The Art of Manliness - What the World of Psychology Gets Wrong About Men

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.460 Several years ago, the American Psychological Association issued a set of guidelines for

00:00:15.840 psychologists working with boys and men. Guideline number one says, psychologists strive to recognize

00:00:21.140 that masculinities are constructed based on social, cultural, and contextual norms. Guideline

00:00:26.540 number three says, psychologists understand the impact of power, privilege, and sexism

00:00:31.240 on the development of boys and men and on the relationships with others. My guest says that

00:00:35.580 these guidelines miss the mark and are just one indicator of the way in which the world

00:00:39.020 of psychology misunderstands and consequently underserves men. Dr. John Berry is a psychologist,

00:00:44.500 the co-founder of the male psychology section of the British Psychological Society, and the

00:00:48.380 co-author of the Perspectives in Male Psychology textbook. Today on the show, John impacts the

00:00:52.840 issues with thinking that masculinity is purely a social construct and that men's problems grow

00:00:57.480 out of their power and privilege and how these issues prevent men from getting the help they

00:01:01.200 need. In the second half of our conversation, we discuss the surprising origin of the idea

00:01:05.160 of toxic masculinity, what really defines masculinity, and what effect internalizing a negative or

00:01:10.500 positive view of masculinity has on men. We end our conversation with what works for men's

00:01:14.940 mental health and well-being if you don't want or need to go to therapy, and what you should

00:01:18.500 look for in a therapist if you do. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:22.780 slash male psych. All right, John Berry, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Brett. Thanks for

00:01:41.200 inviting me. So you are a psychologist and an associate fellow at the British Psychological

00:01:45.880 Society, and you have spent a lot of your time, your academic career, researching and writing

00:01:51.800 about male psychology. You co-authored a book on male psychology called Perspectives in Male

00:01:56.920 Psychology. You also founded an organization called the Center for Male Psychology. I'm curious,

00:02:03.220 how did your career end up focusing on male psychology? What's going on there?

00:02:08.160 Right. Okay. Good question, because I did start off focusing on women's mental health, 1.00

00:02:13.140 and so I did my PhD and I did a lot of research. In fact, I've got a book on the psychological

00:02:19.520 aspects of PCOS, which is coming out in a German translation in a couple of months' time. So my

00:02:25.740 early career was looking at that. I mean, that kind of overlaps a little bit with the male psychology

00:02:30.500 in that polycystic ovary syndrome is a condition characterized by elevated testosterone levels in

00:02:37.480 women. So I learned a lot about the physiology and the psychobiology of testosterone. And the way it

00:02:44.720 affects women is basically, in a lot of ways, the inverse of the way it impacts men. So it's a slightly

00:02:50.380 strange, indirect route into male psychology. In fact, that wasn't really the thing that got me into

00:02:56.980 male psychology. It was more sort of personal thing of over the years, just over the years,

00:03:04.280 noticing that within the field of psychology and within the mainstream media and social media,

00:03:11.040 people seemed to talk a lot about issues as they impacted women. And they didn't really seem to talk 0.79

00:03:18.260 about issues impacting men. And at first, I just thought this was kind of like interesting,

00:03:24.700 or maybe I was missing the parts of the program that talked about male suicide and things like that.

00:03:30.500 But then I just, I kind of finally got a bit frustrated with this. And it's like, really,

00:03:34.340 what's going on? I mean, it's something that major problems that are impacting men and boys,

00:03:40.060 like for decades, like since the late 80s, we've seen the UK, boys falling behind girls in education.

00:03:45.780 And these are things that were not discussed, you really had to hunt around for this sort of data.

00:03:50.200 And sometimes the data is in plain view, like, you know, 75% of suicides are male. I mean,

00:03:56.040 that's, you know, similar in a lot of countries, but, and you can find the data there that will tell

00:04:01.340 you that. But there seems to be, or at least there hasn't been very much interest until very recently

00:04:06.760 in these facts. And so I just started becoming like increasingly bewildered and then frustrated

00:04:13.520 that nothing seemed to be happening. So my route into male psychology was really just this kind of

00:04:19.940 angst that nothing like those major problems facing men and therefore society unresolved,

00:04:26.580 big unresolved mental health issues, big unresolved wellbeing issues that were going to affect men,

00:04:32.800 you know, boys growing up and therefore affect everybody. If they're unresolved,

00:04:36.240 they're going to become everybody's problem and nobody seemed to be doing anything. So it's just

00:04:40.620 one of these things where you end up thinking, well, you know, someone's got to do something.

00:04:44.340 And then actually I was very lucky to run into a consultant clinical psychology, Martin Seeger,

00:04:50.420 who had a letter published in the psychologist magazine, which is the trade magazine for the

00:04:56.200 British psychological society. And he was saying, he was like ahead of me and he's saying, look,

00:05:01.840 we need to have a special section of the British psychological society dedicated to men's mental

00:05:07.840 health. And I just thought, yes, absolutely. Right. Brilliant. I got to get in touch with this guy.

00:05:12.500 So we've gone, that was in late 2010 and we haven't looked back since then. So together with

00:05:19.040 Martin and a few other people who put a lot of work into campaigning for kind of making a case for

00:05:25.360 the British psychological society, having a special section or division, as I think you call them in

00:05:30.840 the APA for male psychology. It took us about eight years to do that. And we had some people who

00:05:37.220 campaigned against us doing that. People who thought that men are already privileged enough.

00:05:43.160 So we don't want to give them this extra privilege of having a special section of the British 0.99

00:05:47.620 psychological society, which, you know, obviously I don't agree with that point of view, but some

00:05:53.320 people do. So, but eventually we got this section and yeah, so a strange route in a way. I hope other

00:05:59.920 people's route into male psychology is a bit easier than mine was, Brett.

