Dr Anthony Clare

Anthony Clare, Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby. What do they all have in common? Each has written a best-seller about masculinity in crisis, with the latter s semi-autobiographical High Fidelity the source of a current hit movie of the same name.

But while Anthony Clare s On Men is actually subtitled Masculinity In Crisis, it is a work of analysis rather than any kind of biography, fictional or otherwise.
Indeed, one of the criticisms of the book is that Clare draws back on self-revelation and doesn t detail to any great degree how this alleged crisis has affected his own life. This has not stopped other critics claiming that the book is little more than a manifestation of Anthony Clare s own mid-life crisis, initiated, in part, it s said, by the fact that he soon is to relinquish his post as Medical Director of St. Patrick s Hospital, Dublin.
Whatever, the book has indeed become a best-seller in Ireland, meaning that many people in this country must, at least, be interested in the subject and how it impacts on all aspects of life. Indeed, before beginning the interview proper, I asked Clare to briefly vacate the psychiatrist s chair for the manager s hot seat and assess if the Irish football team s inability to make the winning line is an indicator of masculinity in crisis. You join us seconds before kick-off

Joe Jackson: It might be a symptom of what you describe in the book as erectile dysfunction which to a lay-man like myself simply means that the Irish team have no balls!
Anthony Clare: It may be evidence of Irish masculinity in crisis! But it s not that the Irish football team have no balls as much as they may suffer from premature ejaculation! They lack the staying power! But they are good. While they last! Yet, you re right, they don t make the final distance! So maybe they should read this book!
What is your problem with those critics who claim the book is about your own uncertainties rather than society at large?
Some commentators did a straight interview in relation to the book and that s the way I preferred it. Some, on the other hand, decided to do a Psychiatrist s Chair on me. My dilemma was that if people started to talk to me about myself I couldn t be frightfully coy because they d say you interviewed other people and asked them questions about their lives, you can t now object to it being done to you. That is true, but it did irritate me at times because it was more the book I wanted to talk about.
But, in the book, did you deliberately draw back from disclosing personal details about your private life?
Not deliberately. I think it was a fairly natural stance I took. I was working out of a mixture of influences over the years. Obviously, my psychiatry. And the fact that I am a man, who is surrounded by other men and has a family life and is involved in debates about pressures of work and professional demands. I m not naturally given to writing a book based on my own personal experiences. I think that kind of anecdotal book can be done to death. And there is very substantial research literature about such things as the role of fathers, the reluctance of men to complain about physical ill-health, the tendency to bottle up emotions, the difficulty men have of letting go control positions. I felt it was better to argue on that, rather than from personal opinion.
Do you, as a man, have difficulty letting go of control positions? The last time you spoke to hotpress, twelve years ago, you d just begun your time as Medical Director of St. Patrick s, you told me you loved pulling levers.
In this hospital the role of medical director has evolved to a great degree. When I first came here, Norman Moore was a very powerful, autocratic figure. Those were autocratic times. But the style here now is very different. Regardless of me. Yet there still is a tendency, in me, to be more controlling than I would wish to be. That s something which is hard to get rid of. I did tell you, then, that I do get a buzz out of pulling levers. Though I don t get quite the same buzz out of it now.
What about media claims that you are fearful of the growing power of women? Colleagues here in St. Patrick s or female patients who dare to challenge you?
Kathryn Holmquist, in The Irish Times, made an awful lot of that. But, in fact, I m quite the opposite. Personally, I have been much more surrounded by women than men. My two sisters, mother, a lot of cousins. And, in medicine, when I was influenced to choose psychiatry, it was mostly because of women patients mystifying doctors and having it all put down to nerves. And when I worked here, one of the really rewarding things was that women patients would talk ! They would tell you how they felt. Men wouldn t. Kathryn asked me did I feel more comfortable with women than men and my answer was yes. Yet, in the interview, that came out as I was more fearful of women. To deny that sounds like rationalisation. I would just say, to you, that I feel more comfortable with many women than men. I do have some very good male friends but they are more giving, less wary, than men usually are.
Are you more giving with female friends than males?
Probably. I would also be more wary of men. In general.
