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Studies in Gender and Sexuality 2(1):3–28, 2001
Faggot = Loser
Ken Corbett, Ph.D.
This essay investigates the projectile force and projective work of the designation faggot by examining a clinical moment during which a child patient called me a “faggot.” Particular attention is paid to the defensive function that “faggot” played in this boy’s effort to disavow smallness and losing. I use his specific dilemma to consider the more general boyhood quest to be big and winning. Focusing on the ways in which boys defend against the anxiety generated by the big–small divide, I argue for the clinical engagement of these defenses, including aggressive protest, bravado, and phallic narcissistic preoccupation. I propose engaging boys in the difficult process of thirdness as a psychic venue that offers a context of growth within which to cathect boys’ anxiety and aggression. Such cathexis stands in contrast to the manner in which boys’ narcissistic preoccupations and aggression are simultaneously prized and neglected through the “boys will be boys” approach to masculinity. Boys’ aggression, which so often conceals their anxiety about losing, is neither adequately contained nor engaged. They are left to adopt a brittle bravado and to relate through control and domination. One routine form of bravado and domination is the contemptuous use of the word faggot. I conclude with some speculative thoughts about how the anxiety of loss that is initially managed through the diffuse projection of “faggot” might develop into a more specific form of hatred: homophobia.
Ken Corbett, Ph. D. is Coeditor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality. He is a member of the New York University Psychoanalytic Society of the Postdoctoral Program. 3 © 2001 The Analytic Press Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
4 Ken Corbett
here I grew up, it was faggot this, faggot that, faggot any- “Wwhere, faggot everywhere” (Wolf, 1999). The failures and the losses that “faggot” pronounces are multiple: losing hold of one’s proper gender; failing to perform one’s fitting sexuality; failing to be the right race (either majority or minority); failing to display the proper amount of intelligence (either too much or too little); failing to be the proper age (either too young or too old); failing to present popular or idealized social codes, including markers of class and class distinction; failing by virtue of physical injury or loss; failing to embody physical strength; failing to be the appropriate physical size or to exemplify acknowledged beauty; failing to win; failing because of seemingly random slippages or losses.1 The ubiquity of the word faggot speaks to the reach of its discrediting capacity. “Faggot” has become the all-purpose put down. You can be a faggot because you are homosexual. You can be a faggot because you drop your keys. “Faggot” can be a momentary appellation; it can mark how one is perceived as failing at normative expectations (based on hierarchies of excellence and value) at play in any given moment. In Oliver Stone’s 1999 film Any Given Sunday, a third-string quarterback is called into a football game. He vomits as he steps onto the field. Customarily, quarterbacks are expected to create anxiety, not give evidence of feeling it. The coach of the opposing team yells across the field to his competitor, “Hey, Joe, where’d you get the faggot?” “Faggot” can also be a more lasting designation for those who are perceived to consistently fail normative expectations.
1 The ironic use of the word faggot serves to redouble its (already) multiple uses. “Faggot” can be turned on its head and used as the precise opposite of the uses indicated here. For example, “faggot” can be directed at the winner of a competition. “Faggot” also has been rebelliously reappropriated by those for whom the term was intended. They then repeatedly and defiantly invoke its linkage with failure, indictment, and scorn. It can be employed with either defiance or affectionate good humor to celebrate the very losses and failures that are supposed to provoke shame and disgrace. While duly noting these ironic turns, and the manner in which a scorned group may ironically appropriate the very name that is used to humiliate them, I focus within this essay on the nonironic uses of “faggot.” Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 5
Following the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, a New York Times reporter interviewed a group of eight students. At one point in the interview, the students talked about how the gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were taunted by others: Meg: They’d call them freaks, weirdos, faggots. It was just stupid name calling, acting like little children. It’s like my cousins come home, they’re only two and three, and they come home and start calling me names, calling each other names like butt-head and all these things. They [Harris and Klebold] probably couldn’t handle it. Devon: People called them fags. People thought they were gay. And that’s not right. I mean, even if they were—and which, they’re not—it’s not right to say that. Dustin: When they call them fag, I think it’s a slang term for, like, loser. I don’t think they really meant that. They were like nerds [New York Times, 1999, p. A27].