00:06:03.900 No, so yeah, you make a good point. I think a lot of people understand that the boys and men,

00:06:08.860 there's a problem there. You hear the reports or read the articles about, you know, boys falling

00:06:13.200 behind in school. Most criminals are men. You have men and younger men dropping out of the workforce,

00:06:19.400 not working. And then there's the statistics you see about, you know, deaths of despair, suicide,

00:06:24.740 mostly men. That is a problem for, but then one of the points you're trying to make with the work

00:06:29.860 you're doing is that psychologists are able to point these things out. We can see these,

00:06:33.360 these statistics, but the solutions offered aren't often very useful. We've known about

00:06:38.700 this stuff for decades, but it seems like things haven't gotten better. And one thing you talk

00:06:42.160 about in the textbook, perspectives in male psychology, you talk about the APA, for example,

00:06:46.480 this is the American Psychological Association. Back in 2018, they came out with some guidelines

00:06:52.200 on how to treat and help mental health issues in boys and men. And it made a big splash. I remember

00:06:58.180 when this came out and then you talk about, there's some good stuff in there, in the guidelines,

00:07:02.380 but then some of the guidelines, they're not great and they could potentially backfire and

00:07:07.180 be counterproductive. So let's start with the good. Like what are some of the good guidelines in

00:07:11.160 this APA thing that you think are useful? And then maybe we can talk about what are the ones that you

00:07:15.940 don't think are particularly useful? Yeah. So there's some of it is fine. And stuff that I think is

00:07:22.320 pretty good. Guideline nine on doing male-friendly therapy or what I would describe as male-friendly

00:07:28.580 therapy. And this is, I think, all very good advice. I mean, things like not necessarily rushing

00:07:35.320 men into talking about their feelings, but, you know, maybe focusing more on what you might call

00:07:41.720 more easy entry type stuff. And so, you know, cognitive behavioral things are often easier.

00:07:48.940 And I think that there's a lot of what was written there, I think is very valid. Unfortunately,

00:07:53.820 I think it's the case with some things in life that you can have something that's very good,

00:07:59.280 but no matter how good it is, it's going to be spoiled if it's done in the wrong sort of spirit.

00:08:03.980 And so guidelines one and three of this particular set of guidelines were, I think, so wide of the

00:08:10.240 mark. I think they made it hard for anything else to really survive it. So guideline one was said that

00:08:16.760 masculinity is basically a social construct. In other words, men's sense of themselves and what

00:08:23.660 it's like to be a man and how they should behave. It's all purely a product of what they learned from

00:08:29.000 the environment around them. Like, you know, things like parents or schools or media, traditions and

00:08:34.840 different cultures. And there is definitely truth to that. I mean, there is no doubt there is an influence

00:08:39.940 of the environment on our sense of ourselves. But you could ask a question like, well, how do these

00:08:46.900 traditions, how do these values come about and how have they lasted for so long? How come they seem

00:08:52.980 to be kind of at root fairly similar across so many different cultures throughout history and around

00:09:00.120 the world? And some people argue about differences in expression of masculinity in different cultures.

00:09:07.140 There's actually not that much difference. So depending on how much of a big of a deal you

00:09:12.960 make of particular points, I think like in general, for example, there's a very large study looking at

00:09:19.780 characteristics of cognition and behavior in men and women all around the world. And, you know,

00:09:25.500 a huge study and I found basically that the kinds of differences that you see between men and women

00:09:31.480 in these different traits and cognitions, behaviors map very nicely onto what we think of as being

00:09:38.920 traditional masculinity and traditional femininity. So for example, men tend to, I mean, not all that's

00:09:44.540 very flattering to men either. I mean, men around the world seem to score higher in aggression and

00:09:50.300 they score higher on more interest in sports, especially team sports, less interest in going to

00:09:56.760 spend a lot of time in school. Unfortunately, we can see that. So, you know, it's not all kind of

00:10:01.340 good news, but there's definitely what we think about masculinity seems to have a common thread around 0.99

00:10:07.620 the world, despite it being expressed differently in some different ways. So the idea that it's just a

00:10:14.160 social construct, I think is misleading. And it's important. I mean, you know, psychology is a

00:10:20.260 science. I mean, it's a social science. It has to, I think, to try and be evidence-based in whatever

00:10:27.040 way it can be. And I think whatever types of therapies or techniques or theories that we have

00:10:32.680 need to be developed from evidence and not from ideology. And I think, unfortunately, some of what

00:10:39.880 we see from coming from the media and spoken a lot about men's issues and masculinity is not based on

00:10:46.940 evidence. So based on ideas, some of them from sociology, and these are not evidence-based

00:10:53.100 ideas. I mean, they fall apart if you start to examine them. And I'm not an essentialist in any

00:10:59.620 sort of way. I mean, I completely agree that masculinity is a product of nurture, but there's

00:11:05.080 also some nature there. So there's some evolved differences, you know, based around reproduction

00:11:10.940 that have knock-on effects on the way that we choose to live our lives. And also, I mean,

00:11:16.020 there's the obvious thing of testosterone then too. You know, a male fetus gestating over the nine

00:11:22.140 months will be exposed to a massive amount of testosterone. There's a testosterone surge at 13

00:11:27.980 weeks prenatally. And this causes all sorts of changes to the fetus, some of which are only then

00:11:35.320 seen at puberty when you have another massive surge. And you have a similar, like we all know that

00:11:40.180 in adolescence, boys experience a massive amount of testosterone. And it kind of changes their

00:11:47.200 bodies in all sorts of different ways. Their voice deepens and they get acne and they become

00:11:51.020 hairier. They develop muscles. And all of these things are programmed from their prenatal life.

00:11:57.300 In that fetus, the levels that it experiences then are as high as those experienced in adolescent

00:12:03.360 boys. So there's a huge amount of nature or biology going on there. And of course, if you're somebody

00:12:11.000 who happens to find themselves being bigger and stronger than other people around you, it's

00:12:17.300 probably going to affect the way that you feel and behave. So just on a very day-to-day level,

00:12:23.520 you know, there's lots of reasons to think that people who are exposed to testosterone and who

00:12:27.680 therefore have, you know, larger muscle mass. They're actually physically taller. The bone

00:12:32.780 structure is denser. They have larger jaws. They are better able at certain types of kind of

00:12:38.960 explosive-type activities and exercises and sports. Basically, you could say, well, they're combat-ready.

00:12:45.240 Like these are the guys who are designed to be protecting people, to be, say, defending communities,

00:12:50.900 to be, also to do maybe kind of heavier-type lifting-type jobs and things like that. I mean,

00:12:56.620 some of the things that, of course, I mean, are a bit problematic if you try and map them

00:13:01.220 on to job opportunities today. But nonetheless, there's a lot of biology. And the thing is,

00:13:07.560 if you presume that the only difference between men and women is what they're taught to think

00:13:13.920 about themselves as men or women, and there's things like reproduction, human reproduction makes 0.98

00:13:20.900 no difference. I mean, that's really, you know, I think, and the thing is, most people, most, you know,

00:13:28.860 everyday people get that. I mean, they get that there's differences between men and women. And this

00:13:34.380 is something that I've learned over the years of being involved in male psychology, which is about 12

00:13:39.220 or 13 years now, is that people outside of academia seem to understand male psychology a lot better

00:13:47.940 than lots of academics do. So we're in a strange situation where the education that we have for

00:13:53.980 academics actually, I think, obscures the reality of things like gender differences, which become very

00:14:01.740 important then if you're trying to understand why there might be more male suicides than female

00:14:06.820 suicides, or why men might turn to substance abuse, which, again, is one of the things that we see

00:14:12.800 around the world. Men tend to engage in substance abuse more than women do. If you want to try and 1.00

00:14:17.340 understand them, we have to understand that there's differences between men and women on these things,

00:14:22.240 and we have to examine why that is, and then how we can use that information to help us. But as a starting

00:14:28.640 point, you at least have to acknowledge that these things exist, or else you're in trouble.

