The Porn-Addicted Magician

From an archetypal perspective, this means that men’s initiation into the world of sex happens via the Magician archetype, which seeks power through hidden knowledge, mastery of technology and mental fantasy.

Consider how the use of porn sites is done in secret, behind closed doors, through anonymous user names and encrypted web browsers. Drawing on an inexhaustible collection of videos stored in “the cloud”, the user is able to conjure up just about any sexual scenario they desire and see it enacted on their screen for their own secret pleasure. All of these factors are what excite and enthrall the inner Magician in a man.

The unfortunate consequence of being initiated into sex via the Magician is that young men become hardwired to respond sexually primarily through the sense of sight (and to a lesser degree the accompanying sound of porn videos), while the other primal senses of touch, smell and taste — so integral to healthy, full-bodied animal sexuality — remain offline and underdeveloped.

Because the Magician is an archetype that tends toward dissociation from the body and material world, the Magician-possessed man can feel completely fulfilled even though their sexual life is happening solely in the realm of fantasy. He is a master in this virtual domain. But all too often, when he encounters a potential sexual partner in the body of a living, breathing woman, he can find himself incapable of relating to her physically and emotionally.

And further, if he somehow ends up in bed with a living, breathing woman he is frequently rendered impotent, unable to get it up or reach climax without the aid of the hyper-idealized and highly personalized images he has been wired to respond to. So he either withdraws from personal sexual relations — functionally celibate but immersing himself deeper and deeper into the world of on-demand porn, fan sites and paid cam-girls who will do anything he asks for a few virtual coins — or he finds sexual partners with whom he can willingly or unwittingly play out his porn-fueled fantasies.

Unless you work with men as a therapist or counsellor you may not realize the extent of this issue. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find that “Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction” and widespread use of little blue pills amongst young and middle-aged men are reaching epidemic levels in our culture.

See: “Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction” via Psychology Today

I was initially surprised at just how common “Problematic Pornography Use” or “PPU” was with the men I work with between the ages of 25-50, but a little research showed me that these issues have been studied and written about by the psychological establishment and mental health organizations since at least 2015.

“One nationally representative survey of 14,135 Swedish participants (6,169 men and 7,966 women) showed that those who used pornography ≥3 times a week were more likely to say they were dissatisfied with their sex lives. A greater proportion of these individuals expressed their desire for more frequent sex, more sexual partners, or sex in a different preferred way.” — Source

One of the reasons I’ve been able to help so many men with this issue is that I’m able to offer a sympathetic and non-judgemental space because a) I don’t have a hard-and-fast (excuse the pun) moral position on porn and b) as someone who was introduced to pornography far too early to know how to engage with it in a healthy way, I’ve had a complicated relationship with porn throughout my life.

To borrow a phrase from Francis Weller, I had my own “rough initiation” into the world of adult sexuality around the age of 10 or 11 when an older male neighbour showed me a porn tape one night when he was babysitting my brother and me. The wildly explicit technicolour scenes from that early 80s porn flick are still seared into my memory to this day, so I know firsthand how deeply these images can be imprinted into a boy’s psyche and the kind of dark obsession they can excite.

I have no doubt that if I had come of age in the time of high-speed internet I would have been addicted to porn, at least throughout my hormone-crazed teenage years. As it was, my friends and I spent far too much of our time on a quest to discover the hidden tapes in our father’s closets and the caches of porn mags that could be uncovered in the wooded areas around our neighbourhood. Looking back with an archetypal eye, I can see how exciting it was for us budding Magicians to be involved in something so clandestine and occult.

Unfortunately, sexual dysfunction is still a very taboo topic for most men and, despite ads that quietly suggest that men “talk to your doctor”, it isn’t always simply a physical problem that can be remedied with a quick-fix prescription.

In depth psychology we’re encouraged to “follow the symptom” and, if we get curious about the symptoms of porn-addiction and its associated behavioural issues, we will soon find ourselves delving into the darkest depths of the personal and collective shadow. This isn’t material that most cognitive and behavioural therapies are equipped to deal with, but I think it’s absolutely essential work for men to do. Not just for themselves, but also for their partners, daughters and sons.