Let s look at a few more questions raised in the Irish Times do you worry about penis size?
Penis size? I was making the point, to Kathryn, that men are wary, certainly in adolescence, about this whole business of penis size. Y know that lovely scene in is it Boogie Nights or The Full Monty ? where he gets himself ready by roughing himself up so that it isn t too small?
Boogie Nights, where the guy was huge, which probably intimidated quite a few men!
When you finally saw it! That s right! Whereas, as I say in the book, in The Full Monty, they backed away from showing the penis because men all men probably are a bit worried by that old question how does my penis rate with other men? There s still a fair amount of that kind of positioning. But what came out in that article was that Anthony Clare is endlessly preoccupied with the size of his penis. (Laughs) Which I have to confess, I m not.
Have you tried Viagra?
No. I haven t tried Viagra!
But you do say in the book that the remarkable number of men who are turning to Viagra probably still focus too much on the mechanics of sex, rather than looking at the broader question of relationships and their own psychology.
There are a number of popular magazines, such as GQ, and they have articles titled, say, 20 tips to satisfy your girlfriend. Invariably, if they are well written they usually focus on the broader issue of a woman s sexuality. But somehow it never seems to get through to most men. Those same men are still obsessed with questions of size, strength, a very penetrative view of sex which people like Germaine Greer endlessly parody. Brilliantly. But the message is that women do see men particularly as they get a little older as better lovers because they take more time. Physiologically they have to! Either way they take a broader view than it all being about just penetrative sex, which is more the view when you are younger. It really is as though there is some terrible anxiety about issues like size and strength, which really is a very male way of looking at things.
In your book you also draw parallels between the tendency to downsize in the workplace and how that can make men shrivel up psychologically and sexually. This, you say, is one of the more obvious side-effects of defining one s self in terms of phallic strength.
Very much so. And the opposite can apply too. Men who have a lot of other things going for them and suddenly develop impotence find that everything in their life unravels. So there is something terribly powerful about this whole concept of the phallus. I did want to call my book The Dying Phallus. I wanted to get at this notion that so much of what it means to be a man is intimately bound up with our sexuality but that it is very difficult to distinguish sexual power from, say, corporate power and professional power. But the publishers didn t like that, felt it was too negative and that men wouldn t buy it.
The book does retain the core argument of how counter-productive it is to define one s self according to phallic power.
Absolutely. Which all men have been encouraged to do.
Including yourself! Pulling levers which Germaine Greer might see as a symbol of your penis, right?
Exactly! And it is true so much of the language of power is sexual.
Greer, and her peers, as you say, see the relationship between men and women largely as a war-zone. You also argue in your book that if you delve beneath the surface of many men you ll find they actually despise women.
One critic, male, said this was the most ridiculous book he d ever read at that level. That Clare hates women. Actually, I believe we are a complicated mixture of feelings towards women. But that critic said I was reducing all men to women-haters. Of course I m not, though some men obviously are women haters. But it s bit like racism. Even the most liberal person is infected by centuries of ways at looking at the other. And women have been, for men, the other. And there is no doubt that some women hate men too. But that wasn t the subject of my book. I was looking more so at men. And there is, for example, great hatred in the way men objectify women, make them instruments. Of whatever.
Certain strands of psychiatry often seem rooted in a hatred of woman. In the book you refer to a time when women were only deemed to be healthy when they were seen as non-sexual beings. That kind of perspective has polluted Freudian analysis, hasn t it?
Yes. Freud was a patriarch. And even women analysts have tried to rationalise Freud because they revere him so much. But he had a view of women that was very much part of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and riddled medicine to such a degree that to be a woman was to be ill in some way, lesser. All the things one associated with women had connotations of illness. All the things associated with men had connotations of health. Though now, I joke in the book, things are looking like they could be reversed! In other words, to be emotional, communicative, soft, tender and to feel compassion are now positive things. Whereas to be strong, tough, macho and so on is beginning to look pathological. Particularly in terms of, say, domestic violence.
In the book you also turn on its ass another of Freud s notions: penis envy among women. You believe that if you strip away the anger many men feel towards women it s really anger at the fact that they can t bear children. That men have a kind of womb-envy and turn to creative endeavours, such as art, by way of compensation.