00:14:33.180 So, yeah, the first guideline that you think that causes problems is that masculinity is constructed

00:14:39.120 purely on social, cultural, and contextual norms. It's completely a social construct. What we were

00:14:44.320 saying is that, no, there's a biological component. If you ignore the biology part, then you're going to

00:14:49.020 have a hard time actually helping boys. Because if your assumption is, well, if it's a social construct,

00:14:53.640 if you can just talk to these guys and they can unlearn those things, then they can change.

00:14:57.860 And you're saying, no, it's going to be harder than that because there's a biological component

00:15:01.380 under there that's, you can't finagle like that. You can't. And it seems that men tend to be like

00:15:08.740 voting with their feet when it comes to therapy. So in terms of trying to help men with their

00:15:13.740 emotional, psychological issues, a lot of men don't seem to be interested in talking about

00:15:18.300 their feelings in the same sort of way that women do. And men can benefit from talking about

00:15:22.680 their feelings, but it's not the first thing that they necessarily want to do. And there might be all

00:15:27.320 sorts of, again, evolved reasons for this that make sense and that we might want to respect a bit

00:15:33.640 more than we tend to. Like people to often just blame men for not going to therapy and say, well,

00:15:39.480 you know, it's their own fault then if they kind of fall off the rails. They should have just kind of

00:15:45.400 just rejected these silly masculine ideas about being tough and stoical and just gone on and talked

00:15:51.740 about the feelings to this therapist. You know, there might be all sorts of reasons why men might tend to

00:15:56.420 not want to talk about the feelings so much as women do. It could be that if you've evolved to be in 1.00

00:16:01.480 situations that might be putting you at risk or danger, or even just things like hunting, for

00:16:07.700 example, if the men are going out hunting because they've got better, like maybe stronger kind of

00:16:11.980 throwing arms for throwing spears at animals or whatever, they've got better mental rotation ability

00:16:17.560 because testosterone has programmed their mind in that way so they're better able to understand

00:16:22.160 what happens when you're kind of throwing a stone or a spear at something.

00:16:26.420 Well, then it might be also that they have to develop a way of staying quiet if they're stalking

00:16:31.180 prey and even under kind of stressful situations, remain quiet so that they don't, say, startle

00:16:38.520 whatever it is that they're trying to hunt or, you know, upset people around them too. If, say,

00:16:44.420 you're supposed to be defending the community and, you know, you don't necessarily want to say to the

00:16:49.140 guy next to you who's also there defending community that how scared you feel and that you're

00:16:53.700 worried you might die. I mean, that's, you know, probably going to make everyone just fall apart.

00:16:58.520 So you probably have to, it just kind of makes sense. I mean, this, you know, this is speculation, but it

00:17:04.020 kind of makes sense that men would involve reasons for not expressing their feelings or being so keen to

00:17:10.320 express their feelings as much as women do. I think it's important that men do, but I think we have to respect

00:17:15.380 the fact that they might not. There's one other point that I think is important about this whole thing about

00:17:20.360 stoicism. One of the most successful types of therapy, rational motive behavior therapy, is based

00:17:27.640 on the philosophy of stoicism. And, you know, if stoicism is so bad for you, well, how come it's such a

00:17:33.980 successful therapy? And of course, there's a difference between just not talking about your feelings and

00:17:38.720 processing your feelings in the way that you do with rational motive behavior therapy. But it just

00:17:44.200 speaks to the idea that stoicism is not as 100% bad as it's made out to be often.

00:17:52.040 What was the other guideline you've had some problems with?

00:17:54.360 Yeah. So guideline three, which seems to cast men as being the benefactors in patriarchy. And it seems

00:18:03.060 to make the assumption that the United States of these times is a patriarchy, which, I mean, you could

00:18:10.380 stretch your imagination and think, okay, so there's some ways in which men seem to have benefits that

00:18:15.860 women don't have. I mean, the most obvious being there's more men in kind of high paying jobs than 0.98

00:18:20.900 there are women. But then again, there are other reasons for that. I mean, if you give it a little 1.00

00:18:25.540 bit of thought, like if you're a woman, you reach, you know, a point in your life for a lot of women when

00:18:30.860 they want to have a family. And it's hard to keep a career going successfully. You know, I mean,

00:18:37.380 like some men work absolutely terrifying hours to make it to the top of their career, or even close

00:18:45.680 to the top of their career, or even just survive in a lot of cases. But like to get to the top,

00:18:49.800 it's not easy. It's not handed to you on a plate. And if you want to have a family, that's not easy

00:18:55.880 either, to be a mother, to carry children through pregnancy, then to breastfeed them or to take care 1.00

00:19:02.620 of them. You know, even if they're going to a nursery for a lot of times, children take a huge

00:19:07.340 amount of time. And I think it's fair to say that women tend to be inclined, a lot of women at least

00:19:14.340 anyway, inclined to want to do that more so than men. I don't think that's a bad thing. I mean, I think

00:19:20.440 fairly sort of obvious reasons why you might expect that women might be predisposed to that a bit more

00:19:26.560 based on biology. But the idea that you live in a patriarchy, and the evidence of this is that men,

00:19:32.920 on average, are earning more than women, I think is, I mean, it's kind of foolish. There's other 1.00

00:19:38.880 things too, you know, the idea that men's relationships with women are based on power and

00:19:44.640 control, and that things like domestic violence are caused by this patriarchal need to express

00:19:51.040 control and power over your wife and family and other people around you. I mean, as psychologists,

00:19:57.280 in order to treat a problem, you have to understand what the problem is, what's causing the problem.

00:20:01.800 And for people, like, generally speaking, for men and women engaging in domestic violence, it's not just

00:20:06.200 men engaging in domestic violence, but like men and women engage in violence and other types of abuse.

