The Male-Child and the Principle of Reality in African Society: Educating the Male-Child away from the Grips of the Pleasure Principle towards the Reality Principle and Productivity through the Symbolic Order: A Transformative Perspective from Amu Djoleto in His 'The Strange Man' ## I. INTRODUCTION At the centre of the development of the human subject, in the view of Freudian psychoanalysis, is the Oedipus complex which defines the structure of relations by which we come to be the persons that we are or become (Eagleton 1992). To be able to achieve this, however, the presence of a father figure is crucial for the negotiation of the pre-Oedipal stage of life that makes us human subjects, gendered, and able to repress or sublimate our desires to achieve higher goals. Failure in this process has many consequences and is disastrous for the process of maturation and living as it results in the inability to enter into the symbolic order, which simultaneously signals a location into 'the locus of the risk of death', as according to Eagleton (1992), Freud described it. To illustrate this likelihood, I explored the phenomenon of rebellion of the male-child and its consequences through the framework of the symbolic order in tracing the development and consequences of the rebellion of Jaja, the rebellious male-child of Mr Achike in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel, Purple Hibiscus. In another article about women's imagination of men through women's writings, I further explored the role of the mother in the structure of relations of the Oedipus complex and her impact on the formation of the African male and their character in recourse to the images of men formulated by women's imaginative writings in selected West African women writers' works. It examined women's writings, particularly of novels and narratives in West Africa, and what they structure for meaning in relation to men in the formation of the individual and their induction into the symbolic order of becoming human subjects. The paper supposed that women's writings imagine, image and typify men according to certain frameworks and practice consciously or unconsciously derived from some basic and yet indeterminate source. The study traced out the outlines of some of these representations of men, leading to the frameworks within which they are typified and cast using a specimen of four popular women's writings across West Africa. The significance of the study relates to the effect such imagination, imaging and typification, often negative, have had and continue to have on the growth of young male children in West African societies. In other words, its goal was to understand the implications and effect of such representations and frameworks of imagination on the character of men and their empowerment for growth, maturity and productivity or otherwise. It is most relevant for the exploration of the creation of the human subject, which is crucial for the building of mental health and wellness, and is essential especially on account of the need for the upbringing of male children to be able to negotiate their human existence towards the relevant focus, mental health stability, the reality principle, and eventual productivity if carried out within the normalcy of the growth process through the symbolic order. This prepares them eventually for being capacitated to meet the need for labour and the creation of civilization. This paper follows up the sequence to explore how the male-child could be successfully inducted into the reality principle through the symbolic order and away from the pleasure principle, in order to develop as a human subject capable of gaining mental stability and wellness, making his own choices, developing the consciousness that leads to productivity, and cultivating respect for property and civilization building, through the thoughts and possibilities offered by a male novelist, Amu Djoleto, in his novel, The Strange Man. ## II. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The study sees the necessity of giving attention to male-child development and hence aims to explore and establish how the male-child can be inducted into the symbolic order and successfully negotiate it to achieve the full capability of becoming a human subject or a capable individual, capacitated for developing an identity and focus, and an orientation towards productivity, labour, and civilization creation. The objective of this aim is to identify the main properties and characteristics for building the character of a male-child. These would assist in charting a credible path towards the formation of male children who are capable of negotiating securely and confidently through the well-established moulds of formation into human subjects through the symbolic order, and capable of developing focus and cultivating interest in being educated productively. It seeks to establish the source and nature of this pattern in order to provide a credible and permanent reference for the basis of raising and educating the male-child appropriately for beneficial outcomes, including the establishment and empowerment for the need to labour, creativity, mental stability and civilization, through a stable transition through the pleasure principle to the reality principle. It also seeks to provide a means of establishing a framework for a credible assistance to the male-child through the growth process and their preparation towards grappling with the future and the 'unknown'. (Scholes 1968). Consequently, it highlights the important and indispensable role of the father figure, the teacher, elders, and leaders in all spheres of life, and makes the case for their own re-education and formation towards the provision of a credible guidance in the formation of the male-child. ## III. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM In two preceding articles in the London Journals Press (2019 & 2021), the influential role the mother plays in the formation process of the male-child was explored. In analyzing Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus which explores and illustrates the rejection of the symbolic order and its consequences for the male-child's ultimate inability to grapple with the unknown, the possible role of the mother in thwarting the successful integration of the male-child into the symbolic order was made apparent. The analysis of four novels by four West African women writers also showed how influential women writers' imagination of men can be in affecting male youth development and self-perception. In the face of an overwhelming and prolific production of work and projects to assist the development of the girl-child and female empowerment, little seems to be going on in the direction of understanding and promoting the factors of the male-child and masculine development. This orientation does not create a growth environment for the emergence of healthy and confident male and masculine identities which are sturdy and focused enough to be productive and mentally stable for grappling with the challenges of life, the future, and the unknown. But how can this situation be rectified, and how can a balanced development of the male-child or the masculine identity be achieved? What kind of perspectives can be explored that are capable of contributing to the understanding of male children, their mode of experiencing and their tendencies to a great extent, and how can they be enabled to grow appropriately? The clarification of this process is expected to provide a means of maximizing the benefits of growth towards the reality principle and the development and establishment of salutary mental health of the male-child as they struggle to become human subjects. The absence of such understanding has left the male-child understudied, denying him the special attention they need to develop into complete human subjects or individuals equipped with the foundations of the mental health that capacitates creativity, productivity and the creation of civilization. ## IV. JUSTIFICATION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The aims and objectives, and the research problem, reference a focus on the male-child and masculinity. The male-child and his welfare has been taken for granted in the face of the need to empower women and the girl-child. It is important to emphasize and empower the male-child too, in the formation of their identity, lest they become less than they could be. The male- child should develop with a focus towards establishing the reality principle, enabling the establishment of a framework for appreciating and orientating the individual towards productivity, respect for property, and the creation of civilization, and maintaining a stable mental health, culminating in becoming a real and capable citizen. The male-child should not be left to develop, as Maglaque (2020: 37) described it, as 'a connoisseur of depravity.' This cannot be accomplished unconsciously. To be able to achieve these goals, conscious efforts need to be made to investigate the nature and characteristics of the male-child and how they could be helped to grow, mature, and prepare for the challenges of life, for the future, and for the unknown. There doesn't seem to be much effort and investigation into raising and empowering the male-child as there is to the welfare of the girl-child and their empowerment. Public policies, educational endeavours and policies, mass media, social media and other public systems have little or no mention of the male-child and their development. This work, therefore, seeks to create the awareness for the needed attention for male-child development in policy and practice, especially in Educational spaces and domains. A study carried out by Adjoe & Adanu (2022) in response to a phenomenon of early sexual practices among school children, affecting the life chances of youth in a peri-urban community titled Commodification, Sexuality and Choice among school children in a Ghanaian Community: The Consequences for Teaching, Learning and Life Chances, highlighted the dangers of not assisting young people in communities to develop the abilities for better or productive moral and ethical judgements that enable the sustenance of opportunities for education, learning and life chances. Using questionnaires, interviews, conversations and observations, the study reckons that the school children's reasoning