The Man in Black famously performed his song ‘A Boy Named Sue’ in front of prisoners at San Quentin Prison, and in the clip below you can hear the inmates sharing his delight as he sings of the confrontation between a man and his father.



I don’t know if it was intended, but Cash has elegantly captured the oedipal tensions that exist between a young man and his father, in a song that becomes a roller-coaster of emotions from sadness, to anger, to hatred, to love, and even redemption.

Cash sings:
“My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me ‘Sue.’”

‘Sue’ receives four legacies from his father: a relationship with his mother, the guitar, a drinking habit, and a girl’s name. Note that Sue uses the same guitar to tell his story. The boy idolizes his father: “I don’t blame him ‘cause he run and hid”, but struggles with the legacy his father has left him.

Cash continues:
“Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke
And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk,
It seems I had to fight my whole life through...”

Perhaps if Sue’s father had stuck around he mightn’t have had to keep fighting quite as long. The fight Sue is waiting for is the only one that matters: the one with his father...

“Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars
That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars
And kill that man who gave me that awful name. “

Finally, the boy named Sue confronts his nemesis, in a father-son scenario that is played out in songs (such as Cat’s in the Cradle), books, movies (such as Star Wars), plays (such as Hamlet) and popular culture (such as media coverage of the Packer family) across the ages:

“Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
And I just hit town and my throat was dry,
I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon on a street of mud (Oedipal issues are a dirty business!),
There at a table, dealing stud (Stud, huh?),
Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue."

Sue only has a simple memory of his father, cobbled together from stories, the memories of a toddler, and most of all from the mixed emotions of rage and longing he’s carried through his life until this moment, when reality is finally confronted:

“Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old (Not the man of Sue’s memories!),
And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do!
Now you’re gonna die!!"

A moment of pure oedipal fantasy. The young man feels he can resolve his oedipal tensions of love, rage and longing about his father by killing the object of these tensions.

“Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And he went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer (was it good for you, Sue?).

“I tell ya, I've fought tougher men
But I really can't remember when,
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,
He stood there lookin' at me and I saw him smile.”

Sue sees his father looking at him with love for the first time. It is, in my opinion, part of a father’s job to show his son the respect of engaging him in battle. It’s not about who wins the fight, it’s about the fact that the fight can even occur in the first place. If the father and son can work through the battle in this way, then the son is ultimately the winner, as Sue’s father explains:

“And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

(Listen to the roar of emotion from the prison inmates in the room.)

“He said: "Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you “Sue.”

The conflict between father and son has enabled them both to reconcile the feelings of love (‘you just fought one hell of a fight’) and hate (‘kill me now, I wouldn’t blame you if you do’) for each other and in themselves. By finally allowing the conflict to occur together between them, rather than separately inside each of them (for example by Sue killing his father, or his father running away again), then the emotional tensions in each man can at last begin to be resolved jointly. The impact on Sue is palpable, and ultimately transformative:

“I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,
And I came away with a different point of view.
And I think about him, now and then,
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him...
Bill, or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!”

Sue still hates his name, but he no longer hates himself, or his own father. This is the gift any father can give his son (or any parent their child): by engaging with his son in conflict, the father allows the son to channel his hate somewhere other than back into himself. Liberated from his father’s legacy, Sue is now free to pass on a different, healthier legacy to his own son - ‘anything but Sue!’ Who won the battle? It doesn’t matter any more. What matters is that the battle could be fought together.

Tags: Johnny Cash, Freud, Boy Named Sue, oedipal, father, son

This week, former Federal Court Judge Marcus Einfeld was sentenced to a minimum of two years’ gaol for perjury. For a reasonable background to this story, checkout the wikipedia entry via this link. Suffice it to say here that Einfeld was convicted for lying under oath about a speeding fine, saying that a person who was later revealed to be dead at the time was driving his car when it was photographed travelling up to 10 km/h over the speed limit.

You may have read my earlier post about naked narcissism; about the legend of Narcissus, who fell in love with a reflection of himself. While the obvious frustration of trying to interact with a naked narcissist is their persistent self-absorption, in my view there is a form of madness at the heart of the narcissism, and it is this: If real-life events contradict a narcissist’s view of himself, he will ignore, deny or otherwise eliminate the inconsitency by favouring his own view. When pushed, a naked narcissist will simply refute reality itself if it contradicts part of her own perfect self-image. This wilful blindness is exemplified by comments Mr. Einfeld makes in a pre-sentencing interview conducted on ABC’s Four Corners Program.

For example, when asked by journalist Sarah Ferguson “Do you have a habit of dishonesty?”, he replies firmly: “No I'm not dishonest, no, no. I mean, I don't want to be offensive but that's a bit offensive and I don't think I'm in the slightest bit dishonest. I just made a mistake.” The point here is that, honestly, all of us can be dishonest at times. To say otherwise is itself dishonest. It is discussed in the program that Einfeld had received infringements notices in the past and “On each occasion in sworn statements he named friends of his from the US and the UK as the drivers, when records showed that none of them were in Australia at the time.” When asked if this shows a “pattern of dishonesty”, Einfeld states that these were not deliberate lies, they were “mistakes”. When Sarah Ferguson says there are “it looks like a lot of mistakes”, Einfeld initially agrees, then says “No it's not a lot of mistakes, I'm sorry. There were three events plus this one. I've admitted to this one. If I'd been called upon to meet the others I might have admitted to one of those when I'd got the facts and I'd checked up on them. It might have been, it might have been possible. But so ah, and I might have not, I might have not admitted to two or one or something of the kind. So maybe there were two occasions let's say at the majority, at the maximum in the past which I might have admitted to if I'd been called upon to do so.”

That’s the thing about narcissism: it’s all about being married to a rigid, ultimately unrealistically idealized view of one’s self, and sticking to that view, even if reality (in the form of a TV journalist asking the question outright on the eve of your sentencing for dishonest behaviour) shows otherwise. So here’s some more honesty: you are narcissistic too. We are all narcissistic, to some degree. Without at least a bit of it, you’d be a complete doormat, easily led in whatever direction someone else with a bit of narcissism wanted to lead you. Narcissism is only a problem if you deny your faults, try to pretend you don’t have them, or otherwise get caught up in a naiive fantasy about your own flawlessness. To do so is itself naked narcissism, and may result in you eventually getting a rude shock, like Marcus Einfeld did. To quote him: “obviously [with hindsight]I would have not done what I did, and it was an aberration, completely mad.” The self-delusion that is required in order to sustain that narcissistic view of self is the madness at the heart of naked narcissism. “I don't have any idea how and why I did it now. I just lost my senses at the wrong moment. I'm certainly sorry to the public at large because they have been in effect my audience over the years, audiences over the years.” A naked narcissist is a performer who never admits lying to his audience.