00:20:12.700 And a lot of this is due to problems that have developed in childhood. So like, very often,

00:20:19.200 it will be impulse control issues that have developed through maybe having had distressing

00:20:26.000 experiences as a child, maybe experiencing abuse as a child, the substance control issues that often

00:20:31.740 happen there. But these things aren't about power and control. These are usually somebody who's got

00:20:36.760 no real control over their own impulses. And so they kind of act out. This is something that men often

00:20:43.860 do that kind of women tend more on average. And whenever we talk about differences between men

00:20:49.940 and women, it's always on average, like you can't say that all men are like this and all women are

00:20:54.020 like that. But on average, men will tend to act out their issues, their psychological issues more than

00:21:00.800 women do, which isn't a good thing, and definitely something that should be worked on. But if you try and 1.00

00:21:06.980 work on that type of issue, like a man not being able to control his impulses, and treat that as if

00:21:13.680 it's some manifestation of patriarchy, you know, it's no wonder the things like the Duluth model of

00:21:21.100 perpetrator change don't tend to work. I mean, they get funded, and they seem to sort of have been

00:21:28.020 popular enough in various parts of the world for a long time. But the evidence is that they don't work

00:21:34.180 that well. I mean, the thing is, even talking about patriarchy or masculinity, I think these are not the

00:21:40.980 central issues that psychologists should be talking about. I mean, these are ideas in sociology. Sociologists

00:21:47.480 don't tend to be trying to treat men's mental health issues. I mean, I think psychologists should be focusing

00:21:53.220 on what we know. Like for years, people have been struggling to make psychology an evidence-based

00:21:58.900 discipline. And I think we should just stick to that. Stick to that. Forget the supposition,

00:22:04.020 the ideology, and really focus on the facts, really, and try and get focused on what's going

00:22:10.240 to help people at the end of the day. So yeah, okay. Guideline one, masculinity is just a social

00:22:15.720 construct. That can get in the way of helping boys and men, because the idea is, well, you can just

00:22:20.960 teach them how to not do those things, right? You can help them ignore the social construct and create

00:22:24.860 a new social construct, but you're ignoring biology. And so you might not actually be going to the core

00:22:29.680 issue. And then guideline three, which is the idea that males in general experience more power

00:22:36.280 privilege than girls and women. How does that get in the way of helping boys and men? I guess,

00:22:40.900 does it, if they're, if men do have a problem, like they're feeling bad, like, well, what's wrong with

00:22:46.140 me? I should be doing well because I'm a man, right? I'm privileged. So something's, I just got to suck

00:22:51.360 it up. And then they don't, do they not just go get help because of that? What do you think the

00:22:54.640 issue? Like how does that guideline three possibly prevent men from getting the help they need?

00:22:59.860 Well, it might sense that, and this is one of the things about the, the APA guidelines have become

00:23:05.340 so prominent in such a talking, but I mean, men for years, I've been hearing guys saying that they

00:23:11.060 don't want to go to a marriage guidance therapist because they don't think that they understand men.

00:23:16.700 They don't think that they're going to get a kind of fair hearing. And I think the same sort of

00:23:21.980 thing. If a man thinks that he's going to see a therapist who thinks that all his problems are

00:23:26.360 going to be his fault because he's a privileged product of patriarchy, I think that that will,

00:23:33.140 for some men, I mean, for some men who believe in that sort of idea, well, they may well go along

00:23:38.460 and find that they do get some sort of relief from that. But I would think that the average man might

00:23:43.040 just, you know, more so than before, just think, well, you know, maybe therapy's not for me.

00:23:47.900 And then where does that leave them? This is the issue that I have. We should be more welcoming

00:23:53.620 of men. We should be trying to find out what do men want from therapy? What, you know, what kind

00:23:58.540 of things, how do they like to deal with their problems? What are the most effective things that

00:24:03.040 we can use? And not doing things that are just demonizing men, basically casting men in negative

00:24:09.500 light, making them, making it seem as if they're the, like, basically what's, you know, some people

00:24:15.620 called victim blaming, you know, telling them that their problems are due to themselves. I mean,

00:24:20.080 that's not going to entice somebody into a therapy room, I don't think.

00:24:23.660 No, so I get a lot of books sent to me about male psychology, like books to help men and whatever.

00:24:28.940 And most of them have that sort of APA idea that masculinity is essentially, like, masculinity,

00:24:34.940 it's a deficiency, essentially, right? It's a problem to be solved. And I read these things like,

00:24:39.340 I just, this doesn't, I don't think this is going to resonate with guys. I don't think it's helpful.

00:24:43.700 Absolutely. I mean, why would it?

00:24:46.700 Yeah. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:24:54.940 And now back to the show.

00:24:56.780 Well, yeah, this, this brings up this whole idea that, you know, of toxic masculinity that you hear

00:25:01.040 a lot about these days. And I think it's interesting, you do, um, kind of do a deep dive of the,

00:25:05.400 the origins of this phrase. I remember the first time I heard it is probably 2010, 2011,

00:25:12.000 but now it's everywhere. Where did this idea of toxic masculinity even come from? And is there any

00:25:18.820 research that backs up the claim that masculinity is toxic?

00:25:23.240 Okay. So the term itself, surprisingly, it came from the men's movement of around the 80s or 90s. It's a

00:25:32.800 big kind of a gray area of where exactly who came up with the first, but the mythopoetic movements,

00:25:38.700 you know, the kind of Robert Bly, Iron John type of schools of psychology. And, um, the, the idea has

00:25:46.800 some, some merit for definite. The idea was that in order for a young man to successfully change from

00:25:54.200 boyhood to adulthood and become a useful member of his tribe or community, um, he had to go through

00:25:59.980 some initiation ceremonies with the men of the tribe. And so these might be a bit arduous and

00:26:06.440 they wouldn't be very popular with a lot of people today, but what they would do is they would give

00:26:11.360 that boy a sense of belonging, having a purpose, being part of a community. And the crucial thing,

00:26:16.580 if they didn't go through this process, that's their masculinity would become toxic. They, instead 1.00

00:26:23.340 of focusing on helping the community, they would, they would end up, you know, self-indulgent. They

00:26:28.520 would end up being selfish and having disregard for others, not be thinking about the long-term goals

00:26:34.680 of the community or themselves, not thinking about what's good for them in the future,

00:26:40.180 just short-term thinking. And they'd describe this as being then a kind of a toxic masculinity.

