also available from same publisher as set of 9 unabridged CD's for $24.95.

Psychotherapist Patti Henry has finally written her first book, and it turns out to be good enough and different enough to justify being reviewed here despite its appearance in 2004. (Henry only sent me the review copy recently and I was previously unaware of this book.) "As a psychotherapist in private practice…" she writes, "men keep coming to my office, one after another, hurting, wounded… but mostly unhappy…. They feel like they are trapped, dying somehow. They feel like little boys in grown up bodies." As we read the book, we come to realize that virtually all men are in some ways emotionally unavailable.

Henry believes that what she calls our culture's "tradition of teaching our little boys to cut off from their feelings" helps create problems that interfere with men's emotional development. And so we have ended up in a situation today where "women seem to have gained some advantage over the last 60 years. They have their emotions---little girls are not taught to cut of from that part of themselves—and they have the business world, too. Men, however, have arrived somewhat at a disadvantage. They have the business world. Period."

The author really grasps in a way I do not remember ever seeing concretized so particularly how women can—intentionally or otherwise—create what she calls a "hurricane" that is "powerful and it is relentless," that shames and terrifies men and shuts them down. There are many ways to avoid the hurricane, but it is often hard for men to do as it may feel familiar from a childhood hurricane created by a raging, addicted, or overly powerful parent. Also, many ways to avoid the hurricane are dysfunctional and counterproductive--raging, overreacting, passive aggression, running away. If men can learn to face the storm, they can bring themselves into full adulthood. Henry writes that to face the storm, we need certain tools, including the realization that we are not victims, the realization that we also have needs, and the need to set healthy boundaries.

Just the realization, "I am not a victim" can be such a powerful statement to release us into adulthood, as Henry relates it did for her. As far as boundaries go, Henry provides an apposite metaphor: "I liken good relationships to sending a fax. You send your partner a fax and you get to keep the original." She then gives the reader seven detailed steps in setting and enforcing meaningful, realistic boundaries.

Most of us had programming laid in at childhood that may not be serving us any more. One of Henry's more inspired metaphors: allowing your (often counterproductive) childhood programming to continue to run things is like letting a five-year-old drive your car.

Chapter 8 contains no fewer than—count 'em!—twenty-eight suggested methods for reconnecting with one's feelings, each explained in detail. Clearly, this author really cares. Suggestion 2: Inventory your losses. Suggestion 5: Write a letter to each of your parents. Suggestion 10: Think About Your Own Children (but why does the author assume all readers necessarily have kids?). Suggestion 14: Practice One-Sentence Confrontations. Suggestion 21: Pray, Sit with Nature, Meditate. Henry earns a lot of points in my book for repeatedly urging readers to attend the Mankind Project's New Warrior Weekend, which--as is probably true for virtually every man who has done it—is one of the most important, powerful things I ever did.

Henry provides a fair amount of atypical advice, as when she counsels her readers not to take items off the table. In other words, if there is some issue that keeps coming up between you and your partner, it needs to be worked out, no matter how trivial it seems, and should not be submerged as it is bound to surface later in a more virulent form. Another example is her advice not to compromise, to go for a win-win but never to agree to something just to end a conflict when your agreement is not genuine. "Compromise doesn't work when it means we take turns losing," she memorably summarizes, later adding even more succinctly, "DO NOT say yes to something when the answer is no." Finally, Henry believes in the occasional use of retraction, when you agree to something that you later realize just doesn't work for you and when there is an important principle at stake for you that you can't override and be true to yourself. The author provides a memorable story of how she uninvited her mother to witness the birth of her child!

This is literally a two-sided book. Start reading from one side and it's a book for men; start from the other side and it's a shorter book for women. Everything I have discussed so far is from the men's book, and really Henry's focus is on men. The women's book enables female partners of emotionally unavailable men to support their partners during the process she outlines. She does provide some memorable points in the women's book too. For example, don't wait to start your life until you have a partner. When you have a partner, neither make him your "project" nor live parallel lives with him. Rather, stay connected while holding onto your individuality. The author also looks at and even lists the numerous "secondary gains" that can hold us back from improving a relationship due to comfort and vested interest in the status quo, even though it may be miserable. She also provides sage advice on overcoming resistances, on creating safety for one's partner, and on how love in a relationship should be conditional, not unconditional (another unconventional yet wise point in her favor).

Some examples fall flat or just don't seem to quite fit. But those that do are often stunning. The other odd thing I noticed is the author's repeated assumption all her readers have kids, which doesn't interfere with the flow of the book or invalidate her points but is just a bit jarring.

Henry's originality means that the numerous examples are fresh, often taken from the author's own life or those of her clients (suitably anonymized of course), or even from Sea World (her example of how Shamu is incrementally changed to do the trick where he leaps out of the water is simply stunning). In a word, what is most special about this book is its sympathy for men—Henry really gets men—and its originality. This is a book not to be missed—and you can listen to it in the car if you prefer that to reading.

