The Male Ego Book

What'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.