00:26:45.080 They would, the short terms, they would be more aggressive and things like that. So,

00:26:50.200 so there is something to that. And I think if we look at the kinds of behaviors that get mislabeled as

00:26:55.280 toxic masculinity, because it just gets used so widely now. So any examples of behavior by men that is

00:27:03.800 abhorrent or distasteful gets called toxic masculinity. But if you look at some of the,

00:27:10.640 kind of, you know, for example, let's say delinquent behaviors that you see, often they come

00:27:15.140 from people, men who have not had the guidance of a father in the home. And, you know, lots of kids

00:27:23.500 don't have a dad in the home. They turn out to be brilliant. But if you just look at the stats,

00:27:27.580 it seems that, for example, most of the men in prison, I mean, like I think Warren Farrell described

00:27:33.780 prisons as being institutes of dad deprivation, I think that's what he called them. Like, so people

00:27:40.260 who are deprived of having the kind of loving, guiding father who will help to, you know, boys

00:27:46.760 especially can be difficult, girls can be difficult too, but growing up, but, you know, boys often need

00:27:51.420 a kind of a firm guiding hand of someone who loves them and will respect them, protect them, protect

00:27:57.180 them from themselves in a lot of ways too. But if you don't have that, you can go off the rails. It's a bit

00:28:02.000 too easy just to, boys, you know, tend to take risks and, you know, try at things, push the

00:28:07.760 boundaries. It's not an unhealthy thing to do these things, but you can get into trouble easily

00:28:14.340 and then maybe not know what to do. And if you don't have a loving, caring father around, I mean,

00:28:20.540 it can just lead to people going off into all sorts of dead ends and bad routes for themselves.

00:28:26.360 So there is something to that idea of toxic masculinity, but I think it really only is

00:28:31.480 useful when applied properly in a therapeutic setting and this sort of very widespread media

00:28:38.640 sort of demonization, kind of lazy thinking is not good. And I think it's not good mainly because,

00:28:45.420 again, it obscures what the actual problem is. It puts the blame on masculinity rather than putting

00:28:52.300 the blame on what you could call a lack of masculinity in that boy's life, the lack of

00:28:57.660 having the guidance of a loving father in their life. So when you misspecify a problem like that,

00:29:03.760 I think it's not only just wrong, it demonizes boys, gives them a bad sense of themselves and it

00:29:10.300 doesn't help address the problem. In a lot of ways, you can understand why people would just kind of fall

00:29:16.880 back on terms like toxic masculinity. Because to be fair, if a man does something that is horrible,

00:29:23.440 abusive, abhorrent, our natural reaction is not to be empathic towards them. It's not to kind of want

00:29:30.300 to help them or not to try and understand them. They're repulsive and you just want them to be

00:29:35.020 punished basically. But again, as a psychologist or for any therapist, you have to find out what has

00:29:44.300 caused that problem. And you don't get to that by just being freaked out by what they've done or

00:29:50.320 just kind of saying, oh, that's due to masculinity. You know, that's missing the point. It won't help

00:29:56.420 that person. It won't help them to recover and become, you know, a beneficial member of the

00:30:01.440 community. It's just a dead end. I just hate to see this happening. We have so much of this going on

00:30:07.460 where people aren't, especially in psychology, where people bark up the wrong tree and it doesn't help.

00:30:13.180 Well, we've been talking about masculinity, but maybe we should define it. How do you define

00:30:18.560 masculinity? Because I know, you know, sociologists have their different definitions of masculinity. 0.51

00:30:24.140 So I know there's this idea of the man box, right? So it's basically there's this idea that there's

00:30:31.540 these seven pillars of masculinity, right? And they're rigid. And if you're inside the man box,

00:30:37.180 you're going to be depressed and suicidal. And so they define masculinity as acting tough,

00:30:42.260 being homophobic, being aggressive and controlling towards men and women, et cetera. And I mean,

00:30:49.380 okay, that's one definition. But like, when you look at the research across meta-analysis,

00:30:54.820 cross-cultural studies, how do you define masculinity?

00:30:58.820 Well, just to say about these kind of more popular recent definitions of masculinity,

00:31:03.940 masculinity, they tend to be based on research, looking at quite young samples, so usually college

00:31:10.980 age men. And, you know, if you think about young men, they're not really representative of the

00:31:17.220 behaviors and the thoughts and the attitudes of men, like 10 years later. So when you're 20,

00:31:22.460 you're a lot different than when you're 30. Like, basically, you're more mature when you're 30. And,

00:31:27.060 you know, for the rest of your life, you're never like that kind of young, risk-taking,

00:31:31.940 reckless person who's pushing the boundaries and trying to find out what the extent is or what

00:31:37.020 they can do in their lives. So when you base your ideas about masculinity on these samples,

00:31:43.460 you get a skewed idea. You get a snapshot of somebody at their worst, basically, well,

00:31:47.940 in many ways. And not something that generalizes to men of other ages. And this is part of the

00:31:55.760 problem. You're getting generalizations from the worst types of behavior, like in the case of toxic

00:32:01.660 masculinity, this gets generalized like all men, all boys are supposed to be like this or at least

00:32:06.880 potentially like this if they're not kept tightly controlled. So there's that problem with these

00:32:13.020 definitions of masculinity. And by the way, there's no end of research that will kind of uses these

00:32:18.840 definitions, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, you keep asking the same questions

00:32:23.160 in the same way, using the same definitions of masculinity, and with the same young samples,

00:32:28.980 like, you know, the kind of college-age samples, you get the same sorts of answers. And you never get

00:32:33.640 out of that loop. It's been described as a paradigm fixation that some research programs seem to have.

00:32:41.280 But in general, though, like, and traditionally, and up until very recently, I think this was

00:32:47.080 the case that masculinity was defined by terms such as being competitive, being aggressive, being in

00:32:55.980 control. And, you know, Martin Segers, with my help, developed psychometric scales looking at

00:33:02.620 masculinity. And we found that the things that tend to fit men quite well is the ideas, three ideas,

00:33:08.960 basically, that they're protectors of others, like their family, they're providers for their

00:33:14.700 family, they're fighters and winners. So they're kind of out there trying to make a living, bring

00:33:19.900 home the bacon, you know, whatever way you want to put it. And also having mastery and control over

00:33:25.780 their feelings. So that part of being masculine is not just saying how you feel off the top of your

00:33:31.540 head to whoever, you know, you keep it under wraps to a large degree, and there's a time and a place.