This group of students point out how “faggot” has become unhinged from its customary meaning–a derogatory term for homosexual. Harris and Klebold, as these students understood them, were not homosexuals; they were alienated losers. Their alienation was perceived, at least in part, as a consequence of their manifest rejection of popular codes/ideals and the manner in which they repeatedly failed to adopt cultural standards of distinction and value. Harris and Klebold’s difference was persistently viewed as evidence of what they never had/lacked/ lost. Whether momentary or lasting, whether diffuse or specifically linked with homosexuality, faggot = loser. Faggot expels the anxiety of loss; the loss is projected into another and thereby kept from consciousness. Faggot operates as a projectile. Faggot is something to be caught, absorbed, or def lected. One of the Columbine students articulated the projectile force of faggot when he said, “I can see how these guys [Harris and Klebold] could have easily caught a lot of, not always physical abuse, but just verbal” (New York Times, 1999, p. A27). In this essay I examine a clinical moment during which a child patient called me a faggot. I situate this clinical moment within Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
6 Ken Corbett
the broader frame of my work with this boy and his family. Central to this boy’s treatment was his experience of himself as small and losing, not big and winning. Particular attention is given to the defensive function that “faggot” played in relation to this boy’s effort to disavow smallness/losing as he sought the agency of bigness/winning. I use his specific dilemma and the manner in which it was refracted in his particular family in order to consider the more general boyhood quest to be big and winning, not small and losing. I use the terms small and losing as virtually equivalent. Concrete thinking would lead us to treat them as distinct; my work with young boys, however, has led me to consider these states as symbolically linked, indeed conflated within the psychic reality of boyhood. My work with young boys also leads me to posit the wish and effort to be a big winner, not a small loser as a central boyhood trope. Many boys and men respond to the threat of smallness/losing with bravado and aggressive protest, which is often embodied through a kind of phallic intrusion/illusion: an insistent, illusory display of bigness and agency that is coupled with an equally unrestrained contempt for smallness and lack. In the spirit of “boys will be boys,” bravado, aggressive protest, and illusory phallic narcissism have become defining, normative attributes of masculinity. I argue for the active clinical engagement of boys’ phallic narcissistic preoccupation and the anxiety and splitting that shadow this preoccupation. I argue also for the active cathexis of the muscular aggression (both the dogged mental muscularity of narcissism and the persistent physical pitch and push of childhood) that often propels such preoccupation and anxiety. Following Fonagy and Target (1996a, b), I propose engaging boys in the difficult process of thirdness as a psychic venue that offers a context of growth within which to actively cathect their anxiety and aggression. I am using “thirdness” here to capture the lively three-way connection that binds a child and the parental couple, and the manner in which that triangular bond allows all three members to simultaneously be participants and observers (Fonagy and Target, 1996a, b). I pay particular heed to the combustion and cathexis that arises through this unique process of attachment and observation. Such active engagement Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 7
and cathexis stands in contrast to the manner in which boys’ narcissistic preoccupations and aggression are simultaneously prized and neglected through the “boys will be boys” approach to masculinity. Consequent to this cultural trope, boys’ aggression, which so often conceals their anxiety about losing, is neither adequately contained nor engaged. Their aggression and anxiety are not balanced through object cathexis or through the equilibrative experience of pleasure and loss that is characteristic of triangular opportunities. The equilibration to which I refer is configured on the balance and negotiation internal to object relations, including the vicissitudes of loss and recovery, the interpersonal push and pull of will, and the intricate mechanics of mutuality. Boys are left to run amok, left to adopt a brittle defensive bravado, left to relate through control and domination.2 One routine form of bravado and domination is the contemptuous use of the word faggot. While noting how faggot
2 Gender is, among its many facets, an organizing concept. As such, it func- tions to classify and generalize. Patterns are noted. Patterns are perpetuated. Yet patterns can exist only with variance. Therefore, the conditions and pathologies of boyhood and masculinity that I describe in this essay must be offset by an equal and opposing appreciation for the possibility of variance. Boyhoods are as various as boys. I am attempting here to speak about a particular pattern of gender pathology—one that can be observed culturally as well as clinically, one that I have observed in a variety of ways in my clinical work with young boys. While there is, I believe, value in this effort, there is also the folly of genera- lization, a frequent folly where the subject of gender is concerned and one that I am loathe to perpetuate. In the course of this essay, I am attempting to combat generalization by focusing on one boy and the individual particularity of his family, as well as the individual particularity of the transference–countertransference of our clinical work. Yet, I present this boy as an exaggerated version of a cultural norm. I use his “story” to exemplify the cultural trope of “boys will be boys.” I also move from his story to speculate on the psychic consequences of the typical neglect I suggest follows on the “boys will be boys” trope. In moving from this one boy’s story (ref lected and refracted through my work with other young boys) to speculations regarding cultural conditions, I can only lay claim to the veracity of deduction—a f lawed route to “truth,” at best. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
8 Ken Corbett
has become unhinged from its customary meaning, I consider how it continues to carry the anxiety of loss that is attached to the homosexual. I conclude with some speculative thoughts about how the anxiety of loss that is initially managed through the diffuse projection of faggot may develop into a more specific form of hatred: homophobia.