When you start to look at men in relation to creativity, this is the one major gender difference it s hard to circumvent. Namely the difference between the relationship women have with their biology and we have with ours. Ours is one step removed. So we re much more uncertain as a result of our biology. We re also more uncertain about our sexuality than many women. Until a hundred years ago we couldn t even be sure of who our children were! Every woman has that security. No man has. So I honestly don t believe women have penis envy. Or are in denial about the fact that they wish they had a penis, which is, fundamentally, what Freud was arguing. They envy male power. He got it half right! But somehow he was so biologically rooted he pulled it all down to the penis, instead of seeing it was phallic. Not penile.
So it does seem to me that men are insecure in this sense and actually envy women s immediacy of biology. In other words, that which has trapped women also is their great advantage. They could go out of life knowing they had created life in a way no male can be sure. And even when, as a man, you know it s your child you are, as I say, still one step removed. You didn t bear it. And you certainly don t nourish it, the way women do.
In the book you have that quote: the only thing the male contributes to the continuation of the species is semen! That seems to be a view shared by many women these days!
Perhaps. But I, personally, don t go along with that because taking such a view is just doing what Freud did, in reverse. What makes us human isn t just our biology. We are a highly imaginative, rational, intellectual organism as well. So I do think men have a very crucial role, in terms of creativity. Both in relation to the continuation of the species and the arts, whatever. But, you re right, more and more women are reducing men to the role of semen-donors. I m very critical of that.
Would you see John Waters as representative of a male who has been thus publicly reduced?
That is awful. I was critical of John in the book in terms of the issue of domestic violence. But I do understand what John is all about. And I hope we re on the same side in a number of things. What I will give to John is that he takes the issue of fatherhood seriously. I think it s a pity he has found himself going on and on, a bit, about female domestic violence. Women can be violent domestically, but he can t divorce that from the context of superior male strength, and so many women being trapped by male violence in the home. I also agree that there are many women who are difficult to live with and that their husbands are intimidated in the way he described. But Waters is on much firmer ground on the issue of the importance of fatherhood. Or the good-as-can-be father as opposed to the perfect-father. Because we re all flawed, really.
But for women to reduce men to being just, as you say, semen-donors is to sow the seeds of real trouble. Because it will encourage young men to behave like that. They will see their role that way, donate their sperm, collect their hundred quid and think that is as far as their responsibility goes in terms of being men, being fathers. But worse, it is hard to find a society in which there are large numbers of unattached males in which there isn t a large amount of violence. That makes sense. One of the ways in which it was said males were reined in was the pram in the hall and the mortgage. But it also civilises young men. Gives them responsibilities. They start to have a role. Take that away and what have they got? A laddish, loutish culture with young men wandering around with no purpose. You can t run a society that way. So I am delighted to see people like John Waters banging away at this idea that men matter when it comes to children.
Let s look at this from another angle, one that might explain why some men relinquish such responsibilities. Men, you say in your book, are often written out of the abortion question: if a woman decides to have an abortion the man is not asked what he thinks.
I think he should be asked what he thinks. But what if he thinks the opposite to her, should he force the issue? No. I would never force a woman to go through a pregnancy. Then again, a lot of women think the child is not the possession of the woman, just because she carries it.
Do you?
I don t suppose I do. But that s a difficult one. Up to a certain point I believe in a woman s right to choose. Up to ten weeks, termination is acceptable on the grounds that what you are terminating hasn t fully achieved the status of an independent, viable sensate. But beyond that I don t think even the woman has the right to abort it. I am very uneasy about late terminations. But you play into the hands of Youth Defence by pretending it is a straightforward procedure. I don t think it is. Yet, to get back to the question of patriarchy, I am uneasy about the idea of any man telling women what they can and can t do. And most of our legislators drawing up these rules are men.
Did you ever have to take part in the decision to abort or not abort? With your wife or a girlfriend?
No. But as a professional psychiatrist in the United Kingdom, I was involved. And I found that scientifically untenable. You were, for example, asked to say that the consequences of the woman proceeding with the pregnancy would be adverse.