and consciousness in determining their attitudes towards choices concerning early sexual practices and in their indulgence or otherwise is crucial. It argued that "schoolchildren's attitudes and behaviour are shaped by social philosophies including empiricism, solipsism, economism and commodification which promote the pleasure principle in a complete departure from the ways of knowing that obtained in society a generation ago. The consequences of such a radical change from the traditionalism of a generation ago is the development of a nihilistic attitude guiding their moral and ethical choices which are nevertheless detrimental to their own development into personhood and the development of their future opportunities through education, learning and life chances." Consequently, the neglect of the conscious development of the male-child can only leave them at the mercy of social philosophies that would be detrimental to the development of their personhood, reasoning and consciousness, and inevitably exclude them from worthwhile life chances as they are abandoned under the rule of the pleasure principle. It is, therefore, worthwhile that the male-child is developed to have a focus corresponding to the crucial aspect of male-child development, and a conscious effort placed on it; one that it has not yet enjoyed to the detriment of its growth process, owing to neglect and being taken for granted. A male-child should be able to feel confident about their maleness, masculinity, and identity as male individuals just as a female should be about hers, and be able to develop accordingly. The focus on the process of the growth of the child means that his appropriate education, guidance and empowerment can be fashioned according to conscious and observable principles and processes. That also means the appropriate equipment of teachers, parents, guardians and caregivers for the challenging role and the appropriate attention needs to be equally given for their empowerment to be able to function in the role. The child can thus be guided and empowered to achieve mental stability, reassurance, and clarity of purpose and focus on a single objective towards creativity, productivity, respect for property and civilization. They can begin to know what constitutes a male or masculine identity and how they can participate in the world, society, and living as masculine beings. They would be empowered to accept their masculinity and be confident that it is an undoubtedly positive and crucial possession to be cherished and utilized for civilized purposes. This would enable them to make fundamental choices and decisions about the values of matriarchy and patriarchy and how to balance them effectively for achieving creativity and civilization, and enabling productivity within the symbolic order and reality principle. They can thereby be capacitated to achieve a clarity of purpose and the formation of the human subject; identity and individuality can be achieved successfully, shielding them from mental instabilities and the unnecessary confusions that threaten to keep the male-child under the location of the risk of death and eternal infantilism. ### Research Questions: 1. What are the pleasure and reality principles? 2. What are the main characteristic features of masculinity and especially of a male-child? 3. How is the male-child enabled to develop and mature through the role of the father, teachers, guardians and caregivers in the formation of an identity as a human subject, an individual, and develop a healthy mental health and stability? 4. What are the blockers of the male-child's growth? 5. How can the male-child be educated to become a human subject, capable of productivity, civilization and develop a healthy mental orientation and focus? 6. How is the induction into the symbolic order achieved in Amu Djoleto's The Strange Man? ## V. APPROACH TO THE STUDY The paper introduces the relevant issues in the introduction, and elaborates them by exploring the aims, objectives, and significance of the discussion. It proceeds to ask the relevant questions to facilitate the discussion of the subsequent sections of reviewing the literature and theories that would aid the analysis of the subject and the examination of the subject in Amu Djoleto's *The Strange Man*. The theory that this discussion turns to for the analysis of issues is mainly the psychoanalytic method of literary criticism as described by Eagleton (1992) and Frankl's (1992) social history of the unconscious for examining the development of the masculine characteristics and their sustenance through the symbolic order. These theories and their approaches and adherents' analyses seem most relevant for this subject as they are primarily focused on how the human subject emerges and develops into a gendered identity and the orientations and dispositions they foster thereupon. The primary resource for the analysis in a concrete context will comprise the analysis and exploration of the phenomenon of inducting a male-child into the symbolic order as explored by Amu Djoleto through his Ghanaian narrative, *The Strange Man*. What Amu Djoleto's *The Strange Man*, contributes to this discussion is a perspective which reaches to the psychoanalytic sources of the male-child's characteristics, attitudes, orientations and focus, enabling us to explore how the child develops through the symbolic order and develops the capacity to transit the pleasure principle to the reality principle to become a human subject ready for productivity and the building of civilization. Moreover, it explores how the transition from the pleasure principle to the reality principle is achieved in spite of the enormous challenges and conflicts inherent in the process, and yet the possibility of achieving the transition into a human subject or an individual who is confident in what it means to be masculine and a male subject preparing towards productivity, citizenship, and a future which is unknown and yet fully prepared for it. a) Literature Review: The Symbolic Order, the Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle According to Eagleton (1992), Sigmund Freud, in his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, made a significant statement: "The motive of human society is in the last resort an economic one." Freud summarized his thinking that what has dominated human history is the need to labour. By this observation Freud reckons the necessity of labour for human existence; and its implications are that the need to labour necessarily requires that we repress some of our tendencies to pleasure and gratification to be able to achieve this essential human need. It is apparent that we would not willingly be inclined to labour, and so "If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we might simply lie around all day doing nothing". Consequently, every human being has to undergo the repression of what Freud named the 'pleasure principle' by the 'reality principle'. Such a repression, if undertaken, is sometimes done excessively. Such excesses result in a person or even whole societies becoming ill. Whereas human beings may be prepared to put up with repression as long as they see that there is something beneficial in it for them, the excesses of repression produce a kind of disease known as 'neurosis'. In spite of this, all human beings must be repressed to some degree, creating the human being as a 'neurotic animal'. However, neurosis has its positive side, for as much as it creates disease and unhappiness, it is involved with what is creative about us. The creativity emerges as a result of the efforts of the human being to cope with neurosis by 'sublimating' his or her desires that should be repressed by directing them towards a more socially valued end. As Eagleton (1992: 152) puts it, "We might find an unconscious outlet for sexual frustration in building bridges or cathedrals. For Freud, it is by virtue of such sublimation that civilization itself comes about: by switching and harnessing our instincts to these higher goals, cultural history itself is created." Eagleton (1992), further observes that whereas Marx examined the consequences of our need to labour in terms of the social relations, social classes and forms of politics, Freud turned instead to its implications for the psychical life. This is crucial because the psychical life is about human relationships and identities. The internal or inner life and the creation of human relationships and identities are indispensable for social relations, social classes, and forms of politics, and underlie them. What Freud discovered, above all, is a paradox or contradiction which grounds his work. This paradox or contradiction evinces that "we come to be what we are only by a massive repression of the elements which have gone into our making. We are not of course conscious of this fact, since the place to which we relegate the desires we are unable to fulfil is known as the unconscious". (Eagleton 1992: 153). Thus, repression and the unconscious play a major role in creating a human subject. However, in order to create an individual capable of enduring the repression successfully, certain pertinent factors need to be taken into consideration. The relevance of repression and the unconscious can be better understood if we take into consideration the prolonged dependence upon parents or other adult members of our species for survival during infancy as necessitated by human evolution. A human being cannot survive if left entirely helpless and without the immediate, unceasing care of such members of our own species. It is within this prolonged evolutionary process that the formation of the human subject begins based upon certain occurrences. According to Eagleton's (1992: 153) description of Freud's analysis, "This unusually prolonged dependence on our parents is first of all a purely material matter, a question of being fed and kept from harm: it is a matter of the satisfaction of what may be called our 'instincts', by which is meant the biologically fixed needs human beings have for nourishment, warmth and so on. Such self-preservative instincts are a good deal more immutable than 'drives', which very often alter their nature. Our dependence on our parents for the nurturing services does not stop at the biological. The small baby will suck its mother's breast for milk, but will discover in doing so that