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Sam Slipp is one of this country's most distinguished professional writers in the area of family and couples therapy. Slipp has been an outstanding author for many years, producing such well-known texts as Object Relations: A Dynamic Bridge Between Individual and Family Treatment, The Technique and Practice of Object Relations Family Therapy, and The Freudian Mystique. In his previous work, Slipp has done what relatively few other writers have done in terms of dealing cogently and wisely both with relevant sociocultural issues and our omnipresent clinical dilemmas. He follows this practice with a fine balance, one third of his book discusses relevant cultural and societal factors (particularly as regards male roles), and the remainder focuses, in his usual detailed and elegant fashion, on clinical case presentations.
Slipp, in 71 pages, does an excellent job in reviewing the changes in male gender role in this century, and the impact of these changes on contemporary Western (developed countries) male psychology. Dichotomies between conformity and nonconformity, expressions of tenderness versus withholding affection, control versus family egalitarianism, and many other issues are elucidated in the context of their impact on male identity. Dual-career families with men giving up their power position in the family, technological and vocational changes, unemployment, the lack of easily believable answers to life's questions, the pervasiveness of drugs and violence and many other factors contribute to contemporary males' personal insecurity and low self-esteem. With the powerful emergence of the contemporary women's movement and subsequent changes in female roles, many men feel less “privileged,” more powerless, and have a greater degree of gender-identity conflict — as Slipp notes, should men be sensitive or should they be detached Mr. Machos? Many men have not had the developmental experience of freely expressing their emotions or cherishing profound interpersonal intim