Masculinity is about organizing identifications, not about disidentifying

There has been an important revision to the traditional idea that the development of masculinity requires a little boy to disidentify (Greenson, Stoller) with his preoedipal mother. This revision is a relational and intersubjective one. Diamond brings to the discussion of the development of the boy’s masculinity the emphasis on the importance of the quality of attachment relationships and the capacity of the mother “to recognize and support both her son’s maleness and his father’s presence” and the capacity of the father to allow “a reciprocal identification” with his son. 

The confrontation of the mother’s subjectivity in the separation-individuation phase is a narcissistic blow to a child who now realizes s/he does not possess omnipotent control over mother. If we recall that identifications come about to preserve what has been lost, then the loss of omnipotence vis a vis the mother is for the little boy more traumatic than for the little girl because he has been pressured by the culture since birth to give up his feminine identifications; as Diamond writes, “the pressure to renounce gender-inconsistent traits is greater for boys.” A boy must adapt to this “pre-oedipal disruption;” how he adapts is dependent on the quality of attachments and on pre-oedipal identifications. If these are insufficient, the boy may do so by disavowing his need for his mother and by disavowing femininity itself.

Disidentifying with mother, then, becomes a pathological resolution to loss of the preoedipal dyadic connection with mother, and loss of omnipotence, and to being forced to denounce feminine traits. It can lead to a fragile phallic centricity meant to hide the need for and loss of mother and of omnipotence. This rigid masculinity constrains the boy’s experience of himself and others, and truncates the multiple possibilities of the self.

Corbett (2009b) advocates for fluidy, ambiguity, and multiplicity of gender identifications and expressions. He questions diagnostic authority when it adheres to the binary classification of gender. Corbett  (2009a) also provides a clinical example of the relational influence of the development of masculinity when he reenvisions the dynamics in Freud’s case of ‘Little Hans’ by bringing to light possible domestic violence as well as Hans’ mother’s reluctance to have children in the first place. 

Corbett, K. (2009a). Little Hans: Masculinity Foretold. Psychoanal Q., 78:733-764.

Corbett, K. (2009b). Boyhood femininity, gender identity disorder, masculine presuppositions, and the anxiety of regulation. Psa Dial  19(4):453-470.

Diamond, M. (2004). The shaping of masculinity: Revisioning boys turning away from their mothers to construct male gender identity. IJP 85: 359-380.