this biologically essential activity is also pleasurable; and this, for Freud, is the first dawning of sexuality. The baby's mouth becomes not only an organ of its physical survival but an 'erotogenic zone', which the child might reactivate a few years later by sucking its thumb, and a few years later than that by kissing. The relation to the mother has taken on a new, libidinal dimension; sexuality has been born, as a kind of drive which was at first inseparable from biological instinct but which has now separated itself out from it and attained a certain autonomy. Sexuality for Freud is itself a 'perversion' - a 'swerving away' of a natural self-preservative instinct towards another goal." This begins a process of development by the infant. As it grows, other erotogenic zones come into play: "The oral stage, as Freud calls it, is the first phase of sexual life, and is associated with the drive to incorporate objects. In the anal stage, the anus becomes an erotogenic zone, and with the child's pleasure in defecation a new contrast between activity and passivity, unknown in the oral stage, comes to light. The anal stage is sadistic, in that the child derives erotic pleasure from expulsion and destruction; but it is also connected with the desire for retention and possessive control, as the child learns a new form of mastery and a manipulation of the wishes of others through the 'granting' or withholding of the faeces. The ensuing 'phallic' stage begins to focus the child's libido (or sexual drive on the genitals, but call 'phallic' rather than 'genital' because according to Freud only the male organ is recognized at this point. The little girl in Freud's view has to be content with the clitoris, the 'equivalent' of the penis, rather than with the vagina." (Eagleton 1992: 153). The stages of development of the infant, the oral stage, the anal stage, and the phallic stage, sometimes overlap. However, they also indicate the gradual organization of the libidinal drives of the infant. This organization of libidinal drives is essentially centred on the child's own body. Drives are not biological or material instincts; they are offshoots of libidinal dimensions from pleasure which separate themselves from the biological instincts to constitute themselves into independent expressions. As drives, they retain a characteristic that can be described as extremely flexible. In this extremely flexible state, their objects are contingent and replaceable, and one sexual drive can substitute itself for another. Eagleton (1992: 154) describes what obtains under this contingent and replaceable state and the nature of what can be expected from these extremely flexible tendencies thoroughly: "What we can imagine in the early years of the child's life, then, is not a unified subject confronting and desiring a stable object, but a complex, shifting field of force in which the subject (the child itself) is caught up and dispersed, in which it has as yet no centre of identity and in which the boundaries between itself and the external world are indeterminate. Within this field of libidinal force, objects and part-objects emerge and disappear again, shift places kaleidoscopically, and prominent among such objects is the child's body as the play of drives laps across it. One can speak of this also as an 'auto-eroticism', within which Freud sometimes includes the whole of infantile sexuality: the child takes erotic delight in its own body, but without as yet being able to view its body as a complete object. Auto-eroticism must thus be distinguished from what Freud will call 'narcisissm', a state in which one's body or ego as a whole is 'cathected', or taken as an object of desire." "It is clear that the child in this state is not even prospectively a citizen who could be relied upon to do a hard day's work. It is anarchic, sadistic, aggressive, self-involved and remorselessly pleasure-seeking, under the sway of what Freud calls the pleasure principle; nor does it have any respect for differences of gender. It is not yet what we might call a 'gendered subject': it surges with sexual drives, but this libidinal energy recognizes no distinction between masculine and feminine. If the child is to succeed in life at all, it obviously has to be taken in hand; and the mechanism by which this happens is what Freud famously terms the Oedipus complex. The child who emerges from the pre-Oedipal stages we have been following is not only anarchic and sadistic but incestuous to boot: the boy's close involvement with his mother's body leads him to an unconscious desire for sexual union with her, whereas the girl, who has been similarly bound up with the mother..., begins to turn her libido towards the father. The early 'dyadic' or two-term relationship between infant and mother, that is to say, has now opened up into a triangle consisting of child and both parents; and for the child, the parent of the same sex will come to figure as a rival in its affection for the parent of the opposite sex". The boy-child abandons his incestuous desire for the mother only because of the fear of the father's potential action of castrating him. The threat of castration is not necessarily spoken but unconscious. The boy, taking a cue that the girl is herself 'castrated', begins to imagine the punishment he might suffer if he did not abandon his incestuous desire for the mother. Consequently, he is forced to repress "his incestuous desire in anxious resignation, adjusts himself to the 'reality principle', submits to the father, detaches himself from the mother, and comforts himself with the unconscious consolation that though he cannot now hope to oust his father and possess his mother, his father symbolizes a place, a possibility, which he himself will be able to take up and realize in the future." He especially convinces himself that although he might not be a patriarch now, if he waits his turn, he will become one in future. Realizing this, the boy makes peace with his father and chooses to identify with him, and is thus introduced into the symbolic role of manhood. He has become a gendered subject, surmounting his Oedipus Complex. The reason he is able to surmount his Oedipus complex is because he has driven his forbidden desire underground and repressed it into the unconscious. The unconscious is not a concrete place that was ready and waiting to receive such a desire, but is produced and opened up by the process of primary repression. Consequently, as a masculine gender, and a man in the making, the boy will now grow up within those images and practices which his society happens to define as 'masculine'. He will one day become a father himself, capable of sustaining his society by contributing to it through his sexual reproduction activities. This is possible only because his earlier diffuse libido has become organized through the Oedipus Complex. A boy, however, could be sexually incapacitated for such a role if he is unable to organize his sexual desires through the Oedipus complex, for he may privilege the image of his mother above all other women. On the other hand, his sexual life may be affected if he over-sympathizes with the recognition that women are 'castrated', causing him to be traumatized so deeply that he is rendered unable to enjoy satisfying sexual relationships with them. In similar vein, to enter into the Oedipus complex, a girl must be able to change her 'love-object' from mother to father. A change of love-objects is, nevertheless, a complex and difficult affair, and can raise problems about female oedipalization. Consequently, as Eagleton (1992) notes, the Oedipus Complex, is utterly central to Freud's work. This centrality of the Oedipus Complex is significant because it is not just another complex: it is the structure of relations by which we come to be the men and women that we are: "It is the point at which we are produced and constituted as subjects; and one problem for us is that it is always in some sense a partial, defective mechanism. It signals the transition from the pleasure principle to the reality principle; from the enclosure of the family to society at large, since we turn from incest to extra-familial relations; and from Nature to Culture, since we can see the infant's relation to the mother as somehow 'natural', and the post-Oedipal child as one who is in the process of assuming a position within the cultural order as a whole...Moreover, the Oedipus Complex is for Freud the beginnings of morality, conscience, law and all forms of social and religious authority. The father's real or imagined prohibition of incest is symbolic of all the higher authority to be later encountered; and in 'introjecting' (making its own) this patriarchal law, the child begins to form what Freud called its 'superego', the awesome, punitive voice of conscience." [Eagleton 1992: 156]. With the readiness for gender roles to be reinforced, desires for satisfactions to be postponed, authority to be accepted and the family and society to be reproduced, the concern turns to the unruly, insubordinate unconscious. The child's development of an ego or an individual identity, and the development of a particular place in the sexual, familial and social networks, nevertheless, is achieved through splitting off its guilty desires by repressing them into the unconscious. Thus, the human subject who emerges from the Oedipal process is a split subject who is torn precariously between the conscious and the unconscious. It means that the unconscious can always re-emerge to disturb it. It can, thus, manifest its radical otherness which is completely indifferent to reality and knows no logic or negation or causality or contradiction, but wholly given over as it is to the instinctual play of the drives and the search for pleasure. Thus, the manifestation of the unconscious in the human subject cannot be taken for granted. The process of the constitution of the human subject and its responsibility for creating the critical factors towards the creation and sustenance of civilization, and its significance for psychical life make it indispensable and worth every effort to consciously monitor, encourage, and midwife for producing the most worthwhile outcomes as steady, aware, conscious, and responsible human subjects. The relationship between these critical stages and state of growth for the creation, sustenance, and development