Awakening from the Deep Sleep: A Practical Guide for Men in Transition Book

After years of socialization mandating fierce independence, invulnerability, and strength, many men fall into what psychotherapist Robert Pasick calls a "deep sleep": an emotional and behavioral state often characterized by excessive dependence on work, wives, or addictive substances. By their late thirties or forties, these men feel pressured to prove themselves, wary of the career track they're on, socially isolated, emotionally distant and hypercritical, and uncertain about what they really want. Drawing on years of experience counseling men, Dr. Pasick explores how they relate to work, anger, grief, women, sexuality, fatherhood, and addiction. Through the stories of men who come together in a men's group, Pasick examines the male socialization process that eventually leads to the "deep sleep." The author explores why men believe they must constantly prove themselves, how the women's movement has frightened and confused men and how it may liberate them, how men are overburdened by an unreasonable expectation to constantly produce, and the difference in male and female language and world views.Read More