CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Forget the 3 degree ice baths and 20 minute saunas. There’s a new type of pseudoscientific men’s therapy that high-paying ‘alpha males’ are flocking to in their desperate efforts to avoid sitting on a leather couch with a qualified professional.
In recent years, men-only “scream groups” have emerged on social media, where groups of up to people gather in a safe space to ‘unleash their anger without inhibition’.
The videos show hysterical men being restrained by other heavily tattooed ‘brothers’ – as they scream and hyperventilate in raw agony like Leonardo Dicaprio in The Revenant.
These images are presented as positive developments in the self-betterment of ‘damaged and broken men’.
The retreats often take place in natural settings, waist deep in a river, or on a mountaintop – as participants pay thousands of dollars for untrained leaders to guide them through ‘healing their repressed ancestral traumas’.
On top of these subconscious ‘spiritual injuries’ – PST (Primal Scream Therapy) also helps men deal with the unique pressures faced by suburban tradies who make $240k a year in peacetime Australia.
While there are no experts in this very new field of ‘therapy’ – the movement has been legitimised by the Alpha/Beta/Sigma framework – as it aims to tackle to oppression faced by ‘real men’ who are victims of what they believe to be unfair custody battles simply because they do too much cocaine and blow 90k a year on online gambling apps.
PST also provides a sense of community for men who no longer join their local sporting clubs because they prefer to stay at home watching videos of American men talking into microphones about what is wrong with the world.
In short, these retreats help participants experience the highly emotive and exciting atmosphere of a metal concert, without needing to dress like ‘gay emos’ or anything like that.
Because, without getting too political, PST provides a rare freedom that participants say is hard to find in a world that can be uncomfortable with ‘raw masculinity’ – and a society that is all too quick to judge a bloke for turning his screen brightness down to zero and betting his mortgage on Dubai harness-racing at 3am while his pregnant missus sleeps next to him