of civilization are described by George Frankl (1992). And what Freud describes at the fundamental stage of the individual in the build-up towards civilization, Frankl describes at the social and historical level through the representations of the concepts of matriarchy and patriarchy. b) The Battle between Matriarchy and Patriarchy: The Position of Masculinity in the Organization of the Scheme of Human Subject Formation and Sustenance Frankl (1992) refers to the work of the Swiss historian, J.J. Bachofen's, *Mother Right*, in describing the possibility of the existence of an ancient matriarchal culture which was superceded by patriarchy and gives the underlying reasons for the supercession. Bachofen regarded the transformation from matriarchy to patriarchy as the most significant event in the history of civilization. A wide-ranging study of the folklore, religion and rituals of the Cretans, Egyptians, Athenians, and many Asiatic peoples provided evidence of the predominance of gynocratic or matricentric societies in ancient times. Building upon his findings, he drew attention to the drama of the Ancient Greeks in particular to illuminate how and why, in contrast, they presented the conflict that originated between the two cultures of matriarchy and patriarchy. He drew attention particularly to Aeschylus and Sophocles, considered as the greatest of the Greek playwrights, and their endeavours to present the causes and results of the conflicts between the values of patriarchy and matriarchy in their plays. For example, Aeschylus' Orestea and Sophocles' Oedipus represent two different aspects of patriarchal culture, each describing something of fundamental importance. Frankl (1992: 12-13) notes that the first, written forty years before the other, "is almost entirely concerned with overcoming the demands of matriarchal morality and with the struggle for superiority between the mother and father in the moral and judicial order of society; whereas the latter, having seen the victory of patriarchy, sets out to propound its most powerful taboos, namely, those concerning the sexual bonds between mother and son. Both dramatists propagate the necessity for men to be weaned from their dependency upon their mothers, first in terms of law and morality and second in terms of emotional and sexual bonds which have to be overcome if the new civilization, the new world-view is to remain victorious". (Frankl 1992: 13) What Bachofen's work as described by Frankl (1992) underlined is that: "The advance from the maternal conception of mankind to a paternal conception was the most important turning-point in history which brought with it fundamental changes in the psycho-social orientations of human beings." (Frankl 1992: 13). Frankl (1992) points out that the main feature of matriarchal cultures indicates that they are governed by a gymnocracy, that is, a blood-bond between the members of a family or group to their mothers. "Being the mother's offspring unites members of a group into a community, whereas the father is considered as a friend, guest, helper, without any significant legal importance for a group's cohesion. It is a community of blood relationship that relates the children to the mother, the members of the group to the womb from which they sprung." (Frankl 1992: 13). However, in the new dispensation, the father's status and role had to be recognized and instituted to constitute articulation involving authority, law, justice, and intellectuality. The symbolism of the blood-bond in gynocracies is the love between the mother and her offspring. In this sense it is the promotion of a sense of brotherhood and equality whose governing principles are based on love and compassion, relegating fear and sacrifice, that is, repression, in the sense of the Freudian description of repression. It also means the elimination of neurosis in this relationship; and the negative implications of eliminating neurosis for creating and sustaining a civilization become apparent. Frankl (1992: 13-14) explains that Bachofen's description of the traits of this relationship produce a state of affairs concerning mother and child: "The relationship which stands at the origin of all culture, of every virtue, of every nobler aspect of existence is that between mother and child; it operates as the divine principle of love, of union, of peace. Raising her young, the woman learns earlier than the man to extend her loving care beyond the limits of the Ego to another creature and to direct whatever gift of invention she possesses to the preservation and improvement of the other's existence. Woman at this stage is the repository of all culture, of all benevolence, of all devotion, of all concern for the living and grief for the dead. Yet the love that arises from motherhood is not only more intense but also more universal; whereas the paternal principle is inherently restrictive, the maternal is universal. The idea of motherhood produces a sense of universal fraternity among all men, which dies with the development of paternity. Every woman's womb, the moral image of the earth mother Demeter, will give brothers and sisters to the children of every other woman; the homeland will know only brothers and sisters until the day when the development of the paternal system dissolves the undifferentiated unity of the mass and introduces the principle of articulation". Frankl (1992: 14), citing Fromm, referred to this kind of existence as the 'matricentric complex'. Fromm summarized that "The 'matricentric complex,' is characterized by a feeling of optimistic trust in mother's unconditional love, far fewer guilt feelings than those shown by patricentric individuals, a far weaker Superego and a greater capacity for pleasure and happiness. Along with these traits there also develops the ideal of motherly compassion and love for the weak and others in need of help". However, things don't end there, because whereas the blood-bond and 'matricentric complex' promotes the soft and pleasurable values described above, on the other hand, the good and benevolent mother goddess can quickly turn into a ruthless Fury if the law of the blood is offended against. The seemingly benign and kindly mother goddesses turn into the Furies, the Erinyes divinities personifying the rage of the mother against the transgressor of her laws. What the Greek dramatists, including Aeschylus, have shown, thereby, is that the concept of justice which prevailed among the pre-Olympian cultures was based upon the principle of revenge. "It was the function of the Furies to hound the offender in his dreams and in his imagination, and to pursue him until vengeance was executed. Their horrible aspect and relentless cruelty were sharply exposed by Aeschylus in his Orestea." (Frankl 1992: 14). These characteristics caused Apollo to invoke a conflict in which he made a devastating attack upon the inconsistencies and inadequacies of the code of justice of the mother goddess and pre-Olympian cultures: "While they will punish a son who does not take revenge for any harm done to his mother and punish equally a son who kills her, they will ignore the guilt of the wife who kills her husband because he is not her blood relation. This is an intolerable position as it implies a deep contempt of the marriage bond which was fundamental and sacred to the new order; it also shows that the Furies' concept of justice is based upon the blind demands of instinct and is incapable of taking into consideration the complexities of individual cases. Moreover, under their dispensation, a single murder may lead to an insoluble blood feud and an endless series of murders in successive generations. On the whole, the old religions provided no safe moral guide, the quest for justice received no solution from the ancient mother goddesses ". (Frankl 1992: 15). According to Frankl (1992), Aeschylus used the Orestea to show how the rule of revenge becomes a ruthless and inescapable fate that haunts society, and to show a way by which the ancient concept of justice and its chain of violence could be broken and replaced by a higher code of law and morality, one governed by reason and persuasion, and by intellect rather than by the blind forces of instinct. By it, he also wanted to prove to the citizens of Athens that this new code of law is associated with the rule of the father, thus, with the emergent patriarchic culture which departs from dependence on revenge for its moral decision-making and judgement of one another in society. In outlining how the blood feuds and revenge played out and how they were resolved to usher in a new kind of civilization based upon law, order, intellectuality and persuasion, Aeschylus described in his first play of the Orestea, how Clytemnestra kills her husband Agamemnon in order to gain revenge for his murder of their daughter Iphigenia. He had sacrificed her to the goddess Artemis in order to assure his success in the war against Troy. "By this act he outraged Clytemnestra's motherhood and by his ten years absence in wars and conquests, which he deemed more important than the needs of his wife, he also outraged her femininity. Clytemnestra becomes a murderess, a Fury, a witch, and her son Orestes kills her to avenge the murder of his father". (Frankl 1992: 15). In the third play of a trilogy, Aeschylus confronts the problem of justice which core centres around the crime and guilt of Orestes. It has to be established who is more important in the family and in society; whether it is the mother or the father. The traditional dominance of the mother under the gynocratic order had to be broken and the superior importance of the father in the family, and in the state, representing law, order, intellectuality and persuasion, unequivocally established. The father's claims to a higher level of intellectuality and his capacity of reasoned persuasion had to be illustrated by a rational victory over the instinct-dominated demands for revenge. "The representatives of the new order had to be seen not merely to be more powerful but on a higher level of rationality. Not violence but holy persuasion had to assure victory in order to validate the new dispensation. The Furies represent the old order, while Apollo and Athene represent the new. The former haunt and pursue Orestes and demand his blood, whereas Apollo defends him. The Furies claim that his crime is much more horrible than