When a man who has been initiated into sex through the Magician enters into a long-term relationship with a woman, he is inevitably confronted with the reality that women’s bodies naturally go through much more extreme changes than men’s bodies. When his partner’s physical body no longer resembles the idealized virtual bodies he’s been weaned on — whether due to childbirth, menopause, illness, aging or countless other factors — he may find his sexual desire for her vanishes into thin air.

For a time he may try and get by with Magician strategies of bio-hacking — taking little blue pills, shooting up with testosterone — or by relying on detached fantasizing in order to get it up, but sooner or later he must confront the reality that something more fundamental needs to change. In this scenario, there are at least three ways change can happen.

One way is that by pressuring his partner either overtly with misplaced Warrior aggression or covertly with Shadow Magician psychological manipulation, she does whatever she can to try and reshape herself into a body and personality that better conforms with his internalized ideal images. This option is never sustainable however, because you can only hold off Mother Time with cosmetic surgery, exercise, dieting, supplements and ‘faking it’ for so long. Eventually and inevitably reality always wins.

Other all-too-common solutions are that the uninitiated man leaves his partner for a younger model, or he gets his fix through porn, prostitutes or polyamory. Either way, these are rarely sustainable solutions to maintaining a healthy long-term relationship.

A third way is available (and isn’t it always the third way that provides the real solution?) in which the man recognizes that the decreased or absence of desire for his partner is a call for him to embark on a sexual re-initiation.

Unlike the first unconscious initiation into sex, this second initiation must be enacted consciously and with a man’s full participation — body, heart, mind and soul. He must undergo it not just in service to his own growth, but in service to his partner as a manifestation of the divine feminine. And like all true initiations, it requires a symbolic death of the old ways of seeing and being.

Now, it must be said that while conscious men who reach this threshold are increasingly recognizing it as a call to personal transformation, the problem is that they often seek out initiatory paths dominated by either the Magician or the Warrior archetypes. The would-be initiate may soon find himself wandering into a confusing and cacophonous self-help marketplace overwhelmed by messages of personal empowerment through neo-Puritanical austerity that speak to his inner Warrior and, on the other side of the aisle, neo-Tantric sexual secrets that entice and excite his inner Magician. Both of these archetypes hold potentials traditionally associated with the masculine: willpower, intellect, self-control, discipline, detachment etc.

However, the true path to mature male sexuality needs to be initiated by the man’s Lover archetype, which a more traditional Jungian might call his inner feminine or Anima.

Because the Magician-initiated man was initially wired to respond primarily to virtual images and fantasies, in order to become more sexually mature the second initiation must happen by bringing the whole body online and rewiring the system to respond to fully sensual, embodied sexual stimulation. Only then will the Magician-initiated man be liberated from the pornographic images and fantasies that are not just oppressive to women, but also keep men from experiencing and enjoying a full-bodied, mature male sexuality.

The beauty of this third way is that it leads to greater long-term pleasure for both partners. As the fully embodied sensual man ages, the reality that he can no longer rely on the heroic erections of his youth is less of a factor and he may just discover what existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom called “gonadal tranquility” — a respite from the everpresent sexual thoughts and urges that used to plague men to such a degree that it became a cliché gag in our culture.

Going through my own sexual re-awakening in my forties and accompanying other men going through a similar passage over the past few years, I’ve discovered a number of creative approaches to sexual re-initiation and psychosomatic ‘upgrading’ that you won’t find in any books on conscious masculinity. This is sexual soul work for men, and sadly it’s been a topic that has never really been properly addressed by the men’s movement at large.

And that’s probably a good thing, because this work is highly personal and deals with extremely volatile and sensitive psychic material. In order to get down to the level of our deepest desires, we have to dig through layers upon layers of cultural and familial conditioning and shame. And what you eventually discover is that the shocking truth about male sexual fulfilment contradicts just about everything you hear in the male-empowerment sphere — that in order to get what you really want, you’ll have to give up everything you think you need.

Brian James is a registered therapeutic counsellor and archetypal men’s coach who works with men all over the world through 1-on-1 counselling and a 6-week men’s program based on the model for mature masculinity presented in the book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert L. Moore and Douglas Gillette.

Find out more at http://brianjames.ca