Masculinity in Crisis: Myths, Fantasies and Realities by Roger Horrocks New York:  St. Martin's Press, 1994,  viii + 210 pp., $45.00.

In this study, the manifest reality of psychological dislocation in men's lives is attributed to the latent, and hence often unrecognized, reality of both oppressive patriarchal social structures and the unique “inner space” of psychological life. Roger Horrocks's contribution to the currently popular study of masculinity as a decidedly psychological experience (Kupers, 1993; Samuels, 1993) rests on a dialectical conception of gender identity as both cultural construction and reflexive self-creation.

Many of the observations that the author makes on gender development and identity will not be new to either psychoanalytically oriented clinicians or feminist sociologists. This book, however, offers something unique to both professional groups. First, for mental health professionals it distills and represents the important findings on gender construction in pre- and postindustrial societies made by anthropologists, sociologists, and historians, most of whom work within a broad feminist and Marxist framework. Presentation of this data allows the author to remind psychoanalytic clinicians that patriarchy is no mere “‘autonomous mental projection’” (p. 57). Rather, it is the expression of particular social organizations of production, family structures, and heterosexual practices that shape the masculinity invariably presented by a patient. Horrocks further substantiates the claims of social constructionists with reference to anthropological data from field work conducted in southern Europe and the Pacific. These findings suggest that men do not easily embrace aggressive masculinity, but are “conditioned by means of all kinds of rituals and social expectations to show valor. In this sense male aggression and courage is “unnatural” and highly culturized” (p. 56).

The book's second contribution is to make available to the nonanalytic community a way of theorizing about gender construction