Meaning? You were asked to decide whether or not the woman carrying the child was suitable to be a mother?
Yes. Or asked whether carrying this child would be a serious threat to her mental health. So one was making predictions and statements, which, in itself, was very difficult.
More to the point, this is where we get into the area of psychiatrists playing God, isn t it?
Absolutely. And the same applies to the Constitutional Committee on Abortion here in Ireland because they may find, arising out of the X Case, that they are making similar recommendations, say, in the case of a suicidal threat. The problem with that is that if someone wants a termination, she may think all I have to do is go to Professor Clare and say I m going to kill myself if I don t terminate this pregnancy. I don t think many women would do that. But some would. Yet you can t build your legislature on that particular threat.
In terms of that question of psychiatrists playing God do you think that it s healthier for society that a person such as yourself is losing power in those areas you ve just described?
Absolutely. And when it comes to the question of whether or not a particular woman should, or shouldn t, have an abortion, I do believe that we, as psychiatrists, are hauled in to give such decisions credibility and respectability. And to get other people off-the-hook. A society faces a choice. Should a woman be allowed to teminate? And in what circumstances, under what rules? I think rape and serious physical deformity dwarf any others. But most abortions are not on those grounds.
You also would have been asked to play God in terms of whether or not a marriage should end. Asked, say, to side with a husband who says his wife is mentally unfit to raise their children.
Yes. Under the old Church annulments you would. But that whole idea is becoming anachronistic. And I absolutely refuse to participate in those value judgements. Because I might be asked to say that you, for example, had a personality disorder a loose enough term at the best of times when you contracted the marriage. Despite the fact that you might have three children and have sustained the marriage for thirty years. Even so, annulments are still granted on those grounds.
But your peers do still stand in judgement on such issues.
Somebody does. But not myself. On principle.
An issue that has come up in other interviews is your regret about smacking your children.
Some years ago, at a Relatively Speaking conference, Simon, my second eldest, made a comment that when he was growing up I had a tendency to fly off the handle and clip him. There was a discussion of this in public and I thought good enough , people should admit that they smacked their children. There is an awful lot of hypocrisy on this. But that comment has haunted us ever since. And Simon even said, this time, he s not going on about beating us, again. Is he?
But was that clip you gave Simon the exception to the rule or something that happened quite often?
Jane (Clare s wife) and I were talking about this the other day. And she said you have gone overboard about all this. But there were occasions and I do remember them. I always was hot-blooded. And irascible. Still am to an extent. Not so much professionally, though I suspect even my patients say I m quite confrontational at times. But with the children, in the early years, when we had three very close together, I was more irascible. Yet, during the later years, I mellowed in that sense and that all stopped because smacking my children was always something I disliked. And I never did it in a cold-blooded sense. Even so, it s not something I m proud of.
You wouldn t describe yourself as an abusive father?
No. Though maybe you should talk to my kids or wife. Maybe they would give you a different perspective. Yet I don t think any of my children would describe me as an abusing father. Irascible and impatient, yes. But not abusive.
So when did you stop beating your wife?
I never beat her, I m glad to say.
During our last interview you said that if society was divided into Christians and cannibals you d see yourself more as a cannibal in relation to your wife. Twelve years later, in the book, you acknowledge she has given a great deal of her life to becoming a fully committed mother but that you gave far less to becoming a part-time dad . So have you become even more of a cannibal in that sense?
Yes. And writing the book did make me think more and more about this. For example, one thing that Jane and I have been talking about recently is the fact that when a woman marries she loses her name. I ve never thought too much about that. But now I see it as symbolic of so many of the losses a woman suffers in society. And of the notion that even your name is something a woman must sacrifice. I didn t have to give up my name. So, yes, overall, Jane did sacrifice more than me. And was I as sensitive to that sacrifice as I should have been? No.
Looking back on her life, might Jane feel cannibalised in the name of Anthony Clare, in every sense?
She would. I can say that. And though an awful lot of this happens simply because we were so busy being parents, it often is only at this stage in life you can look back and realise how much you were cannibalised. She probably does feel that way.
One problem you have identified, is that you, as a young male psychiatrist like many didn t put the family first.