00:33:37.020 And I think it's important. I mean, I haven't really said so much about it, but it's important

00:33:41.140 that men do feel that they have a place to go to, that they can feel comfortable about saying what

00:33:47.760 they feel. You know, unfortunately, I think a lot of men know that a lot of stuff that they say,

00:33:52.960 I mean, that is deemed beyond the pale. Like, you know, you get in some marriages, you get men who

00:33:59.680 don't, you know, talk to the wives because they know that they're just going to get criticized for it. 1.00

00:34:04.180 So that is, you know, it's a yes, dear type of situation. I mean, we have this, I mean,

00:34:08.780 it's, uh, I just found out that in Germany, they've got this new situation where if people

00:34:14.700 criticize gender studies or feminism, they can be, there's a hotline they can be reported to,

00:34:20.820 you know, so there's things that if you feel very strongly, no matter how strongly about a

00:34:25.820 particular thing, you can't talk about it because you get, if you're in Germany, you can get reported

00:34:30.040 to the hotline, you know, and socially it's the same sort of thing. You can get canceled for saying

00:34:35.100 certain things. So, you know, men know this. So I think it is important that we do have places that

00:34:40.960 men can go to that they know that whatever they say is not going to be misinterpreted as being

00:34:46.180 some aspect of patriarchy or, you know, they're not going to be put in some sort of man box that's

00:34:53.020 about their masculinity being a negative thing. They need to go, they just, as again, I mean,

00:34:57.680 I'm kind of saying the same thing, but as before, you know, we just, psychologists need to be

00:35:02.600 psychologists. Like we need to get back to being, you know, person-centered, empathic,

00:35:07.600 meeting people where they're at, understanding the world from their perspective, not imposing our

00:35:13.400 own viewpoints on them, kind of listening to them and trying to lead them forward in a way that's

00:35:17.780 going to be helpful for them. Well, yeah, you mentioned, okay, so those ideas of what it means

00:35:22.180 to be masculine that you found across cultures, being competitive, feeling a sense of competency,

00:35:26.780 mastery, being a protector and provider for your family. There's a book, David Gilmour's

00:35:32.380 Manhood in the Making. He was an anthropologist. This book was published a couple of decades ago,

00:35:37.640 but he did a cross-cultural analysis, right? He looks at all these different anthropological

00:35:41.140 studies and he found the same thing across cultures, across time. Generally, you find the

00:35:46.400 same definition of what masculinity means and it's to be a protector, procreator, provider.

00:35:52.480 And like every culture is going to, it's going to manifest differently because every culture is

00:35:56.060 different, but you're going to see that same universal across. And those can be, I think,

00:36:01.060 depending on how they manifest themselves, they can be positive or negative. I think it's good that

00:36:05.360 men want to take care of their families and protect them and be competent because that can give us all

00:36:10.760 sorts of great things, but they can also be used for bad things.

00:36:14.660 Absolutely. It means you can take anything and turn it into a negative. And it's also true for even,

00:36:19.980 and this is one of the tenets of rational mode of behavior therapy that's based on stoicism I mentioned

00:36:25.120 earlier. One of the ideas is that any idea can be okay, but if you believe it too rigidly or wants

00:36:32.100 things to happen in too rigid a way, it will cause you to be anxious, depressed, angry, all sorts of

00:36:38.620 different things. So for example, if applying it to masculinity, you might say that, you know,

00:36:44.180 I want to be able to control my feelings. Like I said, I want to be able to go to a public speaking

00:36:49.740 event and not show that I'm very anxious about doing it. Loads of people are anxious about public

00:36:54.200 speaking. But if you say to yourself, well, you know, I absolutely can't show any fear. Well,

00:37:01.340 this rigid way of framing that idea, like saying, I absolutely can't, I shouldn't, I must not.

00:37:07.000 This itself, this rigidity will exacerbate the fear and make other sorts of negative feelings come

00:37:12.480 end very likely to. So masculinity can be entirely benign. And I would say like there's plenty of

00:37:19.720 evidence of how masculinity can be a very productive thing and something that we shouldn't want to get

00:37:25.120 rid of at all and shouldn't, I think, misdefine or misspecify and create a sort of a foul smell around.

00:37:33.960 I think we ought to be much more interested in how we can use masculinity as a positive force.

00:37:40.900 And I think that's, again, if we have to, as psychologists refer to masculinity at all, we should

00:37:47.700 really think about, well, how can we harness those positive aspects of masculinity and make them work

00:37:53.060 for men, going to help them to improve their psychological, emotional lives, make them better

00:37:58.180 people to be around. Yeah. I've always thought of masculinity as an energy. It's this neutral force

00:38:03.400 that can be directed for either good or bad. And like how it's directed depends on the cultural

00:38:09.820 context a man finds himself in. So this makes me think of another question. Has there been any

00:38:15.280 research done on the effect that this idea of toxic masculinity has on men, right? So let's say,

00:38:23.040 you know, a man internalizes this idea of toxic masculinity because he's hearing it all the time.

00:38:27.620 How does that affect him? And then like the flip side of that would be what happens when a man has a 0.59

00:38:33.160 positive view of masculinity? How does that affect him?

00:38:36.460 I was on a talk show about three years ago, four years ago, and I was asked a similar question.

00:38:43.560 And I was sitting there answering saying, well, you know, it's, it's amazing. It's such an important

00:38:48.360 issue. And, but like that no one has done any research on this. And I'm sitting there and I'm

00:38:52.640 thinking, I'm a researcher. Why don't I do some research on this? So I did. So I did a kind of like

00:38:58.440 a pilot study. I asked, uh, it was only a small sample, like 250 odd people, the questions along

00:39:04.000 the lines of like, whether they thought that boys would be negatively impacted by hearing ideas about

00:39:09.840 toxic masculinity being talked about in the media or around them like that. And I found that 85% of

00:39:16.320 the participants said that they thought that there would be a negative impact on boys. So I thought,

00:39:22.180 okay, so this is, I'm not the only person who's making this, this wild assumption that some people

00:39:26.980 I think that that could have a negative impact. I did another piece of research recently. It's just

00:39:32.980 been accepted for publication in the international journal of health sciences, which I'm very happy

00:39:37.820 about. And I looked at 2000 men in the UK and 2000 men in Germany. And I asked them various different

00:39:45.920 questions and didn't focus on masculinity, but basically trying to find out what were the different

00:39:51.420 things about their lives or the way that they thought about things or even demographic things that

00:39:56.800 were related to how happy they were, basically their mental wellbeing. And we threw in a few

00:40:03.940 questions about masculinity. And we found that some of these grouped together as positive ideas about

00:40:09.600 masculinity, such as masculinity helps me to be a better provider for my family. And negative, there was

00:40:16.860 another cluster of items that call us as a kind of a negative sense of masculinity. So men thinking that

00:40:23.520 masculinity made them more aggressive towards women, made them want to feel violent towards women.