that of Clytemnestra for in killing his mother he outraged the laws of blood, whereas Clytemnestra's crime is less serious for her murder of her husband did not violate the blood-bond since the husband is not a blood relation." (Frankl 1992: 16). The trial in The Eumenides, advanced a long argument between the Furies and Apollo on the respective rights and status of mother or father in marriage and parenthood. Apollo states succinctly the case for the father and tries to show that the traditional ideas of the blood-bond between mother and child are incorrect: ### Apollo This too I answer; mark the truth of what I say The mother is not the true parent of the child Which is called hers. She is a nurse who tends the growth Of young seed planted by its true parent, the male. So, if Fate spares this child, she keeps I, as one might Keep for some friend a growing plant. Thus 'holy persuasion' and respect for the commands of reason is to replace the old forms of justice dominated by the blind forces of revenge, and democracy – as we understand it – was born. After having projected the positive aspects of the ancient virtues of matriarchy, Bachofen goes on to remind his readers of the spiritual superiority of the patriarchal system thus: "In matriarchal cultures we have confinement to instinct and the demands of nature, in patriarchal culture we have intellectual and spiritual development. In the former we find lawfulness, in the latter individualism. In the former we find exultation in the abandonment of nature, in the latter we find exultation above nature, a breaking of the old barriers and a powerful striving of Prometheus life replacing the constant rest, peaceful pleasure and eternal infantilism. Here man breaks through the bonds of his childhood and lifts his eyes to the higher regions of the cosmos." (Frankl 1992: 18). Being a man, masculine, a male individual and a male human subject, a father or potential father, has its distinctive status and raison d'etre that is indispensable for society. It is too crucial for humanity's existence to be discounted, ignored, denied, or taken for granted. c) And how can the male-child achieve this status, break the bonds of his childhood and lift his eyes to the higher regions of the cosmos in contemporary society? In Frankl's (1992:18) words: "The ancient mother goddesses have been driven underground but not finally vanquished. As long as patriarchal cultures are based upon the repression of mother-orientated instincts, Demeter will continue to lure man's romantic imagination and the Furies will demand revenge against the domination and authority of the Fathers. They wait in their underground lairs, in the unconscious regions of man's mind to erupt upon the surface whenever the patriarchal structure shows signs of weakness; then they will emerge and strive to acquire once again domination over the thoughts and actions of men". Thus, the study of ancient matriarchy shows that having preceded patriarchy, it continues to exercise a powerful influence upon it. In the expression of Wittgenstein (1958), like the old city that never disappears, it remains even as the modern surrounds it. Consequently, as much as a patriarchal Superego exists, so the much older matriarchal Superego. Furthermore, the matriarchal as well as the patriarchal Superego can degenerate and become dominated by aggressive-destructive drives. What this means is that the mother can turn into the witch and the father into the devil; similarly, both witch and devil can combine to dominate the mind of individuals as well as the culture of societies, where the ideals of human love are mocked and replaced by the excitement of sadism. The conclusion is that the formation of the human subject cannot be taken for granted or left to chance; it has to become a conscious and constant effort to supervise the process of integration into the symbolic order of the individual, and to safeguard it against the subconscious forces that are constantly seeking the means to erupt and dominate the mind. Such safeguarding can be sustained after integration into the symbolic order through law, order, intellectuality, and 'holy persuasion'. Amu Djoleto's *The Strange Man* provides an interesting framework for achieving such an outcome through the education of the male-child, ensuring his induction into the symbolic order. d) How is the induction into the symbolic order achieved in Amu Djoleto's The Strange Man? Amu Djoleto's novel, *The Strange Man*, published in 1967, is the story of Old Mensa, a respected member of a village community in Ghana and the influence of his liberating and empowering upbringing by Old Anang, his father, through the principles of raising a male-child successfully, learnt through his own keen observation and structuring. Its effects on Old Mensa were salutary because it made him into an individual, a human subject who could be described as a person of substance. A vivid description of his boyhood has many high points of which his organizing of and catching and castrating of a he-goat as a seven year-old boy is the most memorable and defining core of the need for the process of education of the male-child into the symbolic order in readiness for development as a human subject, an individual, and ready to face the unknowns of life. Amu Djoleto, born in 1929, attended Secondary schools in Ghana, and studied English at the University of Ghana. He later studied textbook production at the Institute of Education, University of London, became the editor of Ghana Teachers' Journal, and published two main novels: The Strange Man, and Money Galore, the latter being a satire on political corruption. With his background in Education and the production of textbooks, it is not surprising that his particular concern and focus should be the engagement with the education and secure raising of children or young persons to maturity and mental health based on the concern for establishing a process of achieving the status of the human subject, individuality, an identity and mental stability, and a readiness for enquiry that helps each child to learn first and foremost. Situated in a community and context which is replete with all kinds of weaknesses and confusing values that pose grave dangers to personhood and a clear development path, and which works like the personified workings of the unconscious, the male-child, nevertheless, has to be guided to learn how to negotiate life and living successfully. Djoleto's (1967) endeavor consisted in engineering confidence in the belief that the male- child is capable of learning to develop a sense of character, conscience, personhood, and a desire to abandon his pleasure principle for the reality principle. The task of giving this guidance falls on the father and the methods and techniques he adopts. Djoleto (1967) depicted a societal context fraught with the challenges of twisted characters that created structures for maintaining societal control through perverted methods and their reproduction through reproducing a society with 'devilish' credentials by turning away from the ideals of civilization. Leaders of the society such as some of the religious leaders, retired civil servants, elders' courts, head-teachers, business men, politicians, and loafers, all alike exhibited the degenerate forms of living organized around instruments of reductionism, hypocrisy, disregard for property, deception, betrayal, and pseudo-scientific attitudes and behaviours. A child living under the clouds of such negativity resembling the personified workings and challenges of the unconscious could easily be influenced and become confused in how to make decisions and judgements, and how to develop morality, ethics, conscience and maturity enough to chart a path through the unknown as they develop (Angier, 2003; Janaro & Altshuler, 1989). Nevertheless, children still need to be guided to succeed in such contexts and to transcend the degenerate Superego to achieve a Prometheus life shaped by the symbolic order. However, two things emerge in spite of the challenges of existing in a degenerate context: the discovery that a male -child can plan, focus and achieve set goals; and that a male-child is able to think and reason like an adult most of the time in spite of intervening fictional bouts. He could therefore be potentially guided to develop into a father figure with the ability to develop into a full and responsible citizen. Old Mensa stood out in the community as a unique personality because of the methods and techniques by which his father Old Anang raised him up, and by which he himself made efforts to raise his own children later. In the end, his upbringing and distinctive character enabled him to be productive, symbolized in the achievement of owning a house of distinction. "It was usually a quiet place guarded by a vigilant, aggressive dog, called Hope. It was an impressive building in its own right, put up in the early forties, and had been, when new, easily the best looking building in the area and certainly raised the architectural tone of the one of the suburbs of Accra, near the sea". (Djoleto 1967: 1). But for his detractors who had little respect for others' achievements and property, "It was this house which Old Mensa's enemies in particular thought he did not deserve. These people, whose chief preoccupation was to assess other people's achievement in relation to their own, thought he could only have owned such a fine house through the perennial mistake of God or Chance or Providence or Society. What Old Mensa had gone through during the fifty-eight years of his existence did not matter to them. The house, comfortable as it was, was a material manifestation. The human story was another aspect of the struggle a man might have to make if he was to be true to his own nature. Old Mensa happened to try to lead his own life." (Djoleto 1967: 1-2) Old Mensa's society was one that did not reckon, as Highet (1951: 35) noted, that "The young are trying desperately hard to become real people, to be individuals. If you wish to influence them in any way, you must convince them that you know them." In such a society, growing up youth have several concerns. These concerns led them to thinking and asking questions, and often wondered whether the elders and those in authority really understood life or them. It was a society in which competition and betrayals were rampant. Tete, who was Old Mensa's brother was trying to outshine his brother. His endeavours ended up in his early death on account of a desperate race and rivalry which did not even exist, as Old Mensa lived his life without rivalries, but confident in his own abilities, he felt comfortable with himself. When neighbours referred to him, it was with awe and respect, but also noting the complexity of his personality and individuality that they couldn't fathom: "Ah, Old Mensa, he is quite different," Akoto said. 