So began Michael Lerner's plea to Bill Clinton (Tikkun, September 1993) to take up the ‘politics of meaning’ articulated by his wife Hillary. Lerner's starting point was Clinton's capitulation to conservatives on the issue of homosexuality in the military. Clinton had failed to understand the psychology of conservatism, Lerner argued. Since it flows from deep psychic trauma, rational argument is pointless. Instead, liberals had to develop empathy with the ‘basically decent people’ who support moral conservatism, learn to ‘speak to their pain’ and to talk about their ‘deepest desires for caring and mutual recognition’: ‘We must continue to resist the content of the homophobia, racism or sexism, or antisemitism that these people exhibit. But if we want to effect change, we'd better understand the underlying trauma and begin to develop strategies aimed at addressing that trauma and dislodging it.’

How should this underlying trauma be understood? To become individuals boys must psychically separate from their mothers, their primary sources of nurture. This requires them to identify with the world of the masculine and to repudiate the feminine. To demonstrate masculinity, bonds are formed with other boys and men and the caring, nurturant, feminine side of boys is repressed. Men grow up fearing their repressed feminine potential and fearing their dependence upon women.