00:40:28.980 And what we found was that the more that people thought that masculinity made them feel

00:40:34.300 violent towards women or made them even things like less likely to recycle all these things,

00:40:40.880 when they thought masculinity was having this negative impact on their behaviour,

00:40:44.580 this was quite strongly correlated to their mental wellbeing being lower. So it seems that this

00:40:50.260 negative view, I mean, I'm speculating here because we didn't test where these men got this idea from

00:40:55.080 about masculinity, although you might not have to speculate too much, but it seemed that having

00:41:00.340 these ideas was bad for your mental health. Conversely, the men who thought that masculinity

00:41:05.100 made them better providers for the family, made them better, made them more likely to want to protect

00:41:10.020 women. That was another thing. These men had better mental health. So this is, we have this kind of 0.63

00:41:15.940 parallel thing going on. The men who think that masculinity makes them behave in bad ways,

00:41:21.560 that their mental health is worse. And so I'm quite worried that a lot of this talk about toxic

00:41:26.260 masculinity that we've been exposed to for a while now is having a negative impact. And these were men,

00:41:32.600 I mean, these were adult men of all ages. And you just think about the impact on children growing up.

00:41:39.160 This is one thing that I think we should be very concerned about, because it's going to affect people

00:41:44.760 differently. And it's probably not a lot of it is going to be a good impact on children. So I really

00:41:51.640 worry about that because you're talking about stuff that could take a long time, if ever, for guys to

00:41:58.540 get over. So you've done a lot of research and a lot of writing about trying to figure out what

00:42:03.880 actually works in helping men and boys with their mental health. Because I think the typical response,

00:42:09.800 if a guy's having a problem, there's just a lot of encouragement to, you need to go talk about

00:42:14.320 your feelings with a therapist. And you said throughout this conversation, you talk about

00:42:18.300 in the book, for some men, that's exactly what they need to do. It works for them. But for a lot

00:42:22.460 of men, it doesn't. And it's not because something's wrong with them. It's just maybe that's just the

00:42:28.080 way they're wired. So generally, again, this is going to be every guy's different. Generally,

00:42:32.780 like what have you found that actually works in helping boys and men with their mental health?

00:42:38.060 Right. I wish there was more research on this. There is some research,

00:42:41.140 not as much as you would like. So the kinds of things that seem to help men is beyond the therapy

00:42:47.780 room. And I should just say that therapy is important for some conditions. Like if you're,

00:42:52.660 say, have a psychiatric condition, so like some psychosis, kind of schizophrenia, any of those

00:42:59.180 types of things, it's important that you see a qualified therapist. Very important. For more reactive

00:43:04.700 type depression, where like you have experience at a life event. So for example, family breakdown,

00:43:11.340 like you become divorced, and then you lose touch with your children, you're prevented from seeing

00:43:16.240 your children in many cases. This can be very distressing. And you may well want to go and see

00:43:21.440 a therapist about it, that may well help. But there's other things that guys often do too,

00:43:26.340 that are outside of usual therapy. I mean, it can, and again, I should emphasize that this isn't

00:43:32.940 going to work for everybody who's got a serious sort of mental health condition. But you can feel a

00:43:40.060 lot better from just doing everyday activities that you enjoy. So, you know, playing team sports is one

00:43:45.720 thing that there's been some research on. Roger Kingerley over here in the UK has found that playing

00:43:52.020 team sport and getting some sort of mentoring type support after us actually is quite beneficial for

00:43:58.740 men who are experiencing non-clinical levels of problems, mental health problems. There's been

00:44:05.100 some reasonably good research at this point on what's called men's sheds. Men's sheds is something 0.93

00:44:12.300 that started in Australia a couple of decades ago and started out just trying to get men who are socially

00:44:17.720 isolated to just come out and talk to each other a little bit. And what they did was get them to

00:44:22.780 fix garden furniture. So just getting together, fixing garden furniture. And without intending for

00:44:28.320 this to be any sort of solution to mental health issues, they found that very slowly, over a few

00:44:34.140 weeks or months, men would just have these kind of little conversations, nothing very big, no big

00:44:39.580 kind of dramatic sharing or anything like that. And these seem to really be quite useful in terms of

00:44:45.340 helping with their well-being. And since that time, there's been, it's one of these areas that doesn't

00:44:50.700 get a lot of funding. It's not really like men's mental health hasn't traditionally had very much

00:44:56.220 funding. And so there's not been kind of, there's a lot of the research is using kind of ad hoc instruments

00:45:03.480 rather than validated measures. But still, we have now got some evidence that these types of interventions

00:45:09.340 do seem to work. I mean, there's governments are now in different countries funding men's sheds of

00:45:16.580 various kinds. So it doesn't have to be about garden furniture. It can be about just getting

00:45:20.460 together and doing various little things without it being any kind of, without labeling it as being

00:45:26.500 therapy. And I think a lot of men don't want to go to something that's labeled therapy. And this is one

00:45:31.720 of the things, I mean, although therapy can be useful for men, and I wouldn't suggest that it isn't,

00:45:36.740 they get put off in a lot of cases by the idea of talking about their feelings as a way of solving

00:45:42.260 their problems. And I mean, there is research saying, a lot of research at this point, you know,

00:45:46.940 showing that men tend to prefer to deal with their problems by doing something practical to try and

00:45:52.320 fix them. Whereas women on average tend to want to talk about their feelings more. Men, I think it's 1.00

00:45:57.600 important. There's loads of things that men need to talk about these days. Partly they're prevented

00:46:02.500 from talking about, as I mentioned, in Germany, they got the hotline. Now, I mean, it's so to the

00:46:08.180 ridiculous degree, men are prevented in some ways from talking about what they really feel about. And

00:46:13.140 I think it's important that they do. But for a lot of men, going playing sports with their friends,

00:46:18.520 fixing a car with the friends who's hanging out, going fishing, even, and I'm not trying to encourage

00:46:23.880 anyone to drink to access or anything, but like even there is some evidence that going, having a couple of

00:46:29.440 drinks, like a couple of pints of beer with your friends, helps you to kind of just, you know,

00:46:34.080 feel a bit comfortable, talk about your feelings, talk about what's happening to you a little bit.

00:46:39.020 And that can be, you know, that can be quite a useful thing. So there's a lot of things that men

00:46:44.440 can do that are happening. And at a grassroots level, there's lots of things that people have

00:46:48.840 started looking at how going to a barbershop where men sit down and might start talking about

00:46:53.960 things. And that can be quite useful, or it can be quite a useful way of signposting men onto other

00:46:59.580 types of interventions if they're needed. But there's lots of different things that men can do.

00:47:05.480 But I, you know, I just think, I just wish that the field of psychology could sort of just pull

00:47:11.680 itself together and just say, okay, men are experiencing these issues. They're not these

00:47:16.760 privileged patriarchs, you know, they're having problems. It's not due to masculinity. Let's get 0.95

00:47:21.940 together and just see what we can do to help these men, these boys to get their lives on track.

