Masculinity and its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood. By Michael J. Diamond. London/New York: Routledge, 2021. 152 pp.

Abstract

Michael J. Diamond, a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, has successfully integrated a wealth of theory and clinical evidence about the gender development of boys as they become men. He identifies with the West Coast version of the American independent tradition. He is quite grounded in modern Freudian theory and has added to and embellished Freud’s legacy with today’s pluralistic ideas and concepts. Bion, Lacan, British object relations, relational theorists, and others are frequently invoked. Diamond has authored more than ninety articles and three books, and his work is widely cited when the subject of male gender comes up. The reader encounters, on the very first pages, a wealth of accolades and praise by eight prominent psychoanalysts who took on the considerable task of reading this book. This book is dense and encyclopedic. Practically every sentence is loaded with concepts, old and new, that pertain to how male gender identity develops over time. Diamond delineates the path by which a boy becomes a man (mensch). Freud described his understanding of female development as the dark continent. With the advent of feminism in the late 20th Century, many psychoanalysts put light on female development. Diamond and others have explored the other dark continent, that of male development.