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THE MALE EGO

Name: THE MALE EGO
Author: Willard Gaylin
ISBN: 0-670-83588-9

by Willard Gaylin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1992

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Like Sam Keen and Robert Bly, Gaylin (Adam and Eve and Pinocchio, 1990, etc.) recognizes a crisis for men, suggesting that ``two hundred years of modern civilization is undoing our evolution.'' Unlike those champions of revised masculinity, however, he rejects the quest for primitive man (``he is only too evident in our behavior''), as well as traditional measures of male success (trophy wives, the corner office), and argues instead for: more meaningful markers and rites of passage; rechanneling aggression into more adaptive patterns; and restoring feelings of pride by acknowledging the historical forces that have undermined them. Gaylin asserts that traditional images of manhood are no longer desirable, that the hunter/warrior mentality once needed for survival has lost its cultural usefulness. As a psychoanalyst committed to a belief in the modifiability of human behavior, he maintains that cooperative models of behavior make more sense in modern society and that we can use play to redirect boys' aggressive impulses along more productive paths. He also looks at attitudes toward work, sex, and manliness in attempting to understand the sources of injured egos and lost pride. Much of what he says has resonance: the symbolic value of guns and cars; the universality of courage as a male ideal; the causes of depression in men; the relationship of scientific triumphs to levels of anxiety. Other ideas—the meaning of sports to men—will be far more controversial. Unlike John Munder Ross (reviewed below), a similarly oriented psychoanalyst with similar concerns, Gaylin rarely refers to specific case histories, preferring literary characters for support—heroes from Stephen Crane, Norman Mailer, and James Dickey most prominently. His tempered commentary here has much of the same positive force as in his Rediscovering Love (1986).

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-670-83588-9

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PERVERSION OF AUTONOMY
by Willard Gaylin & Bruce Jennings

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SUICIDE AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE

METHODS AND CONSEQUENCES

by Geo Stone ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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This is essentially a guide on how to commit suicide, or alternatively, stage a “safe” suicidal gesture. Stone (who has studied pharmacology at George Washington University Medical School and the National Institutes of Health) offers little background—personal, occupational, educational, familial, religious, or otherwise—which might help readers absorb this work into some kind of useful discussion. Stone does set out his basic premises: first, that it is each person’s right to make decisions concerning his own death, and second, that most decisions to commit suicide “are due to temporary problems and are therefore tragic mistakes.” Stone goes on, in a pragmatic, almost cold-blooded, tone to set out an immense amount of information on suicide and attempted suicide. He delineates four groups of people who attempt to kill themselves: rational people facing an insoluble problem, usually fatal illness; those acting on impulse, temporarily miserable—and often drunk; those who are irrational due to depression, schizophrenia, or alcoholism; and those who are making a desperate bid for attention or help. Stone also looks at issues around terminal illness and euthanasia. In Part II, he explains the following methods of killing oneself: asphyxia, cutting and stabbing, drowning, drugs, chemicals, poisons, electrocution, gunshot, strangulation, hypothermia, and jumping. He includes explicit instructions on how to go about each method, and what the likely physiological damage will be if the attempt fails. Difficult as all this is to take in, there is more—information on how to make a relatively safe suicidal gesture will certainly confound readers, as will descriptions of autopsy results and asides on the strange and various ways people hurt themselves. The technical information here is accurate. But to approach such a stunningly painful, morally loaded, politically hot subject constructively, we need more than information. We need to know who our guide is, how he has come to this place, how and why his view was formed.

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-7867-0492-6

Page Count: 416

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

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RESPECT

AN EXPLORATION

by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

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A simple, stunning study of the power of respect to forge salutary bonds between unlikely partners. Lawrence-Lightfoot, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (I—ve Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation,1994), offers penetrating portraits of six individuals in sundry professions who share the ability to traverse social and economic barriers in reaching others. Lawrence-Lightfoot focuses not only on the extraordinary work that these people do, but on their personal backgrounds and possible motivating factors, as well. Jennifer Dohrn, a nurse-midwife, directs a Childbearing Center that she founded in New York City’s South Bronx. Determined to empower poor women who have been neglected by traditional medicine, Dohrn oversees a staff of seven midwives, along with staffers who serve as liaisons to the community. The key to Dohrn’s success is her admiration and respect for the struggling families she meets daily. And the support that she offers others helps restore her after the painful death of her activist husband, who was killed in Cape Town, South Africa. Just as Dohrn encourages the women with whom she interacts to question authority, Kay Cottle similarly challenges her middle and high school students. Willing to take risks and share personal stories with young people, Cottle successfully forges a bond with them that allows them to share their experiences and insights in return. In her respect for her students, Cottle constantly tries new approaches that “urge students to confront ideas from a variety of perspectives and appeal to a number of senses.” While most of the professionals portrayed came from educated, nurturing backgrounds, there are exceptions. Bill Wallace, an Episcopal priest, pastoral psychotherapist, and AIDS activist, attributes his caring for the disenfranchised to his having grown up in chaos within a distressed family. Replete with a bibliography entitled “Some Roots of Respect” (with source materials as diverse as Shakespeare, Buber, Kant and contemporary therapists on self-esteem), Lawrence-Lightfoot’s elegantly written study enlightens and invigorates. (Author tour)