Masculine psychology

Masculine psychology may refer to the gender-related psychology of male human identity. One stream of thought emphasizes gender differences and has a scientific and empirical approach, while the other, more therapeutic in orientation, is more closely aligned to the psychoanalytic tradition. It also relates to concepts such as masculinity and machismo.

Jungian analysts Guy Corneau and Eugene Monick argue that the establishment and maintenance of the male identity is more delicate and fraught with complication than that of the establishment and maintenance of the female identity. Such psychologists suggest that this may be because men are born of the female body, and thus are born from a body that is a different gender from themselves. Women, on the other hand, are born from a body that is the same gender as their own. Camille Paglia declares: A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung argued that a father is very important to a boy's development of identity. In his book Absent Fathers, Lost Sons Canadian Jungian analyst Guy Corneau writes that the presence of the father's body during the son's developmental phases is integral in the son developing a positive sense of self as masculine. Corneau also argues that if the son does not develop positively towards the father's male body, then the son runs the risk of developing negatively towards all bodies. Jacques Lacan argued that in the son's mind, the father's body represents the law, and that the role of the father's body is to break the attachment the son feels to the mother and by extension his own.

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