The Rise of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement

This study offers a psychosocial analysis of the rise of the mythopoetic men's movement in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s. Written from a social constructionist perspective, the analysis draws mainly on the psychological, sociological, and historical literature on and relevant to American men. It is also based on interviews, conducted in 1994, of 10 fairly representative participants in the Chicago branch of the New Warriors (since renamed the ManKind Project). The central thesis is that the mythopoetic men's movement represents a mass therapeutic response to the contemporary crisis of male identity and to two problems of traditional male experience, namely, fathers' relative underinvolvement in child rearing and men's relative lack of emotional intimacy in interpersonal relationships, especially with each other.