'Yes, true, true indeed; but he has a sharp tongue. I wouldn't like to get involved with him,' Ofori said. 'You're quite right, Akoto,' Okai agreed. 'The two are different. Here you have Tete: tall, handsome, paunchy, jovial, proud and boastful – a man who likes his food and wants to be recognized at any cost. There you have Old Mensa: medium height, a head like nutmeg but attractive on his shoulders, a lined face, but always neat, ascetic, reserved with a kind of glow about him. He fascinates me. He's so unhurried and composed. You never see him often but you're aware of his presence. I hear he keeps a daily record of what happens to him and to others." [Djoleto 1967: 12-13]. As a little boy, Old Mensa lived with his family in a mud-house which had corrugated-iron roofing. His father was Old Anang. "He was a happy little boy, carefree and handsomely built, and precociously articulate. Nothing impressed him so much as the towering Akwapimian hills especially in the mornings when the mists rolled over their summit. He loved to hear the birds sing and would have loved to have them in his control. He was the eldest of three children. Tete came after him, and then their sister. Little Mensa's parents were fond of him. Even as a boy of seven, he could have his way in most things. He could organize his boy friends in the village for any mischief and was prepared to speak the plain truth often to anybody when they were caught." (Djoleto 1967: 16). e) Children's thinking and imaginative logic: A reflection of father's conversations, adult conversations, observations, beliefs and practices in the society and childhood fantasies of what is possible: The male-child's thinking and logic can often be curious, but even if they appear fictional at first, they can be traced back in facts gleaned from adults in their environment: in the conversations of adults, actions and observations within their environment, and the beliefs and practices existing within society. For example, in respect of their castration of the he-goat, they explained themselves: "The village boys, for their own very good reasons, did not like the goats at all and considered them both a threat to themselves and a nuisance. They particularly and bitterly hated the he-goat which they treated with the greatest amount of disrespect, and, when unseen, with savage cruelty. What disturbed them about the he-goat may be summed up under four categories. First it worried too much the nanny-goat both during the day and in the night and gave her no rest. This they considered unreasonable. Second, the he-goat would spend all feeding time asking the nanny-goat to oblige; then when it was dark and the boys went round to drive in the goats, it would be far away in the bush searching for a bite before running in. If the boys came home without it, then they would be in for trouble. They would be whacked on the backside for leaving the he-goat behind. Third, the he-goat smelt too much. Whenever the boys were in the church, worshipping God, it would not only foul the air they breathed but also make unpleasant noises at the nanny-goat and divert their attention from the Almighty. If they were caught looking its way, they would be told that God did not like children who would not listen to the sermon. Fourth, the he-goat always led the gang of marauding goats to the farms near the village. If those goats ruined the crops, it was the boys who were held responsible." (Djoleto 1967: 16-17). The boys were able to work out plausible reasons for which they needed to deal with the troublesome and irrepressible he-goat: "Since the boys trusted the saying that prevention is better than cure, they treated the he-goat in any awkward manner possible just to make it realize that it was making life difficult for them; that it was too often the source of their afflictions... If it did not bolt away and allowed its lust to overcome other considerations, it would get a bad kick in the hindquarters from one of the boys. Any boy who succeeded in timing it and gave it a kick that got it bleating painfully away was the hero of the day." (Djoleto 1967: 17) Little Mensa hatched a plot to castrate the he-goat in the village, in order to tame it. He was able to persuade the boys to agree to undertake the project. The surprising thing was that for his age, being strong-willed, he could keep an idea to himself for as long as he had decided to. For some reason or other, the boys trusted his leadership though they did not always like him. He convinced his friends with what he once heard from his father's conversations: "My father says if a goat hasn't got them, it doesn't smell and keeps out of mischief. "(Djoleto 1967: 21). He was referring to the testicles or the gonads of the he-goat. In carrying out the curious deed, they were caught by a man who hounded the boys in the village; a man who had made it an article of faith to suspect those boys always. He therefore went straight and fast to find out for himself what the boys were up to. (Djoleto 1967: 22). He went first to Old Anang's house because he felt Mensa would by all means be connected with the bloodshed. He had two very good reasons for his suspicion. First, he was quite convinced that Mensa was an incorrigibly bad boy. Second, the bloody affair had taken place on his father's farm. (Djoleto 1967: 23) When being reported to his family by the man who made it an article of faith to suspect those boys always, "Mensa's lips were tightly compressed; for he always made it clear that he was not afraid of the man who rang the church bell. Naturally, it was this open defiance which led the man to think that Mensa was a bad boy." (Djoleto 1967: 24). But when he noticed that the turn of events did not please his father, he explained to him afterwards. He explained to his father: "Daddy, I didn't really mean any harm,'... 'the goat came and stole my food from me. I wanted to punish it but was not sure what I should do. Then I remembered what you once told me.' 'What did I tell you?'... 'You told me that if the two soft balls were removed, the he-goat was kept out of mischief.' 'But I didn't tell you to go and do it yourself, did I?' Have you ever seen a boy do it or just anybody do it? People learn how to do it when they are grown up. An animal can be seriously harmed if it isn't properly done.' "I'm sorry, Daddy, I don't know why I did it." [Djoleto 1967: 43] Old Anang endeavoured to listen to his son, to understand his logic and reasoning, and to reason with him, straightening out the thinking of the child in contrast to the posture of the man who rang the Church bell. A future of Hope: The outcome of his bloody affair with the he-goat was that Little Mensah had to be removed from the environment of the village to a school far away from home. He received the news with calm but what concerned him was what great changes such a move would make to his life in future. He knew he would miss his playmates in the village, but he was also aware of a hopeful future. What he wondered about was what the future exactly entailed. For this reason, too, he contemplated running back home from his new location; but his mother advised: "That won't do you any good. Your daddy won't be happy if you run back home. You see, your uncle is going to make a gentleman of you. He'll make you become a great man in future if you behave and do as he tells you." He wanted to be convinced of the worthwhileness of relocating through the prospects of hope and promise such a future held for him. He enquired from his mother: "Is he a great man himself?" 'In his own way, yes. He's a headteacher and well respected.' But they say in this country only doctors, lawyers and ministers who preach are the great men. I've heard about it but I don't understand it. In my opinion anybody whether a farmer or a carpenter who keeps out of mischief, helps his town or village not for his personal glory but for the good of all, is a great man. Would you want me to be a farmer or a carpenter?' His mother answered: "I want you to do well at school first, then the rest will follow." (Djoleto 1967: 69) f) Learning new things in a new environment: Who and what influenced Mensa most? Mensa was a person who learnt much from what he saw and heard, and what he saw and heard at the Accra market made a deep impression on him. He tried to register every detail, no matter how minute. He also made friends quickly, and his new colleagues reckoned they should be very nice to him and become his best friends in order to benefit from the food he brought from the village. But Mensa disliked children who appeared to be proud and snobbish. The differences between Mensa's upbringing and those of the new environment began to be apparent and set up a conflict with it. He exceeded what was known of the ordinary child. This was a challenge for the persons who were supposed to be responsible for his further training. It was going to pose a challenge for Mensa too, as they sought to suppress and oppress him instead of helping him to repress his unconscious urges as Old Anang did through dialogue and discussion, and practical demonstrations and illustrations for his son. Instead, he was met with suspicion and skepticism: "What immediately struck Mrs Lomo was the articulateness of Mensa. She had all the time believed that boys from the rural areas were bashful and tongue-tied whenever they came to the city. This one was different and she wondered what manner of boy he was. In any case, this being her first encounter with him, she tried to be as affable and as condescending as possible. And to evade Mensa's request as tactfully as she could, she told him that she would look into what he had complained of later and that in the meantime she would provide him with something to eat as he must be hungry. " (Djoleto 1967: 82). What his new guardians noticed about him set them strategizing about