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This is an important book for understanding the evolution and complexity of masculinity in psychoanalysis. Karl Figlio, Professor Emeritus of the University of Essex, and a clinical associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, manages to go far beyond the phallic-narcissistic aspects masculinity usually described in psychoanalytic theory. He frames them historically and clinically, integrating them into a broader, deeper, and more far-reaching vision.
Pertinent and up-to-date, this extensive work is well researched and provides a vast review of the subject; it helps us to rethink the psychoanalysis of masculinity. It is an invitation to reflection, challenging assumptions in a well-documented way, with links to culture and other social phenomena. The author takes a Kleinian perspective, defining phallic masculinity as a schizo-paranoid defense, relating it to what he classifies as toxic masculinity and its different expressions. He contrasts this concept with seminal masculinity, which he associates with the depressive position, capable of bringing life and concern to its subjects.
This book allows us to understand how psychoanalysis has viewed male sexuality around the penis and its phallic expression. As David Bell, a former president of the British Psychoanalytic Society, says in a brief endorsement of the book, psychoanalysts have been “scotomotising the testicles,” and this book explores that theme. In other words, Karl Figlio points out how the dominant discourse has exploited phallic and quantitative aspects, and with a few exceptions, has minimized qualitative (seminal) aspects.
Reading it gives us a deeper insight into male anxieties, emphasizing creative power and the fear of failure and/or blockage. The starting point for this reflection is indicated by the title of Part I “Becoming Masculine.” It points out how the phallic vision seems to lack an internal procreative space and the anxieties associated with them have remained marginalized or unrecogniz