Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man

Donald Moss is on the faculty of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education of NYU Medical Center. Moss focuses on the elemental problem sites of masculinity—mind/body, inside/outside, heterosexual/homosexual, love/hate, singular/plural—while arguing against any settled notion of what men—and women—want.

Donald Moss’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man is undoubtedly one of the most important books of the past decade on the complexities of the development of male gender identity. The book, as reflected in its title, offers no "solutions" to the questions it raises; rather, it examines the problem of gender identity from a number of vantage points, each of which complements, but also complicates, the others. What for me is a particular pleasure in reading this book is the writing itself—writing that is often used to describe some of the author’s own experiences as a boy faced with the daunting task faced by all boys in their efforts to grow up to be a man in one’s own terms. - Thomas Ogden, Personal and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California Donald Moss has written a brilliant, emotionally unsettling and brave book. The ostensive topic of Moss’ book is a close look at masculinity, but actually this book is an examination of "masculinities" that turn the standard normative forms of gender inside out. In Moss’ project, the canonical has become symptomatic. Through the psychoanalytic lens he deploys so deeply, Moss illuminates how much all our struggles with desire and loss inevitably overwhelm us in the project of forming and becoming selves, with dangerous and destructive consequences. We are all inevitably displacing and expelling those aspects of body and mind that frighten and shame us into the bodies and lives and minds of weaker and more vulnerable people. This is Moss’ original and potent way of thinking through misogyny, homophobia, and the often murderous attitudes toward difference and otherness, including "trans" experience. Moss asks us to see that these refusals and disavowals of our complex humanity have enormous and dangerous consequences individually, collectively, and politically - Adrienne Harris, PhD, New York UniversityFascinating, thought-provoking exploration of the notion of masculinity, written in an intelligent, accessible style - Michael Feldman, Supervising and Training Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society"The title of this important book echoes both Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird and Henry Louis Gates Jr's Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man. Like Stevens and Gates, Donald Moss offers multiple perspectives: being a man is not simply a choice to be more or less like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Liberace. Each man has internalised an ideal based on disavowals and refusals of other male bodies and behaviours. The author combines his childhood reminiscences of illness and classroom embarrassment, deep personal reflection, his father's war stories, theoretical overviews and case studies from his psychoanalytic practice. This way of writing is common to a range of books on masculinity, but the stylistic mix reflects the volatility he seeks to address." – David Kennedy, Times Higher Education"This scholarly yet incisive and accessible book addresses the unstable notion of masculinity and the ways in which both hetero- and homosexual man seek to shape themselves in relation to the precarious nature of being a man. ... The writing is enriched by the author's willingness to share several of his own formative experiences in facing the daunting task of searching for the ways to grow up as a man with a mind of his own." - Michael J. Diamond, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies

• Bass, Foreword. Prologue. Masculinity as Masquerade. Immaculate Attachment vs. Passive Yearning: On Being and Becoming a Man. First Aside: Ted. On Neither Being Nor Becoming a Man. Two Ways of Looking Back. Psychoanalysis and Male Homosexuality/ The Ideal of Neutrality. Internalized Homophobia: Wanting in the First-Person Singular, Hating in the First-Person Plural. On Situating Homophobia. Freud’s "Female Homosexual": One Way of Looking at a Woman. Second Aside: Little Richard. Looking at a Transsexual. War Stories. Epilogue.