Debate over gender and especially the lives of men is currently at a fever pitch, particularly in the United States. New perspectives that capture the complexity of men and a rapidly changing gender landscape are therefore critical today. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary American Men challenges narrow stereotyped views of men by arguing that men are as complex and layered as women.
In the light of the recent #MeToo movement, stereotypes of men are being recycled. While aligned with the spirit of this movement, the authors worry that negative stereotypes of men are being perpetrated at the very time that men are renegotiating their gender experience. The authors present a critical non-heteronormative perspective addressing current gender transformations. Although the lives of men are changing, the stories that dominate the public sphere often represent them as narrowly phallic—controlling, detached, sexist, and homophobic. Seidman and Frank offer a counter point: men are also "guardians" driven to be useful and to do good, to live valued and purposeful lives. They argue that men are not only driven by a will to power but by an ethically-minded, relationally-oriented sense of responsibility to care for others, whether partners, children, or fellow citizens.
Drawing on historical, sociological, and psychoanalytic work, this book provides a nuanced, multidimensional construct of American men today. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary American Men will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists as well as scholars and students of gender and queer studies.
Table of Contents:
Preface Chapter 1: Gender Uncertainty in 21st Century America: Psychoanalysis Widens the Conversation Chapter 2: Straight Families Making Straight Boys: Phallic and Relational Threads in Boys’ Early Lives Chapter 3: Gay Boyhoods and Fathers: The Gay Oedipus & Beyond Chapter 4: Authenticity: Men’s Struggle to Live an Ethical Life Chapter 5: Between Abjection and the Ecstatic: The Erotic Lives of Men Chapter 6: Intimate Knots: The Unconscious Dynamics of Intimacies Afterword: A Transsituated Perspective on Bodies and Genders
About the Author :
Steven Seidman has written widely in the areas of gender, sexuality, queer studies, and American culture. His books include Romantic Longings: Love in America 1830–1980, Embattled Eros: Sexual politics and Ethics in Contemporary America, and Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life. He is currently a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City, USA.
Alan Frank co-edited Intimacies: A New World of Relational Life (Routledge, 2013). He is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City, USA.
Review :
"I admit I was skeptical that a traditional psychoanalytic framework could encompass the massive changes in gender and sexuality, but Seidman and Frank proved me wrong. Their explorations of masculinity widens the range of psychoanalysis and also deepens our understanding of different groups of men. A primer for our time."—Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, USA
"Doing for men what psychoanalytic feminists have done for women, Seidman and Frank offer compelling perspectives and fascinating clinical stories revealing the struggles men undergo as they wrestle with phallic and narcissistic masculine demands while creating their own ethically informed and individualized gendered subjectivities. This book makes it clear that psychoanalytic exploration is crucial for understanding the extraordinary range of how contemporary men ‘do’ gender."—Lynne Layton, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, USA; author of Who's That Girl? Who's That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory
