Masculinity as a Project: Some Psychoanalytic Reflections Cover Image
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Męskość jako projekt: kilka uwag psychoanalitycznych
Masculinity as a Project: Some Psychoanalytic Reflections

Author(s): Gunnar Karlsson
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: phallic masculinity; masculinity; gender; psychoanalysis; phenomenology; transcendence; immanence; phallocentrism

Summary/Abstract: In this article Karlsson discusses the question of phallic masculinity from a subjective perspective, more specifically from a psychoanalytic perspective supplemented with phenomenological reflections. A vantage point for this discussion is the distinction between sex/being a male and gender/masculinity. The focus is on the boy’s/ man’s striving for a phallic masculine identity – a striving that can be described in terms of a ‘project’. The term ‘project’ indicates that phallic masculinity is a striving for a possibility that is not yet realized and will never be realized, since it essentially entails a denial of our existential conditions such as our vulnerability, transience and dependence. The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion conceives of phallic masculinity as a repudiation of the feminine/motherly containment. The phallic masculine project has alienating consequences, but an escape form this trap is possible only through a phenomenological revision of masculinity – a revision that leads from transcendence to immanence.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 381-407
  • Page Count: 27
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