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"The Male Brain"

The Male Brain. By Louann Brizendine, M.D. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. www.crownpublishing.com. 271 pp. $24.99.

Psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, currently of the University of California, San Francisco and formerly of Harvard Medical School, has published the predictable followup to her bestselling book The Female Brain. This may be the most accessible book I have ever read that has slightly more than half its length taken up with appendices, notes, references, and the index. In 135 easy-to-read pages, Brizendine lays out the basic functioning of the male brain. Despite the number of books addressing these general topics, the author stands out due to her knack both for memorable formulations of information and for bringing up little-discussed aspects of the brain and tying them into everyday aspects of life to which we can relate.

Her prefatory material is fabulous in itself. We get two pages summarizing the ten principal areas of the male brain, followed by a three-page "cast of neurohormone characters" that sets the tone as it gives us the list of players as if we were in the theatre: "Testosterone—Zeus. King of the male hormones, he is dominant, aggressive, and all- powerful…." Or the less familiar "Mullerian Inhibiting Substance (MIS)—Hercules. He's strong, tough, and fearless. Also known as the Defeminizer, he ruthlessly strips away all that is feminine from the male…." One more: "Androstenedione—Romeo. The charming seducer of women. When released by the skin as a pheromone he does more for a man's sex appeal than any aftershave or cologne." Next are two pages summarizing the phases of a man's life.

Then the book proper begins! Brizendine explains that male and female brains to differ considerably. "In the female brain, the hormones estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin predispose brain circuits toward female-typical behaviors. In the male brain, it's testosterone, vasopressin, and a hormone called MIS (Mullerian inhibiting substance) that have the earliest and most enduring effects…. We have learned that men use different brain circuits to process spatial information and solve emotional problems." The author aligns her chapters with the different principal phases of a male brain's life---the boy brain, the teen boy brain, the mating brain, the brain below the belt, the daddy brain, manhood, and the mature male brain.

In the chapters on the boy brain and the teen boy brain, the doctor provides tales drawn from her own experiences raising boys. By the time we get to the mating brain, things are really starting to heat up. She provides a detailed travelogue of an imaginary train trip along the brain circuits of "the male brain in love." One key area of the brain involved in pair bonding is the ventral tegmental area or VTA, whose cells manufacture dopamine, "the brain's feel-good neurotransmitter for motivation and reward…. Filled with dopamine, the train would speed along his brain circuits to the next station, the NAc, or nucleus accumbens, the area for anticipation of pleasure and reward." And later, "[a]s the train sped into the final station, the caudate nucleus, or CN, the area for memorizing the look and identity of whoever is giving you pleasure," we'd see al the tiniest details about the woman who started the train going in the first place.

Interestingly, to reach orgasm, "both men and women must first turn off a few parts of the brain—like the amygdale, the brain's danger and alert center—and the areas for self- consciousness and worrying—the anterior cingulated cortex, or ACC." Now there's a topic that I haven't heard feminists talk about much. Although I had heard this before, I appreciated the author's reminder that, women's complaints that men don't care enough about them to stay awake and cuddle to the contrary, "the truth is that the hormone oxytocin is to blame for a man's so-called postcoital narcolepsy."

Being a father myself, it is fascinating to read about the daddy brain and then to consider how nature has equipped males to do such different tasks—fight, conquer a woman, and then nurture children. Certain brain circuits are designed to induce men to fall in love with their children. "[C]lose physical contact releases oxytocin and pleasure hormones in dads, too, bonding parent to child." And of course, as the author reminds us, men are critical to a child's well-being. Active discipline from fathers plays a crucial role in a child's success in life, and a girl's close relationship with her father can set the stage for getting along well with men throughout her life.

In the manhood chapter, the author explains that both men and women have both a mirror-neuron system (MNS) and a temporal-parietal junction system (TPJ) but the female brain stays in the MNS longer while the male brain quickly switches over to the problem solving, action-oriented TPJ. These different brain circuits function adaptively and helpfully, for the most part, even though in modern society we may sometimes deny certain aspects of the behaviors they produce. The TPJ induces men to, for example, aggressively stare down guys they may catch checking out their wives, and women— whatever they may say—generally feel flattered by such behavior. Like it or not, "[r]esearch shows that angry men get noticed more—not only by other men but also by women." Not only that, but "couples who argue have a better chance of staying together."

Finally, the mature male brain has grown in comfort with its established rank in whatever hierarchies apply to the man's life, and it feels less called to prove itself than it did when it was younger.

What a great book! A quick, easy, and pleasant read, yet a very enlightening and instructive one. The model of integrating small amounts of core text with large quantities of prefatory and supplementary material is one other authors should consider adopting. Don't miss this fabulous work. Three cheers!