00:47:27.420 It's going to be better for everybody. I mean, if you don't want to do it for men or boys,

00:47:31.700 for whatever reason, do it for the community. The community's got, that has healthy men and

00:47:37.320 healthy boys, that's going to be a better community.

00:47:40.200 Okay. So instead of necessarily encouraging men to go to therapy by default, what you're saying is

00:47:44.640 we got to meet men where they are. And for a lot of men, they just don't want to, you know,

00:47:49.080 dedicate an hour to just talking. But if, you know, so if a guy doesn't want to go to therapy,

00:47:53.200 what they should be doing instead is getting together with other men in groups, doing some

00:47:57.700 sort of activity. And I mean, that could be like exercise. It could be sitting in a sauna,

00:48:03.080 working on a car, whatever. And so, you know, find a group of men who does that sort of thing

00:48:08.260 regularly. And, you know, like what's going to happen is those activities, it's going to naturally

00:48:13.480 facilitate conversation while you're doing the activity. But then also there's just something

00:48:16.920 therapeutic about doing the thing, right? Exercising feels good. Working with your hands feels good.

00:48:21.960 And that could help a lot of men. And then when, let's say a guy does decide to go to therapy,

00:48:26.660 I think what you're saying, what the research suggests and what you're arguing in your work

00:48:30.520 is that make it guy friendly. So most guys, they're all about solving your problems. They

00:48:35.920 might go to a therapist, like, look, I have a problem with my anger. What can I do about it?

00:48:38.960 They don't want to spend an hour like going through their childhood and trying to figure out

00:48:42.660 the source or like, there's like, okay, I have this issue. What can I do? Like, give me something I

00:48:46.300 can do to start working on this now. And that can be a helpful way to reach men.

00:48:51.960 Absolutely. And of course, it can lead, as others have pointed out, it can lead to other

00:48:58.580 stuff that's going to, I mean, basically, if your problems are rooted in childhood, you

00:49:04.440 will need to deal with them in some sort of way. But you can deal with it in a practical

00:49:08.880 way too, or a way that's framed as being practical rather than framed as being, let's do, you know,

00:49:15.280 an hour a week for the next two years talking about, you know, how you feel about your mum and

00:49:19.420 dad, you know, for a lot of guys, it's just not what they want to do. So I think we have

00:49:22.920 to, you know, we have to, to some degree, meet people where they're at, give them something

00:49:28.320 of what they want. I think where we have to go to, I think, with a lot of this is making

00:49:33.280 guys realize that when they go to whoever they go to, that they're not going to be judged

00:49:38.180 out of hand and kind of misunderstood. I think empathy is the key for all this. So like, whether

00:49:44.540 it's a shed or whether it's CBT or no matter what you're talking about, like what way you're doing

00:49:50.480 your therapy, empathy is the cornerstone of it all. I mean, for, if you look at research on therapies

00:49:56.320 to see how, like, what's the most important aspect of a therapy? Is it, is it the modality that,

00:50:01.920 you know, what is it about sharing feelings or discussing ideas, whatever it is. The key thing

00:50:07.180 is the therapeutic alliance. Like, in other words, the rapport that you have with your client

00:50:13.480 or with your therapist, you know, that's the cornerstone of it. And my fear is that you're

00:50:18.040 going to just, we've already lost so many men to just not even wanting to begin to develop

00:50:25.180 any therapeutic alliance with any therapist because they've been frightened off already.

00:50:30.980 I think that research is really interesting. You know, it really doesn't matter what kind of

00:50:34.580 therapy you choose. It's effective if you feel like you have a good rapport with your therapist,

00:50:40.180 because I mean, I'm really at the end of the day, I think a lot of people, they just need someone to

00:50:44.160 talk to, right? They want to feel understood and listened to. So look for a therapist you feel

00:50:49.340 comfortable with, someone who doesn't seem to be judging you. You know, maybe you don't get the

00:50:53.740 vibe from them that they think your masculinity is a problem that needs to be changed and you can feel

00:50:59.000 like you can open up to them. And you know, that's the most important thing. Well, John, this has been a

00:51:03.440 great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

00:51:06.600 Right. So there's a couple of things for people in general, and also for therapists of various kinds,

00:51:11.960 for psychologists, for people working in charities that might be helping them. There's the Center for

00:51:16.580 Male Psychology. Now, this is something that we set up about three years ago. Now, we've got various

00:51:21.920 sources of information on there. We have a magazine, the Male Psychology magazine. We also have a new

00:51:26.980 online course, which I hope addresses a lot of the gap that we have in people's understanding of

00:51:33.360 men's mental health issues and also things around sex and gender. There's a lot of misunderstandings

00:51:39.140 there too. So we address these issues and we've got it in a nice package. We've got like five hours

00:51:44.480 of lectures and videos. And this is approved by the British Psychological Society for continuing

00:51:50.140 professional development. So it's a kind of a, you know, a good standard, but it's also made

00:51:54.760 accessible. So something that I've learned is really important. When you're talking about male

00:51:59.000 psychology, very often you're talking to the general public who are wondering about, you know,

00:52:04.220 the source of help, what they can do, how they can best understand things. And often the general public

00:52:09.680 already have quite a good understanding so that they will really enjoy engaging in this sort of higher

00:52:15.760 level kind of academic, but digestible and easy to understand format that we have. So if you're,

00:52:21.420 if say, if you're working with men, you can think about how the various information that you're

00:52:27.580 receiving in the CPD course, how that impacts your day-to-day work with men. Like, should you be doing

00:52:33.760 something differently? Have you been thinking about things in too narrow a way? Or if you're, say, a woman

00:52:40.680 who's, you know, married to somebody and you don't really understand that maybe have moves or behaviors,

00:52:45.740 you can reflect on how those might be understandable and, you know, easier to deal with if you engage

00:52:54.040 with them in a different sort of way. So we're hoping that we get a lot of people who really

00:52:59.180 benefit from this new course that we've got. All right. Well, John Barry, thanks for your time.

00:53:03.200 It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Brett, for asking me.

00:53:06.680 My guest here is Dr. John Barry. He's the co-author of the book Perspectives in Male Psychology.

00:53:10.560 It's available on amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website,

00:53:13.860 johnbarrypsychologist.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash male psych.

00:53:25.740 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Every week, Kate and I work hard to

00:53:30.220 distill interesting and actual insights from the authors and leaders in a variety of fields and

00:53:34.400 present them in an engaging, fluff and filler-free episode that comes in under an hour. If you get

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The Art of Manliness - April 10, 2023

What the World of Psychology Gets Wrong About Men

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