The Male EgoWhat's the matter with men today? From homicidal macho posturing to weekend drumming marathons, American men are in crisis, and showing it. This landmark work by Willard Gaylin, the best-selling author of Rediscovering Love, traces the origins of that crisis to the fragile center of masculinity - the much-misunderstood male ego. Men's identities are dangerously bound by rules that they themselves have made, driving them toward goals that are almost unattainable. In The Male Ego, Gaylin examines the ways in which that contradiction erupts in men's everyday lives: in the pervasive fear of impotence and the paranoid terror of "being screwed"; in the irrational displays of phallic power that endanger our streets and vulgarize our work spaces; in the use and abuse of women as "male jewelry". Gaylin shows how an embattled sense of manhood infects our language and corrupts our political life; how it poisons relationships between the sexes and why it ultimately results in most men feeling a failure in their own eyes. At a time when so many men are struggling, not just with women but with their own deeper selves, The Male Ego presents a compelling case for redefining manhood and relocating traditional sources of male pride. |
Contents
The Task Ahead | 3 |
What Do We Mean by Ego? | 13 |
Real Men and Mamas Boys | 28 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
achieved activities adult aggressive animal assault become behavior BIG STICK biological CARRYING A BIG castration anxiety child COJONES competition COURAGE AND COJONES culture danger David Gilmore defined depression dream drive emerge essential exist experience failure fantasy father fear feel female feminine Freud gender genetic girls homosexual human sexuality humiliation hunt identification identity impotence inevitably kill less little boy live Mailer MALE EGO MALE SEXUALITY Mama's boy man's manhood masculine masturbation mating metaphor METHODS AND MADNESS modern mother nature nurture Oedipal complex one's orgasm pain parents patient penis penis envy person phallic phallus physical courage play pleasure potency premature ejaculation pride primary procreator psychoanalyst psychoanalytic rarely rites of passage ritual role Sambia seems sense sexual revolution simply social society specific status stoicism survival symbolic things traditional unconscious vagina vulnerable warrior woman women York young