I m not sure it is just young male psychiatrists. One of the real problems of the male world of work is that for women to really penetrate it they have to, still, adapt to certain male values. And the women who succeed are women who have adapted. So the role models they have are masculinised. What happened in the feminist revolution, sadly, was that women s arrival in male places of power did not feminise those places of power. We won. Men won. And are winning. They are still dictating the terms under which women will succeed in public life. And those terms are male.
Take the area of medicine. Specifically, obstetrics. The most fundamental area of being a woman is dominated by male obstetricians. Because the way it is staffed and practised favours men. Women may be brilliant and bright but they cannot become obstetricians because they cannot work those kind of hours and be women. They can become men and do it. That is a travesty of the way things should be. And the same applies across the board of industry, business and politics. The same things are said. Of course women can be Prime Ministers. They can if they are prepared to be like Margaret Thatcher. She decided I m going to be as good as these buggers. And she was. But she didn t do anything good for being a woman. Or for being a man.
So the success of Margaret Thatcher and women like her you see as a travesty of the feminist revolution?
Yes. What one had hoped for as I understood the feminist revolution was the assertion that women had a dimension to them that was unfulfilled in the patriarchal division of public and private, men and women. I ve no problems with that. The really thoughtful women wanted that public dimension to be recognised but to retain a much more healthy view of the biological, psychological and social realities of life. What would be the comparable revolution for men? To realise that what got distorted in their structure was the private, the personal. Feeling. And I already notice how many men have responded to my saying that in the book, reading it as oh, he wants a world of wimpy men. I don t. I just want men to acknowledge the importance of the emotional and psychological in their lives.
But things haven t worked out that way. It has for some men and women. And there is a lot of debate and argument along these lines. But more amongst women than men.That s why I wrote this book. To push the argument in relation to men. And, to tell you the truth, I am delighted to be interviewed by a male because in most cases, the interviewers were female. Which totally missed the point about the book! If I was an editor I would have handed this book to a man. Every time. I ve no problem with being interviewed by Fay Weldon and Victoria Glendenning but it was revealing that mostly women were sent out to talk to a male about a book on masculinity in crisis!
It s as though this whole area of discussion has been colonised by women.
Exactly. And even though, of course, I want women to read this book even if they say I haven t gone far enough and that I m still an unreconstructed patriarch struggling away ! the people I really want to read this book are men. I want them to debate it, disagree, get involved
As a husband and father, in the early years at least, you let psychiatry come before the family. You recall coming home after a day s work dealing with severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, dementia, addictions feeling irritable and uncommunicative. Did you ever come home needing to drink heavily or do drugs to get away from it all?
The things I do, to discharge, are go to the cinema, where I can watch without having to do anything! As for alcohol? I was never a great drinker. My children rarely remember me drunk.
What about stoned on mind-altering drugs?
Jane and I were talking about that, too, the other day. She said I never smoked cannabis and I said you did! I did too! At a party. And in the late 60s there was the great R.D Laing debate. Indeed, one of the first texts I wrote was challenging his espousal of drugs such as LSD. Because at the time, you were beginning to see casualties. Of LSD. So I didn t espouse a pro-drugs position.
Are you opposed to cannabis?
I m less certain about cannabis. If they were to have a newspaper advertisement asking to de-criminalise cannabis as they did in the late sixties I think I d sign it now.
Would you legalise cannabis?
I d listen to the arguments. But there should be no debate about decriminalisation. It should just be decriminalised. And if you pushed me really hard said it s got to be legalised or not I d probably go for legalisation.
Have you ever recommended cannabis to patients, to calm them.
No. And I do have one major reservation about cannabis being used in this context. And alcohol. There are some people, prone to psychotic illness, who seem to be made worse by alcohol or cannabis. I m not saying cannabis causes psychosis. But there are patients I strongly advice not to smoke cannabis. It seems to trigger their psychosis. But I am also aware that we have legalised drugs that are quite complex. Aspirin, alcohol, nicotine. So, obvously, there are vestiges of liberalism about me. The public should be free to choose. And the public really are indicating that cannabis is a drug they regard as a drug of recreation, no worse than alcohol.
How did you advise your children in terms of drink and drugs?
In terms of drink, I advised them against intoxication. But I m not anti-drink. By and large, my kids drink sensibly. As for drugs, I would suspect that all of my children have smoked cannabis!
Did they ever come to you with drugs problems?
No. And we ve had considerable discussions along these lines. I remember my daughters, at school, being wary of headbangers who did ecstasy. Though, as I say, there is among the younger generation in particular, the idea that the establishment view on cannabis is untenable, it s use is so widespread that blind eyes must be turned all the time. And in the discussions, on drugs, I ve had with my children, I concede that the official position on cannabis is not logical. Hard drugs is a different issue. I would be very uneasy if it came to any weakening in terms of their position on hard drugs.
As a psychiatrist, you have dealt with suicide first-hand. Did you yourself ever contemplate
suicide?
No. But I remember thinking this is where people are, when they make that decision . I was under enormous pressure, as an intern, in the States, when I was in my early 20s. Deprived of sleep, emotionally depleted, thinking Christ, if anything more goes wrong, I don t know what I ll do . And most of us get close to moments where we understand why someone would commit suicide. And I ve been amazed at one or two psychiatrists saying to me that they don t believe suicide can ever be justified as a rational decision. I have no problems seeing it as a rational decision. And I can see how, in moments of great pain, I might consider suicide. If my wife died in certain circumstances. Or something happened to one of my children. To live with that kind of agony might be unbearable.
So can you give any hope of resolution to anyone reading this, whose son, daughter, mother or father recently committed suicide?
This is one of those life-altering changes. So people do not like to hear someone say time will heal it . They know this is nonsense. And I don t know why we say it. Other than to make ourselves feel better. But the people I m still in touch with, who have had to deal with suicide, it helps them to know they can get back to living their lives and put that suicide out of their minds. Though it will crop up again, at anniversaries, birthdays. And I think it is better to try and share with people the enormity of what happened rather than simply assure them they ll get through it. They will get through it but they won t ever get over it. I really wonder how I would cope if one of my children committed suicide. Because one thing, as a parent, you often mull over, is whether the decision to give them life was the right one. Suicide says perhaps it wasn t. That would be hard to live with.

Does anyone, in psychiatry, accuse you of having focused too much on being a media-shrink and not applying yourself to, say, making a breakthrough in the field of clinical psychiatry?
No. Yet if you were to ask me if I have a regret, it would be that I didn t stay on in research. I was a research worker in the Institute of Psychiatry for a number of years, before I took a Chair. But I didn t really think I was cut out for it. Besides, precious few make the kind of breakthroughs you re referring to.
Do you take any consolation from the fact that as a media-shrink you have at least communicated to society at large some of the more contemplative aspects of your profession. As in, reminding men in your new book that if we don t acknowledge the end of patriarchal power and participate in the discussion of how the post-patriarchal age is to be negotiated there is no hope ?
Definitely. And even if men read statements like that and say he s talking rubbish that s fine. Because I really don t think men have faced up to such issues. Particularly male violence against women. Or fatherhood. Or even the possibility that, at long last, partly as a result of the feminist revolution, the dominance of the capitalist notion of the importance of work is being challenged. But I must admit there is a part of me that thinks my book is spitting in the wind. Particularly in Ireland. And particularly in terms of, say, the generation that reads Hot Press. And it s not just the Celtic Tiger I m talking about. It is the triumph of capitalism. It s very hard to argue with a major corporation that says we want more from you, growth is the answer . There s nothing to even vaguely challenge all this in terms of the redistribution of wealth, a cap on growth. My kids think I m daft to talk this way.
So do you agree with those who say we, the Irish, may lose our soul in the mad rush towards materialism?
Yes. And become the very
people we always were most mocking of rightly automatons. Working and working and working. Acquiring and acquiring and acquiring. But not living. And not looking inwards.
There is another way. There is a better way of doing things. Men could, as I say in the book, join with women to reassert and revitalise a system of values in which the personal, the intimate and the social take precedence over the pursuit of power and the generation of wealth. On the other hand if men do not engage in serious re-evaluation and reconstruction they will become totally irrelevant as social beings.