Psychoanalysis as a resource for understanding emotional ruptures in the text: the case of defensive masculinities

Recent theory and research on men and masculinities within feminist and critical social psychologies has largely drawn upon social constructionism and discourse analysis. This work has been useful in extending our understanding of contemporary discourses drawn upon by men to construct masculine identities and/or to construct 'subordinated others' such as women and gay men. But it has been pointed out that discourse analytic work does not adequately account for emotional or experiential dimensions to (masculine) identities. To address this problem, several writers have turned to versions of psychoanalytic theory as this perspective is directly concerned with emotional life. Psychoanalysis has been reworked so that concepts traditionally read as intra-psychic essences (e. g. anxiety, desire, defence) are re-interpreted as interpersonal and contextual. Informed by this work, I argue that a psychoanalytic, particularly Kleinian, reading of focus group discussions with heterosexual men can help illuminate aspects of the contemporary reproduction of masculinities. I use data collected from a 'men and masculinities' project and focus primarily on emotive talk which 'others' gay men and women. Concepts such as 'projection' are used to connect the men's constructions of others with shared anxieties about masculinities. The implications and advantages of pursuing psychoanalytic accounts of (masculine) subjectivities within social psychology are then discussed.