his 'castration' resembling the inexpert fashion in which the boys castrated the he-goat in the village: "Mensa, it was clear, was unconventional... The truth, was what his elders wanted to hear and he must say it in abject self-abasement. No doubt there were many grown-ups who had been so trained in this way, who said yes, when they should say no. Men who tried to please anybody in authority and inevitably carried through life a personality which was colourless, futile, spineless, time-serving and oft-times dangerous." (Djoleto 1967: 84) Mr Lomo's methods of training children were through staged trials which were meant 'to instil fear into all the boys, to inculcate into them a sense of justice and righteousness and to make them realize that if they erred they could be sure of the consequences.' But when he encountered Mensa, his tried and tested methods which had all the while worked for him were bound to be challenged and inverted. Employing his old style, he told the other boys: "Well, I know you're surprised to hear what I've just said. But it happens that I've known Mensa for some time and he's as bad as each and every one of you!" Mensa was so angry and upset by the summary of character given of him that he said involuntarily: "This man is funny! He's only seen me once and he's so cruel to me! Now he says I'm a bad boy. How did he know?" It gave Mr Lomo food for thought: "As Mr Lomo sat in his office, one thought exercised his mind. Why would Mensa speak the way he did? Was it because he was an incorrigibly bad boy or was it how he naturally spoke? He brooded over the last question for some time and suddenly an idea occurred to him. He wanted to find out for himself whether that was the real problem. He came to the house and asked Mensa to come along to his office. He was pleasant and affable. He asked Mensa to sit down on a wooden bench placed against the wall. Normally boys never sat down when they were in his office. They always stood erect in military fashion, their hands behind them the feet placed astride; neither at ease nor attention; they stood on the alert and in obeisance." "He smiled and asked Mensa: 'Why did you hurt that goat in the village. Didn't you know it was a bad thing to do?' 'No, I didn't know. That goat was a nuisance. All the boys in the village hated it. It ate my food. It fought the other he-goats and worried the nanny-goats. My father had told me that if a goat was troublesome and it was castrated, it sobered down. Moreover, it would grow fat and the flesh tasted excellent when served.' (Djoleto 1967: 91- 92) Thereupon, Mr Lomo, supposed his presuppositions about Mensa had now been proved right. The boy did not articulate himself through subtleties. "The boy was ingenuous and spoke freely like an educated boy from an uneducated village. He had nothing to hide nor fear. He saw everything in either black or white; and would give vent to what he thought was true without a second thought. This was perhaps good, Mr Lomo vaguely felt, but all the same it could not be countenanced. It was a sign of simplicity, naivety and total backwardness. If allowed to flourish, it would give a lot of trouble to a civilized society. No good educational system, he was sure, would tolerate it. A good educational system should, no doubt, make a boy as docile as possible. It should make a boy a good diplomatist who would say he was not aware of something, not because he was not really aware of it, but because he could not be proved to be aware of it; he must be the kind of boy who should specialize in manufacturing white lies as a means of profiting from life. For example, the defence put up by Badu and Antwi was preferable to any blunt statement of fact that they fought over the bananas. Such truthfulness was anathema. It fetched punishment. It was illiterate to speak the truth and be punished. The good life demanded lying. It had to be so, it should be so and it must remain so. Who could go through life successfully without it? Abstruse philosophy is woven by great men to support it, not in all circumstances, but in some circumstances. Mensa could, when he had the mind to, say why he had done the wrong thing, even if saying so would incriminate him. The four Accra boys would do the wrong thing and say that it was never their intention to do it and that something beyond their control must have compelled them. To Mr Lomo, those four boys, no matter how black their lying was, were using the right language. It showed that they were responding successfully to correction; they were becoming trained and disciplined; they had discretion. Mensa's natural honesty was not to be tolerated; it was not to be fostered; he needed training to get rid of it otherwise, in future, he would embarrass organized society and organized society must survive not on occasional honesty but on endemic subtle lying." (Djoleto 1967: 93-94) Mensa saw through the hypocrisy of Mr Lomo and rejected his approach. However, the things and methods that actually helped his maturity and judgements in contrast were his class teacher, nicknamed, 'I'll-twist-you' who taught him how to create the necessary nuances in his life and language, and the kindness of friends in the environment: He was very happy to be in the school and felt proud in his school uniform: 'he was in his sacred, new khaki uniform.' And, "His full name had been entered in the school register and he felt important when the class teacher mentioned it during roll-call in a martial voice. He watched the teacher closely to see whether he was an ordinary mortal or a special breed of man reserved only for schools. Already, the personality of the teacher had profoundly impressed him and curiosity forced him to know why. On the whole, his caning punishments were more enjoyed than dreaded. If anything, it was his frowns that really scared the children to death. Having thus taken a good look at his teacher and having heard so much already about him, Mensa was quite sure that he was going to get on excellently with this frail, old man who always walked three miles to school. It happened also that 'I'll-twist-you' was in turn eyeing him surreptitiously, taking an interest in him as a pupil. Why did he pick on him and eye him? Mensa thought about it for a few moments and finding no good answer to it, forgot about it entirely as many other things attracted his attention. It was apparent that boys negotiate quite a lot among themselves, particularly in matters related to food. "During that lesson pupils were terribly busy, having engaged in clandestine negotiations..... Such negotiations were tough, for children were more interested in immediate benefits than in future rewards..... For a boy to be successful therefore at the negotiations, he must use all the imagination God had endowed him with, and paint a very rosy picture of what the one who gave would have in return. He must impress upon the giver that the next day would not take long to arrive and that his big cake would be the most delicious ever eaten by man. A business of this nature automatically precluded profitable teaching and class discipline was taken care of by business pupils not by the teacher." (Djoleto 1967: 102) At break time, the behavior of his guardian's wife, Aunt Adzoa, or Mrs Lomo, who was one of the food vendors on the school premises made him sad and disappointed him. He hid himself in a corner and wept. He felt nobody had any love for him and life was devoid of joy. Not that he fully understood his plight but he felt that those who loved and cared for him had posted him to an alien spot when human beings existed not for him but for others. He was saved by another boy who noticed and approached to comfort him. The boy spoke softly and asked him, 'What's your name?' His class teacher, 'I'll-twist-you', noticing his sadness, invited him to his desk. As Mensa stood close to his desk, he said: "Look here, my dear boy, I was born and bred in the countryside myself. In my time, life was easy and free. Nobody was taught honesty. Indeed, people were not sufficiently crooked to be dishonest. Now everything is not simple, my dear boy. You see, you got into trouble this morning because you said what you felt you should say, not what everyone expected you to say. My dear boy, if you want to survive in this world always say the things people would wish you to say or wish to hear and not what you think should be said. For example, if someone says 'Good morning' to you and you think it's a bad morning, you don't have to say 'Bad morning'. If you said that you'd be considered a lunatic. My dear boy, that's how the trouble starts until you have injustice paraded as justice. You probably don't understand me, but you'll learn in good time. My dear boy, I don't have to say much; you'll learn in good time. You see, I'm paid to do this or that when I am here. At home, I do what I like provided I don't hurt anybody. You have also come here to do this or that. When you've finished with schooling, you can do what you like provided you don't hurt anybody. Is that not funny, my dear boy? It is, it is! Life is funny, my dear boy. I've seen a bit of it, my dear boy. Whenever you're in trouble come and see me. You may go back and sit down but don't look that sad again, my dear boy!" (Djoleto 1967: 110-111). Once a while, his class teacher would impart his philosophy of life to those children because he had boundless faith and confidence in them. He knew nonetheless that they would not understand him because they were so young. But he trusted that those children's memories would serve them long after they had finished with their basic education; they would remember his words and weigh them for what they were worth. "He believed that the end-product of education was man's realization of what the life he faced was worth and his relationship with it; his rational grasp of his environment and of himself; his developed intellect that enabled him not to be committed necessarily or even at all to what all other men on earth thought and said; his freedom to seek the truth, the spiritual happiness or whatever faith he desired, upon which he could anchor his life which was buffered because the whole of creation was founded on treacherous restlessness and had ever remained restless and full of dismal uncertainties; and that the only certainty he could have would be the certainty of a never-ending battle