The Completed Man: Counseling, Violence, and Peace

Introduction

There is a concern among many men, and more conservative-leaning women, about the practices of clinical counseling and therapy. This concern is that the effect of that process will be to soften the sharp corners, dull the edges and ultimately pare the claws of the lion to make him more fitting for a zoo enclosure. The view is that modern counseling often aims at pacification rather than transformation. Too many therapeutic models, it is asserted, subtly work toward producing a man who is “safe” at all costs. He is sanitized of aggression, stripped of potency, and has coarseness sanded to neutrality for acceptability in a polite society.

It is my unhappy duty to confirm that this can, more often than not, be the case. What’s more, it does not always guarantee that such a harrowing outcome will be any different if “Christian Counseling” is what is sought rather than secular humanist counseling. The horrors which undergirded the search for why mankind is capable of the monstrous vis-à-vis his fellow man had a good deal of input into the framing of counseling psychology, and ultimately most talk-therapy modalities. All this to say, the profession of which I am a part has a great mea culpa to issue writ large to most men who find themselves on a couch. I would say that it is different for women, but that would likewise be a lie, and one to be expounded on perhaps at another time.

For most chair-jockeys that are turned out by most programs around the world, the approach is the same; create less of the past in people of the present which (might, perhaps, we hope) mean a “better” future (subjective qualifications of “better” be damned). If the central flaw of this situation isn’t plain, let me state it from the outset: a man without the capacity for terrible violence when absolutely necessary is not peaceful—he is merely harmless. As C.S. Lewis warned in The Abolition of Man, such an education (or therapy) produces “men without chests”—individuals lacking both courage and moral backbone.

The best counseling does not create harmless men; it creates complete men. A complete man is one who possesses the ability for ferocious, monstrous violence when required (and equally so to slay those monsters that go bump in the night), yet governs that capacity with virtue, discipline, and peace. This paradoxical coexistence of dangerous strength and inner tranquility has been embodied in warrior archetypes across cultures. The European knight, bound by the codes of chivalry, and the Japanese samurai, bound by bushidō, illustrate that true virtue emerges not from the absence of capacity, but from restraint in the presence of it.

It is my argument that counseling, at its best, forms men in this mold. By developing strength, encouraging prowess, and then channeling them through virtue, counseling produces men capable of defending the good, the true, and the beautiful, while also living at peace with themselves and their communities.

Violence/Peace

From a psychological standpoint, aggression is not a pathology; it is a basic human capacity. Social psychologist Albert Bandura noted in his work on aggression that humans are born with the potential for violence, but societies (small and large) attempt to regulate and channel it. Suppressing aggression entirely, however, does not extinguish it; instead, it festers into passive aggression, neurosis, or uncontrolled eruptions.

A man must integrate this shadow side of himself (to borrow from Jung, in part), lest he become a slave to the unconscious. Counseling that pathologizes all anger or aggression inadvertently produces fragile men who cannot withstand crisis or confront monsters. By contrast, counseling that helps men acknowledge, train, and properly govern their aggression fosters resilience, confidence, and responsibility.

This integration mirrors what modern trauma therapy calls “dual awareness.” The individual learns to hold both strength and restraint simultaneously. He knows he could act destructively, but he chooses not to. This inner command is the foundation of true peace.

Bushidō

The samurai warrior provides a clear image of this integration. Living under bushidō, the “way of the warrior,” the samurai cultivated martial skill to the highest degree, yet was also expected to embody courtesy, loyalty, and self-discipline. He carried swords, long and short, not merely as weapons but as symbols of a moral burden: the power of life and death held in trust.

Edo-period texts such as Hagakure (Yamamoto Tsunetomo) emphasized that the samurai should meditate daily on his own death. By accepting mortality, he became free to act decisively in crisis, but also more patient and calm in daily affairs. His capacity for violence did not make him a tyrant; it made him a guardian.

For the samurai, peace was not the absence of the sword, but the mastery of it. A man without a sword could not be peaceful; he could only be impotent. A man with a sword, trained and disciplined, who refrains from drawing it; that is a man at peace.

The Chivalric Knight

In medieval Europe, the knight was bound by a similar paradox. The knight was a mounted warrior, skilled in brutal combat, whose firsthand knowledge and techniques have been handed down for centuries through illustrated manuscripts. Yet through the development of chivalry, he was also bound by vows: to protect the weak, to honor women, to serve God and king. Common among ideals we timeless concepts and virtues: courage, prowess, honor, courtesy, franchise, loyalty, generosity, and faith.

This keen sense of knightly virtue serves as an archetype that captures the integration of violence and virtue. The knight must be capable of dreadful deeds on the battlefield; otherwise, he cannot fulfill his duty. Yet those deeds are constrained by vows of honor.

