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In this highly original volume, Gunnar Karlsson offers new answers to the question concerning the relationship between belonging to a specific sex as a male and striving for a masculine identity.

This book offers a uniquely psychoanalytic and phenomenological perspective on masculinity. Karlsson considers masculinity and traditional masculine ideals through a psychoanalytic lens before taking phenomenological concepts to chisel out the relationship between sex and gender. This perspective is developed throughout the volume to inspire readers to further their understanding of traditional gender assignment – female, male and intersex – in light of gendered characteristics such as femininity and masculinity. Chapters span topics such as the characteristics of typical, so-called "phallic masculinity", its allure and psychogenetic explanation, as well as looking at what phallic masculinity disregards. Throughout, Karlsson maintains that phallic masculinity is unattainable, as it seeks to escape the existential conditions of helplessness, vulnerability, and dependence. He makes the case for the importance of considering the notion of ego-identity in the field of sex/gender studies, encouraging a liberation from gender stereotypes.

Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological Reflections on Masculinity will be of great interest to researchers, clinical psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as anyone interested in masculinity, gender studies and the relationship between sex and gender.



The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Gunnar Karlsson hävdar att det som anses som typiskt för maskulinitet i första hand är en reaktion på människans existentiella villkor, som innefattar hjälplöshet, sårbarhet och beroende. Bokens bärande tankegång är att maskulinitet är ett ouppnåeligt projekt, då den just söker undkomma de existentiella villkoren. Maskulinitet förstås som ett avståndstagande från den moderliga omsorgen, en kompensatorisk reaktion snarare än som ett fullbordande av något naturligt givet hos ett mankön. Med hjälp av psykoanalytiska och fenomenologiska tankegångar tar sig författaren an frågor om vad som utmärker maskuliniteten, hur den blir till och vad den försummar och går miste om. ?Det maskulina projektet? är en bok som vänder sig till alla med intresse för den komplexa genusfrågan, och med hjälp av psykoanalysen och fenomenologin breddar den förståelsen av maskulinitet. Gunnar Karlsson är professor i pedagogik vid Stockholms universitet, och privatpraktiserande psykoanalytiker och psykoterapeut

Medieval Icelandic law contains no provisions about copyright. Authors used without hesitation narrative texts by others, but poets were paid for composing laudatory poems about kings and narrators for telling stories at their courts. The art of storytelling became a speciality of Icelanders, who were also hired to write biographies of Norwegian kings. It was considered reprehensible to use the poetry of others as one's own work. Two Norwegian poets may have got the cognomens skáldaspillir (Destroyer of poets?) and illskælda (Bad or Evil poet?) for plagiarism. An Icelandic poet composed a laudatory poem about a woman but changed it to fit another one, receiving a bitter revenge. In Icelandic sagas stanzas occur frequently and, unlike borrowings in prose, their authors are usually named. In the medieval law of Iceland it is forbidden to compose about people not only derogatory but also laudatory poetry. Conceivably it has been considered to give the author some kind of power over the person who was the subject of the poetry. Proper copyright, though, does not occur in Icelandic law until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Whether President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative can be viewed as "a conscious instrument of economic warfare, used in order to economically compel the Soviet Union to accept more of the U.S. position on disarmament."