in a settled style, to adjust his life which would be extinguished one day and would be lost to a dark nothingness. He had an inward contentment and was at peace with himself and his world. He sought after no economic efficiency upon which to base his happiness; he sought after hard thinking which made him free from the cobwebs the modern man had woven over the earth. He was left alone and alone he stayed; he never tried to be at the top, and desperate ambition did not becloud his destiny." (Djoleto 1967: 112-3) Mensa was overwhelmed by all that he had heard. From now onwards, he reflected on the talking to he had heard, interspersed with the caning sometimes. It dawned on him that he was now in a world which was not easy. "He could only distinguish between those who were good to him and those who were hostile to him. Why those people were what they were, he could not tell; he had neither the intellectual capacity nor the time for it. He sat down quietly not knowing how to manage to look cheerful, though at that moment he had some peace of mind because 'I'll-twist-you' had been nice to him." (Djoleto 1967: 114). ## VI. DISCUSSION Amu Djoleto's (1967) narrative accords with Highet's (1951) observation that the young are trying desperately hard to become real people and to be individuals. It also accords with the observation that, to be able to influence the young, one ought to be able to convince them that he or she knows them. The methods for helping the young male-child to achieve this should be the preoccupation of the father and those who become the father-figures in his life, as much as it should pre-occupy the mother and the mother-figures in a male-child's life. Those who tried methods of extreme surveillance, exhibiting the morbid epithet of making it their duty and having their own 'good reasons' for suspecting them always, like the man who rang the village church bell, are invariably hated by the male-child. Techniques such as those based upon Mr Lomo's hypocrisy which worked upon the principle that a child showed signs of 'simplicity, naivety and total back wardness' and were dangerous to society because they spoke the truth as they felt it articulately without fear or bashfulness did not work either. An educational endeavor built upon the principle that a boy must be made as docile as possible, making him a diplomatist who should 'specialize in manufacturing white lies as a means of profiting from life' only confirms the children in their undifferentiated unconscious condition and confusion. Highet (1951) summarizes the implications of such approaches poignantly: "The young dislike their elders for having fixed minds. But they dislike them even more for being insincere. They themselves are simple, single-minded, straightforward, almost painfully naive. A hypocritical boy or girl is rare, and is always a monster or a spiritual cripple. They know grown-ups are clever, they know grown-ups hold the power. What they cannot bear is that grown-ups should be deceitful.... So they will tolerate a parent or a teacher who is energetic and violent, and sometimes even learn a good deal from him; but they loathe and despise a hypocrite." (Highet 1951:19). The effects of being lied to can be devastating as Burrow (2020: 22) expressed it: "That feedback between liar and lie-ee has immense psychological significance. It's the reason why, in fiction and in life, lies can have such a powerful effect. If they take us in it's because they work with our beliefs about what is likely to be true. And that's why the discovery that one has been lied to can give rise to such emotional chaos." Consequently, Mr Lomo's mistakes and those whose education of the young were based upon the same principles like his create the conditions for future negative reactions from children who sense that a parent or teacher is trying to make them other than themselves into replicas of the teacher or parent. Highet (1951: 44-45) reiterates: "Most important of all is a negative. Do not try to make the brilliant pupil a replica of yourself. To begin with, that would be impossible, because individuals differ and brilliant individuals diverge widely. Even if it were possible, it would be stupid: because much of a man's creative energy flows from his knowledge of his uniqueness and originality, whereas anyone who has been moulded to fit the pattern of another personality usually spends the rest of his life either trying to conform and crushing out spontaneous and creative impulses, or rebelling in that dreary uncreative way which consists in saying 'I don't care what I do, I just want to deny everything X stands for.' (For X, read 'my father', 'my mother', or 'my teacher'). The most effective approach to teaching the male-child to achieve their identities as human subjects, individuals, ready for participation in productivity, jettisoning the pleasure principle for the reality principle, forged within the symbolic order was achieved by Old Anang, and by the teacher who was nicknamed 'I'll-twist-you'. They adopted methods described by Palmer (2017) about teaching from within and from a position of identity and integrity, and also by Brookfield (2017) concerning teachers seeing themselves through the eyes of their students. 'I'll-twist you' became a mentor for Little Mensa: When he called Mensa to come forward, he described to him the complexities of life and living, and reassured him, 'Whenever you're in trouble come and see me. You may go back and sit down but don't look that sad again, my dear boy!' (Djoleto 1967: 111). And once a while, he imparted his philosophy of life to the children because he had boundless faith and confidence in them. Thus, Djoleto (1967) presents the narrative of the castration of the he-goat in a double sense. It is first, an event describing the naivety of the male-child, wishing to solve problems, but not knowing how to accomplish them in the appropriate way. Relying on the father's pronouncements, they proceed to act without seeking training. It makes them prone to naivety and mis judgements, and ironically making them create mischief like the he-goat. That leads to the second sense of the he-goat narrative as symbolic of what the character of the male-child resembles in its natural state when the unconscious dominates it - irrepressible, irresponsible, incomprehensible, insensitive, insensible, aggressive and destructive, and meriting abhorrence. The notion of castration introduced by Djoleto is a reference to the professional education and guidance of the male-child towards induction into the symbolic order and residence within the ability to repress the unconscious and the pleasure principle for the sake of transiting into the reality principle of living. By this, they are enabled to overcome the eternal infantilism which could characterize them otherwise through the domination of the unconscious. But as Old Anang insists, it must be carried out by experts and experienced human subjects, and not by just anyone, let alone a hypocrite, liar, or someone who has not himself successfully transited the symbolic order. a) Recommendations: Assisting and enabling the male-child to break the bonds of his childhood and lifting his eyes to the higher regions of the cosmos in contemporary society The Oedipus complex, which serves as the organizing principle of human growth into an individual and a human subject should not be discounted. It can be successfully negotiated and transitioned, and the drives it organizes duly achieved; in the same way, failure can result in its negotiation and transition, leaving a creature in its pre-oedipal stage who is anarchic, aggressive, incestuous, and without focus. A successful negotiation of the oedipal stage should be applauded, promoted, and strengthened; in the same fashion, failure in its negotiation should be duly acknowledged and efforts made to guide children to be able to make the transition. Failure to transit the Oedipus complex to cause a successful organization of drives must be recognized and acknowledged as such and should not be masked and encouraged as some democratic ideal where a child can be encouraged to do whatever they want or like. Such attitudes and perspectives constitute an abrogation of responsibility equal to the frustrated headteacher, Mr Lomo's hypocritical principles of education and training of children to become duplicitous and hypocritical. Castration, as recommended by Amu Djoleto (1967), is not meant as a removal of the phallus of the male-child which is the status of his masculinity, but is a keen reference to the re-ordering of the drives of the male-child in line with the Oedipus complex and symbolic order towards a civilizing end including repression, sublimation, productivity, and creativity. Consequently, the consideration of the organization of capacity building events to support the male-child, to equip them with the requisite knowledge, information and skills for transiting from the pleasure principle to the reality principle is crucial. The training and activities towards achieving them will give much confidence and direction to the male-child. They will, thereby, be given the knowledge, skills and focus required for the male-child's development and maintenance of mental stability in a contemporary context which is ever-changing. It also calls attention to a focus upon and empowerment of those who can enable the achievement of this guidance and transition including parents, teachers, guardians and caregivers to be given all the resources and support they need to acquire the skills and training they require to enable the achievement of a successful transition of the male-child through the sensitive and crucial stage of growth where their identities are made as human subjects. Without these, the male-child is bound to lose focus, pursue inappropriate goals, or find it difficult to achieve appropriate goals, and become prone to failure, depression, confusion and mental health instability and problems. The male-child ought to be able to learn and debunk the aberration that 'Hope and virtue are for the weak, for life's losers.' (Maglaque 2020:37). He ought to know that he can transcend nature into culture, break the bonds of his childhood, and lift his eyes to the higher regions of the cosmos to become a full citizen capable of creating civilization.

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