PROJECTING “FAGGOT”
The “boys will be boys” approach to male development ref lects a pervasive reluctance to examine certain forms of male aggression. It also ref lects the way in which masculinity has been undertheorized and insufficiently problematized. In particular, the “boys will be boys” approach masks the masculine dilemma regarding the threat of losing. Consider the dilemma of losing illustrated in the following clinical material taken from a play therapy session with a six- year-old boy. Josh was referred for treatment following repeated outbursts of disruptive and aggressive behavior at school. These disruptive outbursts were often followed by equally intense periods of sullen withdrawal and apparent sadness. His parents described similar behaviors at home and in particular noted how these behaviors were more pronounced in relation to his much older brother. In many ways, Josh’s family was a house divided. His parents brought him for treatment at the suggestion of their couples therapist. In our initial consultation, both parents spoke of their fear regarding the “breakdown” of their marriage as well as of their family. For the past two years, the father had been traveling a great deal; he was generally away from home at least two weeks of every month. The mother felt angry and overwhelmed by having to bear the lion’s share of parenting responsibilities. She was equally dispirited by her efforts to balance her own work with the demands of family life. She became especially anxious when the two boys fought. In her eyes, these fights represented the breakdown of their family life. The father, for his part, expressed a mix of guilt and divided loyalty. He was grappling with having “abandoned” his family while wrestling with his “selfish” desire for the worldly pleasure provided by his work. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 9
Importantly, both parents recalled greater harmony in the early years of raising their first son. In effect, they described a first- versus second-family divide. The two boys were separated by eight years. The parents described how the added responsibility of a second child, coupled with the ways in which their careers had become more demanding, overwhelmed their efforts toward harmony. While they enjoyed a greater degree of economic freedom (and in the father’s case a greater sense of accomplishment), they nevertheless felt less involved with both of their children and with one another. They described having less energy and “mental space” for the children. They felt that this lack of mental space was especially true for Josh, who, as the younger child, made different demands on their attention. This lack of energy seemed especially apparent in response to Josh’s aggression: the mother described herself as implosively turning in and away, while the father reacted with a kind of overbearing silence. The household was further divided along the axis of physical size. Bigness and activity were prized in contrast to smallness and passivity. The older brother was linked with the father, who was a large and imposing man. Josh was linked with his mother, who was small in stature (a fact made all the more apparent in contrast to her husband’s physicality). The brother had just entered a prestigious and very competitive high school when Josh entered first grade. He bore a striking resemblance to the father. They shared many common interests and, like the father, the older brother was involved in numerous after-school activities that kept him away from home. Josh, on the other hand, was struggling in school and was linked with his mother’s younger brother, a young man of small stature, who was seen as “hot-headed” and who had a history of “casting about.” Josh, his uncle, and his mother were further linked through their “habit of frustration.” Their blend of irritation and persistence was described with a mix of admiration (for their determination) and sadness (for their lack of satisfaction) and was contrasted with the ease attributed to the father and brother. The hour I describe here began in the waiting room, with Josh’s mother instructing him to return a toy that he had apparently taken from my office. Josh sheepishly produced from his front pocket a blue plastic knife that did in fact belong to Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
10 Ken Corbett
my toy kitchen set. I nodded and said that we could talk about his having taken it when we got into the office. Once inside, I suggested that he must have really wanted to have the knife for his very own. He concurred with a nod of his head. I asked if maybe he was embarrassed, to which he also concurred with a nod. He then suggested that we play a game with which he had been preoccupied for many sessions. The game comprised the following roles: Josh was a spy, who always had the plastic knife in his rear pocket, partially visible. I was given the role of the spy’s younger brother, whose primary motivation was to get the knife. Josh would direct us through this drama in a variety of ways. Today the plot centered on the younger brother’s efforts to trick and distract the older spy brother, so that the younger brother could make off with the knife. Importantly, though, the younger brother was never to succeed; he was consistently foiled and was left empty handed. As I inquired about the younger brother’s feelings