Heterosexual Masculinities : Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory

by Reis, Bruce; Grossmark, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780881635027
• ISBN10: 0881635022
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-12
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In recent years there have been substantial changes in approaches to how genders are made and what functions genders fulfill. Most of the scholarly focus in this area has been in the areas of feminist, gay, and lesbian studies, and heterosexual masculinity - which tended to be defined by lack and absence - has not received the critical and scholarly attention these other areas have received. Heterosexual Masculinities rethinks a psychoanalytic tradition that has long thought of masculinity as a sort of brittle defense against femininity, softness, and emotionality. Reflecting current trends in psychoanalytic thinking, this book seeks to understand heterosexual masculinity as fluid, multiple, and emergent. The contributors to this insightful volume take new perspectives on relations between men, men "s positions as fathers in relation to their sons and daughters, the clinical encounter with heterosexual men, the social contexts of masculinity, and the multiplicity of heterosexual masculine subjectivities. What to a previous generation would have appeared as pathological or defensive, we now encounter as forms of masculine subjectivity that include wishes for intimacy, receptivity, and surrender, alongside ambition and the pleasures of "phallic narcissism."

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. xi
Introduction	p. xv
Masculinities, Plural	p. 1
Masculinity and Its Discontents: Making Room for the "Mother" Inside the Male-An Essential Achievement for Healthy Male Gender Identity	p. 23
Names of the Father	p. 55
Two Men Talking: The Emergence of Multiple Masculinities in Psychoanalytic Treatment	p. 73
Imperfect Love, Imperfect Lives: Making Love, Making Sex, Making Moral Judgments	p. 89
On Intimacy Between Men	p. 105
An Eruption of Erotic Vitality Between a Male Analyst and a Male Patient	p. 127
David and Jonathan	p. 151
Psychotherapy with Poor African American Men: Challenges Around The Construction of Masculinities	p. 163
"Fathers" and "Daughters"	p. 189
Finding a Father: Repetition, Difference, and Fantasy in Finding Nemo	p. 217
Interiority and Inner Gential Space in Men: What Else Can Be Lost in Castration?	p. 231
Index	p. 261
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