cover image Men Talk: 2how Men Really Feel about Women, Sex, Relationships, and Themselves

Men Talk: 2how Men Really Feel about Women, Sex, Relationships, and Themselves

Alvin S. Baraff. Dutton Books, $18.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-525-93328-1

Baraff founded the only psychotherapy center devoted exclusively to men's issues, MenCenter in Washington, D.C. Here he recounts 24 therapy sessions with one group at that facility. This venture into pop psychology stresses that U.S. males are frequently reluctant to express emotion and are victims of socially prescribed roles in other ways as well--unlikely to be news to the reader. Most of the members of Baraff's group (which began with six men and dwindled to four) are revealed as caring individuals, quite willing to undergo psychological pain to face truths about themselves. Although their travails are of mild intellectual interest, they fail to engage the reader's emotions.The result is a generally unsatisfactory book. (Aug.)