by Thomas Matlack
“Repression is like holding a ball under water,” my
sister Laura said last Thursday, as she explained
her doctoral dissertation. “Dissociation is like
trying to get a rock from the depths to the surface.
Repression deals with processed experience but
dissociation is about unprocessed experience
often associated with trauma.”
I sat in the front row within arm’s length of my sister
and her committee as she masterfully articulated
the impact of multiple childhood traumas on
personality and its relationship to dissociation. I
held my second wife Elena’s hand tightly, interested
but also fearful. A woman of enormous grace and
warmth, she makes up for my social deficiencies.
My parents sat immediately behind us, my mother
giving a virtual play-by-play of “right”, “yes”, and
a variety of vocal affirmations that expressed
her heightened state of engagement without the
benefit of language. Decades before, she too had
presented a dissertation en route to becoming a
psychologist, a job which she held for most of her
adult life.
I tried not to block out the impact of having a shrink
for a mother and the parallel now of having a sister
who, for very different reasons, had followed in
her footsteps. I tried to focus on a returning Iraq
veteran medic I recently heard talk about losing
11 men on the battlefield before coming home to
blackouts and profound personality changes that
caused him to seek out help.
Out of nowhere, I heard the sound of a baby crying
hysterically (I later discovered that there had been
a class on babies in the next room). My sister
was discussing her sample and how much of the
trauma had occurred when the victims were pre-
verbal. Mom grunted approval. I closed my eyes,
my skin crawling. Though not a victim of abuse, I
was dissociating all the same.
Friday, I drove to Exeter Academy to speak at the
Independent School Health Association conference.
There were 150 deans of students, nurses, and
school counselors in the audience. Dr. Michael
Thompson, author of Raising Cain, was to speak
first. I had been asked to present The Good Men
Project—a foundation aimed at sparking national
dialogue about manhood and helping boys in the
process—and then finish the day on a panel which
included Thompson, a specialist on boys and the
internet.
I sat in the back listening to Thompson, a world-
famous lecturer, as he paced back and forth. Half
an hour in, I was livid. I had expected stories about
boys, but what Thompson was describing was
the way boys, and in fact men, developed their
model of intimacy from their moms. “It’s a double
reversal,” he asserted. “Boys seek out girls who are
the opposite of their mother, but who will follow the
tracks of intimacy set down by mom.”
Complete psychobabble as far as I was concerned.
I was there to tell real stories about real men and
how those stories could inspire boys to do the right
thing. Then came the capper. “I require that men
acknowledge their dependence on their moms. 
On this I agree with the English pediatrician-
turned-psychologist, D.W. Winnicott, who said
that dictators and other men who are a danger to
others deny that they were every dependent and
needy.  They despise their own neediness; that’s
what makes them so dangerous.”
After lunch, I was introduced by the school
psychologist at Deerfield Academy, a man who
was in the same training program as my mom and
who used to hang out at our house when I was
a troubled teenager. I hadn’t seen him in thirty
years.
I launched into a description of our book, film,
website, the men in Sing Sing, and covering Iraq
war stories we had captured. I then went back to
the beginning of how and why the whole topic of
manhood had become my personal passion.
I described my athletic and then business prowess.
I explained how I was made Chief Financial Officer
of The Providence Journal Company at 29, took
the company public and, 90 days later, negotiated
its $2 billion sale. I paused.
“But the fact that I appeared on the front page
of the Wall Street Journal as a wunderkind didn’t
matter, because my wife threw me out of the house
for being a cheat and a drunk. Just days after
announcing our deal, I found myself in a church
parking lot with no place to go, having left behind
a three-month-old son and two-year-old daughter
who my soon-to-be ex-wife had assured me I would
never see again.”
I stopped to look at the crowd. Even though I
had told the story perhaps hundreds of times, I
suddenly couldn’t remember what I had done in
that moment of truth fourteen years ago.
I snapped out of my momentary blackout with a jolt.
Before even speaking, I smiled knowingly. “In that
church parking lot you know what I did? I called
my mom.” The crowd laughed in recognition of the
earlier reference to men calling for their mothers as
they lay dying on the battlefield. “I tried to explain
to her how I had gone from Superman to homeless
in a matter of hours. She told me to make sure to
remember to eat.”

It was on that call that I realized that I had

absolutely no idea what it meant to be a good
father, husband, and man, I told the crowd. And it
took Dr. Thompson to remind me what it meant to
be a good son, I thought to myself afterwards.

Saturday morning I awoke to an email from

Thompson telling me that his life, like mine, had
been impacted by alcoholism and his relationship
with his mom had never been easy. “My mother was
both depressed and an alcoholic.  Trying to save her-
--probably one reason I became a psychologist---
was the main work of my childhood.”
 
It turns out that as men, we are more alike than we
know.

T H O M A S M AT L A C K
was Chief Financial Officer of The Providence Journal Matlack has an extensive social
until 1997. He was the lead investor in the Art Technology
Group, which reached $5 billion in market capitalization in media platform inc l u ding :
2001. He founded and ran his own venture firm from 1998
to 2010 before turning to writing. His work has appeared · http://www.scribd.com/tmatlack
in Fogged Clarity, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Rowing
· http://www.facebook.com/thomasmatlack
News, Penthouse, Boston Common, Boston Magazine,
Boston Globe Magazine, Wesleyan, Tango, Pop Matters, · http://www.facebook.com/thegoodmenproject
and PenSpark, and he is a frequent contributor to The
Huffington Post. · http://twitter.com/tmatlack
In 2008, Matlack founded THE GOOD MEN PROJECT · http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodmenproject
with his venture capital partner James Houghton. He has
appeared on national and local television and radio as · http://www.youtube.com/goodmenproject
well as in print across the country. In the fall of 2009,
Matlack led a non-conventional book tour that started · http://matlack.blip.tv/
inside the Sing Sing Correctional Facility and ended
· http://www.goodmenproject.org/blog
in Hollywood with a screening of THE GOOD MEN
PROJECT documentary, followed by a panel discussion
including Matt Weiner and Shepard Fairey. All proceeds
from the Project go to helping at-risk boys.