and motivations, so that I would know how to play his part, I became aware that Josh was more interested in embodying the role and motivations of the prepossessing older brother. He was not interested in talking about the younger brother’s experience. I was, at this point in our work together, quite familiar with the role of younger brother and gave voice to “my” experience of frustration at not having and not being able to get what the older brother had. I sputtered angrily, I pouted, and I bitterly complained about the state of being small. I also suggested that the younger brother might feel embarrassed to be seen as so angry and upset–that he was mad about wanting so much, upset to be seen as wanting, and possibly embarrassed to be caught trying to take what he wanted. I knew that these more abstract comments would not have the same effect as those which could be expressed within the play. But I wanted at least to hint at a move from the play to Josh’s experience of having taken the knife from my playroom. At this point in the hour, Josh turned from the knife drama and suggested that we play a board game that is intended for older children. I explained that the game might be difficult, but Josh was insistent. So we set about playing. He quickly grew frustrated and voiced his fear that he was going to lose. At one point, as I moved a game piece toward the finish line and it seemed that I was going to win, Josh muttered, “Faggot.” Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 11
There was a pause. Eventually, I said, “I guess you really wanted to win.”3 Josh tersely replied, “It’s just a word.” There was another pause, and then he added, “My brother calls me that.” I said, “I see.” Then I asked, “Why does he say that?” Josh responded, “I don’t know.” I said, “You don’t know. But how do you feel when Jed calls you that?” “Mad,” Josh answered.
3 My thoughts and feelings reeled in several directions at this point. I experienced the stunned blankness of injury, while simultaneously attempting to regain my footing in order to ref lect on what had occurred. As is so often the case through the force of projection, I found myself weighing the correctness of the accusation/attribution: Had he perceived that I was gay? Had I somehow been a “faggot” in winning an unfair competition? Was I a “faggot” for trying to empathize with his experience? In yet another, neighboring region of my mind, I came up against my anxiety over being a man who works with children, and an openly gay one at that. Recently, a father of another child, in a moment of intense feeling, expressed his concern that I was a pedophile. Stunned and stung, I once again felt the force of hate. And, once again, I weighed the hateful perception: Did he understand that I was gay, and did he therefore make the unfounded and irrational link with pedophilia? Had I expressed some inappropriate degree of affection for his child? (I recalled touching his son’s head in the waiting room as I said goodbye). We came to understand that this “moment of hate” (the father’s phrase) was born of the father’s envy of my apparent ease with children and my willingness to engage them at their level. We came also to understand that he did suspect that I was gay (a fact that was then confirmed when aspects of my private life were made public in a newspaper article). In the spirit of our psychotherapeutic endeavor, we worked with his projections and perceptions to understand better his relationship with his son, and in this respect our work was not extraordinary. There is, however, an extraordinary vulnerability for men working with children, which is even greater for gay men working with children. This vulnerability is overdetermined and highly idiosyncratic, and this is not the juncture at which to address this phenomenon in detail. I will simply note that my experience has led me to ref lect on how this vulnerability, built as it has been on my own experience of being hated, requires a particular kind of countertransference forebearance—a particular capacity to sustain multiple states of mind that allows me to experience the shame of being hated while simultaneously (or most likely retrospectively) thinking through the shame of being hated. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
12 Ken Corbett
I said, “It’s a word that makes you mad. It sort of stings, doesn’t it?” “Yeah,” Josh replied. “When Jed calls you that, do you also feel bad–sort of small and bad?” I asked. Josh nodded. I added, “Sort of like me in the blue knife game.” Josh nodded again. I ventured that he might feel hurt and mad when he was put down. He concurred, saying, “I hate him. He thinks he’s the boss of everything.” I replied, “Your brother sure does make you mad,” and then I added, “But do you think you also might want to be like him– big like him? And be close to him? Like in the blue knife game?” Josh allowed that he was mad but was insistent that he did not like his brother nor did he wish to be like him. I asserted here that it was hard to figure out how to be big, especially if you have a big brother and an even bigger father. At this point, Josh asked to play a game that had become a mainstay of his repertoire. We called this game “Block Tower Baseball.” Josh was the batter. I was alternately the fielder and the sports announcer, who would interview Josh about his accomplishments at