55. Mike Box

Evan sits down with Mike Box, a Jungian psychoanalyst, for a wide-ranging conversation about male psychology, suffering, and what it means to actually engage with life rather than just move through it. They cover legitimate versus illegitimate suffering, the wild man from Iron John, the Ouroboros, the red shoes, and why men so often identify with what they do rather than who they are. Mike shares his own story of coming back from the Gulf War, drinking too much for years, and eventually arriving at the legitimate suffering he’d been avoiding, and how that arc maps onto the men he now works with who wake up somewhere in their forties asking whether this is as good as it gets. The conversation ends on the importance of play, the loss of male community, and why spaces where men can talk about things that actually matter are rare and necessary.