Masculinity Reconstructed

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

While Harvard Medical School faculty member Levant (Between Father and Child) covers a lot of familiar territory in this examination of American manhood, which he considers to be in crisis, he adds significant new insights as well. The principal reason he cites for many men's failure to establish good relationships, especially with women, lies in their lack of emotional empathy: they tend to act rather than feel. And the socialization that has caused them to repress much emotion results in their expressing feelings in one of the few outlets available to them, anger. But ``traditional man'' has many valuable qualities that should not be disparaged, he notes in this study written with freelancer Kopecky. In his own clinical work, Levant has evolved a therapy for men who feel emotionally stunted and reports that he has had considerable success with those who wanted to effect a change. His clearheaded approach could prove helpful for men ready to reconstruct. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Like the spate of men's psychology books published last year, this book challenges emotionally disconnected male readers to get in touch with their feelings. Clinical psychologist Levant presents much paraphrased dialog with his clients-average guys who want to stop acting like jerks when they are with their wives or girlfriends. In hopes of reaching these people outside the masculinity cults, the author does not suggest running around in the woods and beating drums la Robert Bly. But his advice is simply not all that different from that found in Marvin Allen's In the Company of Men (LJ 5/1/93), William Betcher's In a Time of Fallen Heroes (Atheneum, 1993), or Kathleen Gerson's No Man's Land (Basic Bks, 1993). Only libraries where those books are circulating well need consider this addition to their collections.-A. Arro Smith, San Marcos P.L., Tex.

Mike Tribby

Levant doesn't much refute charges that the men's movement is just an overhyped, defensive mechanism, a cry for undeserved sympathy from a bunch of guys whining, "Don't blame "me"!" But at least, with Kopecky's help, he dresses the thing up in more scientific sounding language. Instead of celebrating drum beating, he vends plenty of men's introspection about their children; for example, he claims--it may surprise some men--that men are all very concerned with shepherding their sons' emotional development so that they'll resemble appropriately masculine models. His thesis seems to be that men need to understand what it means to them to be men and, once they understand this, come to terms with it and rework it into something that works in a contemporary world in which outmoded ideas of masculinity are often unwelcome. Agree with this, you'll be edified by the book; disagree, and you'll still almost certainly be entertained. Either way, this is an important addition to men's studies, provided, of course, that you believe "men's issues" are a legitimate concern for study.