bat. The interviews would focus on his prowess and his strength. He would swagger over to the mike and grant terse recognition of my laudatory comments. Today, as usual, Josh built a block tower and then toppled it with a large, long block. The number of runs scored was equal to the number of blocks that fell. Grand slams were especially sought after and would necessitate an “instant interview.” Early into today’s game, Josh scored a grand slam. During the instant interview, I suggested that he wanted to show those blocks “who was big–the big boss.” He puffed up his chest and said, “Yep.” During this phase of the treatment, I made only occasional links between Josh’s experience in the play and his own family experience. I felt it best to wait for him to provide such linking. It was some time before these links were made. When he did make these links, I believe they followed, in large measure, on work I did with his parents (which I describe later). Poignantly, when Josh did begin to speak more directly about his father and brother, he exclaimed at one point, “They don’t understand. I wanted to be the biggest.” Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 13
I have purposely chosen an hour from the beginning of Josh’s treatment to illustrate how the dilemma of bigness was expressed and solved through splitting: one was either big or small, strong or weak, a winner or a loser. Firm lines were drawn. Josh spent much of his time during this period of his treatment struggling either to represent bigness and strength or to win bigness and strength–even if it had to be stolen. Loss was strictly managed. Play was rigidly scripted, so that loss was always on the other side. Such scripting required a loser, the role to which I was consistently assigned (as in the blue knife drama). When loss did occur (as in the board game), it was shed and turned outward – projected into the other. In the course of this hour, loss was expelled by the projectile, “Faggot.” Josh was not the loser. I was the faggot. The displacement of the painful anxiety and loss was aided by a “simultaneous strategy of (dis)identificatory aversion and buttressing identification” (Moss, 1992, p. 286). Loss was lodged in another, as Josh moved toward a valued (though clearly conflicted) identification with his brother. He stole “faggot” from his brother, just as he strove to steal what he saw as his brother’s strength. A similar identificatory move can be noted in his apparent wish to appropriate what he saw as my strength (or to take a valued part of me) in his act of taking the play knife. This dynamic is then repeated in the blue knife drama wherein I, as younger brother, was instructed to try to steal the older brother’s knife. Such identificatory maneuvers allowed Josh to locate smallness and loss on the other side, while he positioned himself on the side of victory and bigness. In so doing, he repeatedly strove to create a distinct border between a small and defeated “you” and a big and victorious “me.” But borders need constant patrol. As Moss aptly reminds us, “The (dis)identificatory border is porous” (p. 285). The anxieties that are to be averted through (dis)identification have a way of sneaking back. “Sneaking” is operative here; the manner in which the anxieties sneak back is in keeping with the “sneakiness” of the act of identification. Josh sneaks toward identification through various acts of appropriation and stealing. Identification is never fully claimed, is even denied. If he were to identify openly with a winner, he might risk being a loser (risk being small and in need) or risk the possibility that winning and losing can exist outside a dynamic of splitting. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
14 Ken Corbett
Instead, Josh made repeated and consistent efforts to define the border and to sustain the split. He was a vigilant border guard, persistently fending off the anxiety of losing. Our roles as winner and loser were rigidly defined and controlled. The “play” in play was burdened by his rigid and paranoid vigilance. I often experienced the insistent thrust and grip of domination. At times my every move was controlled, and I was not allowed to voice anything other than that which was scripted by Josh. To further aid and abet his border patrol, Josh repeatedly inflated his bigness and strength. Consider how he moved to Block Tower Baseball following his loss at the board game. The goal of his performance in the baseball game was adoration. Ross (1986) has linked such performances with machismo: “It is a dance whose aim it is to be applauded. The exhibitor reassures himself of the viability of his pretenses to virility while others ref lect back to him and, in the process, magnify his machismo” (p. 65). Josh enacted a macho victory in Block Tower Baseball through a kind of tumescent hammering. Not only did he seek through such acts to bolster his bigness, but he also sought to disavow his experience of loss. He would not allow any expression of caring or empathy in the face of defeat; to do so, he would have to cross the win–lose divide. He might also have to see himself as small and in need. Remember that he moved to Block Tower Baseball after I offered my thoughts about the difficulty he was experiencing relative to his quest to be big. In response, he became the big, hard victor, and not the small, soft baby.
