The Living Room Mysteries: Patterns of Male Intimacy, Book 2

Jackson presents his typology of male intimacy patterns. Reminiscent of C G Jung's "Personality Types", Jackson uses his blue and red types to explain the phenomenon of (gay) male patterns in metropolitan life. Jackson identified the green and yellow types in his previous volume "The Secret Lore of Gardening", and now he approaches a more dangerous and shifting alchemy in male-male relationships. Cutting through the obsenity of new age and pop psych garbage popularly ranting on "what it means to be gay" or "the gay psyche", Jackson is not only trained and experienced to speak on the topic, he is also thoughtful and aware of the perilousness of the polarization present in such relationships. He identifies what may be at the core of male to male effiminacy and emasculation, and how this post-modern attempt that gay men stumble upon (as Percifal and the Grail King did in the 12th Century)is really a psychic meeting of the mother complex and the father complex to sqare off (and possibly account for, in this terribly deprived language we have, homosexual eros and amore). I reccomend this book to the lay Jungian and depth psych nut. I stumbled upon it with a little introduction from Walker, Hopcke, and Thompson-but would have been able to navigate through Jackson's words and ideas just as well without. Side by side Robert A Johnson's "We", Jackson's volumes enlighten the powerful and most idealized experience for us in the west-"Falling in Love". See also Johnson's essay in Hopcke's "Same Sex Love:A Path to Wholeness" for a likewise uncluttered and sustaining attempt at bringing consciousness to gay male love. This and the previous book by Jackson are difficult to find and buy. A true gem for gay hearts.