The knight who could not fight was not virtuous. He was useless. The knight who fought without restraint was not virtuous. He was a brigand. Virtue arises in the tension between capacity and restraint.

Men Without Chests

C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man warned that modern education was producing men stripped of the “chest”. That is to say, it robs him of the seat of magnanimity, courage, and honor. Lewis argued that reason without virtue produces clever devils, and appetite without discipline produces brutes. Only men with “chests”… moral strength fused with reason and appetite… could act as complete human beings.

Apply this to counseling: therapy that aims only at pacification strips the man of his chest. He may learn to suppress his anger, to comply, and to avoid conflict but he has not been made whole. He has been emasculated; he has been “gelded and bidden to be fruitful”.

True counseling restores the chest. It develops both the strength to fight and the wisdom to know when not to. Without this integration, the client remains incomplete.

“Blessed Are The Meek”

Jordan Peterson has repeatedly emphasized that the biblical phrase “Blessed are the meek” (Matthew 5:5) is often misunderstood. Modernity has unashamedly rebranded “meek” as “weak” or “harmless.” But in the original Greek, the term praus refers to strength under control; the trained warhorse that does not bolt, but moves at the master’s command.

Thus, “the meek shall inherit the earth” does not, and cannot ever mean the cowardly or powerless. It means those who have power, but restrain it in obedience to higher principle. Peterson concludes his thought by summarizing it this way: “If you’re harmless, you’re not virtuous. You’re just harmless. If you’re dangerous but you keep it under control, then you’re virtuous.”

This reframing aligns perfectly with the samurai and knightly archetypes. True peace is not passive; it is the active governance of strength.

Counseling Toward Integration

What, then, should counseling aim for?

1. Acknowledgment of Aggression

   Men must be guided to acknowledge their innate capacity for violence. To deny it is to live in illusion.

   
   

2. Training and Discipline

   Just as the knight trained with sword and the samurai his katana, modern men must train their bodies, minds, and emotions. Physical training and martial training should be held to the same necessary standard as boundary setting and controlled exposure to conflict. Both defense and de-escalation should have a place at the table in an effort to foster mastery.

   
   

3. Moral Formation

   Without moral grounding, power corrupts. Counseling must connect strength to responsibility, embedding aggression within a framework of service to family, community, and God. Christians who seek counseling from other Christians (and specifically Christian men who seek counseling from other Christian men) are more firmly able to find the bedrock of moral foundations through Scripture and are, as such, less prone to the whims of culture, fancy, and momentary convenience.

   
   

4. Inner Peace

   The goal is not constant readiness to fight, but a deep rest in knowing that one could fight if needed. This produces serenity in daily life and decisive clarity in crisis.

   
   

The Consequences of Failing to Integrate

What happens if counseling neglects this integration?

• Harmless Men: Men trained only to suppress anger become compliant but weak. They cannot protect, they cannot lead, and they often collapse under pressure.

• Unrestrained Men: Men who embrace aggression without moral guidance become tyrants or abusers. Their communities suffer under their violence.

• Fragmented Men: Men caught between suppression and eruption live in anxiety, depression, and relational turmoil. In fragmentation, chaos is the natural byproduct, and out of chaos comes a greater propensity for continued imbalance.

Only integration, that is… capacity yoked to virtue, produces wholeness.

The Completed Man

The completed man is dangerous but at peace. He is like the knight in shining armor who spends his days in courtesy but can ride to battle when evil arises. He is like the samurai who cultivates art and poetry yet can unsheathe the katana when his lord is threatened.

In psychological terms, he has integrated shadow and persona. In Christian terms, he has crucified sinful passions but stands ready as a protector. In social terms, he is trustworthy because his community knows he restrains his power for their good.

A parting Warning

If your counselor does not understand this paradox, you should reconsider what you are being directed toward because, as a consequence, you are being routed to whatever your therapist believes is at the core of what makes someone whole and ready to face the world. Counseling that only soothes, only pacifies, or only manages symptoms is not enough. worse yet, fragmentation in a true IFS sense of the word can become a reality from guiding men toward the harbors of pacivity and gelding... no matter how good your intentions might be. Such counseling produces men without chests; clipped and broken men stripped of both danger and virtue.

The true aim of counseling must be wholeness. Wholeness is not the absence of violence, but its integration under the rule of virtue. Wholeness is the knight’s sword kept sheathed in peace, yet sharp and ready in war. Wholeness is the samurai’s calm tea ceremony, performed with the same hands that could wield a blade. To be a counselor worth the title (and the session fees) you must believe in the capacity of your male clients to be integrated, to be whole, and to reflect the Petersonian definition of those blessed “meek”.

A man made whole by counseling is not harmless. He is dangerous, but disciplined. He is at peace with himself, with his community, and with his God. That is the man worth becoming. That is the man counseling should produce.