PHALLIC NARCISSISM— PHALLIC ILLUSION
The exhibitionistic vigor and desire for adoration that fueled Josh’s performance is not unusual for a boy his age. Nor is it particularly unusual for a boy this age to engage in play that is colored by a kind of machismo or aggrandized exhibitionism and active pleasure. Such machismo is often set in direct opposition to smallness or babyness. As one boy put it to me recently, “Who wants to be the stupid baby!” Along similar lines, I am repeatedly struck by the amount of derision and abuse Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 15
that befalls the baby doll in my office as boys seek to distance themselves from it.4 I am focusing here on the defensive aspects of boyhood bravado. I hope at another juncture to address this phenomenon more fully and to consider what might be called the positive valence of such exhibitionistic vigor. Who among us has not been charmed by the phallic posturing of young boys? These exhibitions are, after all, often presented as acts of seduction: “Look at me, and admire me as the bigness that you desire.” One would be positively churlish—and would deprive oneself of the pleasure of being the admirer/desirer—always to resist. Moreover, as befits acts of seduction, however clumsy and lacking in finesse, these exhibitions are shot through with the vitality of yearning and a quest toward relating. Josh’s desire for admiration was, however, burdened by an unusual degree of vigor and vigilance. The seductive arc of his play was interrupted by his persistent anxiety regarding the possibility of loss. In this way, Josh affords us an enhanced or exaggerated view of a set of dynamics that have been said to characterize the psychic terrain of boyhood. Historically, these dynamics have been theorized through the classical psychoanalytic vocabulary of castration and phallic narcissism. This vocabulary has been persuasively critiqued and characterized as fossilized–a wooly mammoth trapped midstride in Miocene ooze. Yet I still find particular aspects of the classical vocabulary (despite its hardened lapses and crusty gaps) to have a certain utility. I find this classical vocabulary to be necessary but insufficient. While I employ the concepts of phallic narcissism and castration, I am mindful of their limits. To name a few: these concepts (1) circulate in a discourse that promotes a narrowed focus on the penis as opposed to locating the boy’s relationship to his penis (both in pleasure and conf lict) within the broader bodily eroticism that more aptly characterizes boyhood; (2) promote phallic monism; (3) encourage a view that elides gender and
4 See Ross (1996), who argues that such behavior is in line with boys’ efforts to disavow their longings to be a mother or a mother’s baby. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
16 Ken Corbett
the sexed body; (4) highlight children’s experiences of difference while virtually ignoring their experiences of similarity; (5) prize the developmental achievements of activity while overlooking the developmental possibilities of passivity; and (6) overemphasize boys’ conflicts with genital difference (penis– vagina) while underestimating their conflicts with generational difference (big–small). Regarding generational difference, my experience in working with young boys suggests that this conf lict is often far more pronounced than the conflicts they experience around genital difference. The issue is not so much who has a penis and who does not, but who has a big, agentic penis and who does not. Along these lines, I have often found the notion of penis envy to be more useful in thinking about male development than about female development. Given these caveats (considerable though they be), the concepts of phallic narcissism and castration fear can still be utilized to understand what might be called the phallic quest that pervaded the hour I have just reported. An especially intriguing expression of this quest can be found in the symbolism and function of the knife. To begin, the knife is pocketed. It is literally and repeatedly put into a pocket: presumably, Josh pocketed the knife when taking it from the office; he produces the knife from his pocket in the waiting room; the older brother in the blue knife drama offers a tempting display of the knife in his rear pocket. Calling to mind Mae West’s famous quip, Josh simultaneously draws our attention to the penis and accentuates his own narcissistic interest in it. This narcissistic interest is further expressed in the ways in which the knife is an object of desire. It is displayed as a taunting and desired object that is out of reach. One either has it, or tries to get it. There is a sadistic edge to this taunting, narcissistic display. But never in the game does the knife become a weapon, nor is it ever wielded in a threatening manner. The desirability of the knife contrasts with the way in which the block-bat in the baseball game serves as an instrument of attack. This shift, which occurs following Josh’s loss at the board game, might be understood as a move from phallic narcissistic interest or desire (the blue knife) to a sadistic, phallic defense (the block-bat) in the face of loss. The projectile force of the word faggot can be understood along similar lines: “faggot” Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 17
