Men: The Darker Continent

by Heather Formaini

This reappraisal of traditional 'male' psychology faces us with some tricky questions, whether they are about men's attitudes to work, love, freindship, marriage or the environment. it is a remarkable study, raising many controversial issues and promising ther reader a compelling engagement with the subject. (From the book jacket)

Genres: Nonfiction

187 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[James Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heather Formaini’s “Men: the darker continent” is thirty years old and that in itself makes it a suitable vehicle to contrast changing views on masculinity, sexuality and gender norms. Formaini interviews 120 men and her conclusion is that most men feel that they don’t live up to societal standards of masculinity and have issues with intimacy and compartmentalisation.

Like all psycho-analysts, Formaini packages generalised Freudian theory as received fact (all men feel rejected by their mothers at the age of two, and therefore reject women they love and only marry women they don’t quite love… or their mothers. Formaini can’t quite as neatly explain how daughters channel their own rejection at the same age).

But for all that, “Men: the darker continent” is thought provoking: from observations that society feeds white, male heterosexual fears of intimacy to perpetuate its functioning model, to research findings that resonate. For example, 80% of women want to have sex with someone who loves them, yet less than 20 per cent of men want love, preferring high-sensation, low-emotion sex. And the most unhappy people in society? According to research cited by the author, it’s single men and… married women. Think about what the solution to one of those groups means for the other…

Formaini concludes that “for men, genital sexuality has come to represent the total sexual experience… what integration of male sexuality into the total psychological development of men would mean, I think, is a unity of the sum of the parts that are presently disparate or lost – gone missing. In its essence, it would signify a union of sex and love.”

In other words, men should be more like women. Formaini makes an invigorating attempt to show that there is nothing inherent about men’s behaviour, and they want the wrong thing.

[Rj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glad I read this. It is a bit out of date, she might elicit different material from (young) men nowadays, I think. She makes it clear throughout that she's keeping the focus onto one thing for as you go along a thousand related questions and tangents arise. It's very accessibly written. I read it in one or two sittings.

With age, time and professional experience I had been gaining ever more insight into the crushing cage of societal meaning that men are forced to live within but struggled and lacked confidence to express this. Formaini does this clearly and well, she unveils, in stages, the tragedy of being a man.

That's it really. Would certainly recommend any woman to read it.

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is definitely worth a read for anyone who thinks women are "hard to understand" or any of those old clichés. It shows how men avoid the analytical gaze by positing women as dark or unknowable (essentially exoticising them). This was written wuite a long time ago but is still worth reading

[Richard]

This is the kind of book that demands more than one reading.