Unlawful Entry: Male Fears of Psychic Penetration

Private Terrors Sexualized Aggression and a Psychoanalyst's Fear of Her Patient

“…The theme of being "closed out" might even have evoked unconscious reactions of his feeling "closed out" by the important women in his life-being unable to possess one or to be one himself. My request to enter his interiority might also have stimulated deep-rooted unconscious fears of being penetrated, which could represent the ultimate surrender of his masculinity (Elise, 2001). Subsequent to these sessions the "block" no longer stood between us, and, although still guarded for some time about his fears of being gay, Richard began to engage in a less dissociated dialogue about vulnerability and victimization.…”

Masculinity Unraveled: The Roots of Male Gender Identity and the Shifting of Male Ego Ideals Throughout Life

“…Such arrested phallicism, marked by a partition in the bodily experience of the sensual from the sexual, operates to stave off intimacy (Bollas 2000;Elise 2001). One such patient of mine, a thirty-something man whose father abandoned the family and whose mother was "burdened" by her son's maleness, spent month after month in therapy recounting his daily sexual conquests while attributing his "successes" to the enormous size of his penis and his gigantic, Mensa-worthy mind.…”

Gender Differences in the Representation of Congenital Physical Disability. How Disability Intervenes In the Formation of Gender

“…As it has been noted by Diamond [9], the fact that seems to socialize males in a regulatory way, compiling them with the social standards of masculinity is the feeling of "shame" that drives them to renounce any sign of need in case they are characterized by others as "sissy boys" [9,10]. Therefore, the requirement that seems to determine masculine identity refers to the capacity to disclaim any characteristic, attitude or desire that refers to this "passive" period in the life cycle of the individual, identified with femininity.…”

“…Therefore, the requirement that seems to determine masculine identity refers to the capacity to disclaim any characteristic, attitude or desire that refers to this "passive" period in the life cycle of the individual, identified with femininity. In that sense, the formation of masculine identity doesn't necessarily refer to all these things that a man has achieved or has gained, but to those that he has renounced in order not to reveal an earlier "passive" past, giving a lifelong fight to try and to prove "what he is not" (Real 1997, as it is sited in Elise, [10]). In order for men to avoid their possible "feminization", resulting from taking a passive role, they tend to adopt a "reactive type restless behaviour" as it has been clearly described in the narratives of the majority of male participants, by expressing a need for a constant search of action.…”