functions, like the block-bat, to strike at and fend off the threat of loss. The knife was “pocketed” in yet another manner: it was stolen, once from my office, and again in the many attempts at stealing that became the heart of the knife game. As such, the penis can be taken. Here we might question whether Josh was enacting his fear of castration or his feeling that, in order to have the phallus, he would have to steal it from another. The need to steal could be interpreted as generated by castration. Along these lines, addressing his push toward appropriation proved most helpful in addressing Josh’s anxiety. I worked to understand how his quest for phallic agency had been curtailed within his family: how he had not been afforded opportunities to consolidate the bodily and erotic pleasures that characterize phallic activity. We spoke of this dilemma as his “wish to be big” versus his “worry that he wouldn’t have a chance to get big.” For example, I pointed toward the way in which he so often dominated the play as indicative of his “worry that I might take over” or “that I won’t let you be the one who gets to lead.” I also sought to understand how he had not been provided with equally important opportunities to metabolize his experiences of loss, and I began to comment on his efforts to avoid or disavow loss. We spoke mostly of these efforts as “cheating,” but with time we were able to speak more directly about how he tried to “act big” when he lost at something like a game. I sought to locate his phallic quest and his efforts to equilibrate pleasure and loss within certain family dynamics: his father’s frequent absences, his mother’s anger and anxiety, and his competition with his brother. A vantage point on this dynamic was offered through the recurrent play themes of stealing and spying. Recall that the older brother in the knife game was a spy and that the younger brother was attempting to steal the older spy/brother’s knife. I understood this play to be a portrayal of the older brother’s ability to see into another world and, through that act of seeing, to garner power, authority, and autonomy. The powerless younger brother, on the other hand, could only attempt to steal the phallus, and fail. Following Britton (1989) and Fonagy and Target (1996a, b), I approached this theme as an expression of Josh’s experience of oedipal triangulation. As the fourth, Josh stood outside the Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
18 Ken Corbett
triangle of his mother-father-brother–outside the triangle of the first family. He was having great difficulty creating his own useable oedipal triangle. From the sidelines, he repeatedly enacted a dynamic of thwarted rivalry, which usually consisted of efforts to steal power through a kind of intrusive, illusory agency. He had limited experience with triangular opportunities, either as a participant in a relationship being observed by another or as an observer of a relationship between two others. Consequently, his world was made secure, not through the creation of a benign space wherein one could be observed or thought about, but through relations that were rigidly controlled and dominated. He attempted to engage others through a kind of physicality and aggression as opposed to the possibilities of mentalization and observation (cf. Fonagy, Moran, and Target, 1993). His aggression and quest for phallic strength were not balanced through object cathexis or through the equilibrative experience of pleasure and loss that is characteristic of triangular opportunities. Instead, his aggression ran amok. To a large extent, when he entered treatment, Josh felt his brother to be his only usable object–an object, however, who could neither promote nor tolerate such object use, especially given its destructive and libidinal reach. Josh’s relationship with his brother, both as enacted in the play and as it was lived in daily life, provided me with something of a bridge to engage Josh’s parents in a therapeutic dialogue about his experience of neglect. To a considerable extent, the therapeutic action that developed in working with Josh occurred within this parental dialogue. In particular, I set out to understand the effects of his father’s absence and his mother’s anxiety. In conjunction with work undertaken in the course of their couples treatment, the parents began to grasp how the father’s absence made manifest a growing alienation within the couple. That insight led to the further understanding that, as they turned away from each other, they also turned away from their children. Left with two parents, each absent in his or her way, Josh was without parental objects that he could actively use. As I indicated earlier, this parental absence was further manifested in the overburdened and explosive sibling relationship. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 19
Additionally, once again, through work done principally in couples treatment, the mother began to question whether she was depressed. We were able to see how she had moved into an avoidant position whence she felt great injustice and limited capacity to change. She could feel especially “helpless” and “in the dark” with the children and spoke of her guilt over leaving Josh to the care of his older brother. Both parents felt it likely that her depression predated the father’s acceptance of his current job and that they had most likely concurred in his taking the job as a way to avoid facing her depression. The mother entered her own psychotherapy and sought psychopharmaco- logical treatment as well. The parents’ increased understanding along these lines led the father to curtail his travel schedule in order to be at home more, a move that appeared motivated by his wish to recoup his marriage and be more available to his children. In addition, both parents arranged to spend more time with Josh on their own. I persisted, though, with both parents to draw them into an understanding of Josh’s needs on the plane of psychic action. We worked in a manner that was sometimes psychoeducational and at other times more dynamic. Underscoring my efforts was my conviction that Josh needed parents he could actively use. I explained that I thought it likely that his aggression and anxiety stemmed, at least in part, from neglect. I encouraged the parents to more directly contain and redress Josh’s anxiety and aggression. We worked toward their being able to speak with Josh about his behavior and help him give voice to his fears so that he could see himself as well. For example, as opposed to simply intervening in order to stop the boys from fighting, I worked with the parents to help them “scan” the situation: What was it about the circumstances that provoked the fight? What was it about the arc of the day? What might have provoked or upset Josh? In particular, had something happened that might lead to his feeling diminished or humiliated? If so, might there be a way to recover? By helping the parents to focus on Josh’s experience, I sought to invite them into considering his mind: What did they think was on his mind? How did his mind look–was it crowded by anxiety, was it open? What were the contents of his mind? How might his generally aggressive outwardness cloud his capacity Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
20 Ken Corbett
to look inward? Through such questioning, I was attempting to illustrate how children come into their minds through processes of mutuality and intersubjective recognition. Guided here by Benjamin’s (1988) documentation of the ways in which the breakdown of mother–son mutuality can lead to sadism and violence, I was especially keen to promote greater mutuality between Josh and his mother. Key to our work in this regard were discussions about how the mother’s fear of loss (the fear that she had lost hold of herself and her family) had interfered with her ability to “tune into” Josh’s experience; instead of engaging his anxiety, talking about his fears, and helping him to mentalize his mind, she had defensively drawn into herself and away from his mind. Along similar lines, I posed Josh’s need to observe others in order to be able to see himself. I suggested that in so seeing he would come to appreciate the potential for relationships as well as the optimistic possibility of growth. We worked together to understand how his aggression often masked his anxiety about losing. I ventured that Josh needed help with being able to lose and that thirdness offered such an opportunity. (I posed thirdness as a triangle, and we used this image to visualize looking from one point toward the others.) Through thirdness, loss can simultaneously be experienced (observing others from outside, not inside; observing big others from the position of smallness) and recovered (being observed by others who are optimistic about one’s growth). Josh was small in relation to his parents and brother, and there was real loss in such recognition. He stood outside the exclusivity of his parents’ relationship. Yet his smallness included the promise of growth and could be observed with optimism. Such observation, and the mentalization it affords, is also colored by the optimism of parent–child mutuality. In the course of my work with Josh’s parents, a theme evolved regarding their difficulty in sustaining such parent–child optimism. This theme had a familiar ring; I had encountered it with other parents of young boys. Both parents pointed to their difficulty in remaining open and optimistic to the possibilities of knowing Josh’s mind (and promoting mentalization) in the face of his persistent activity and aggression. Parental fatigue is a commonplace. Nonetheless, my work with the parents of young boys suggests that there may be a particular brand of fatigue Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 21
that Josh’s mother summarized rather well, “Sometimes I want to either smack him or collapse. Given the choice, I collapse.” In a similar vein, many parents of young boys speak about their difficulty maintaining their own psychic equilibrium and parental containing capacity in the face of their sons’ aggression. Indeed, the phrase, “boys will be boys” intones a degree of resignation in the face of boys’ aggression. Might this be one of the reasons that young boys are neglected (or, alternatively, abused)? Do we tire as a consequence of the diligence required to pursue and cathect boys’ aggression and activity? Does this dynamic of aggression and fatigue then reinforce boys’ moves toward a less reflective and more physical mode of relating? Along these lines, consider Fonagy et al.’s (1993) hypothesis that, if a child’s expression is consistently experienced as aggres- sion (provoking either an aggressive or a def lective response), a psychological self cannot develop. Aggression then becomes fused with self-expression, and mental contents (thoughts, desires) are expressed and managed physically, not psychically. The parents’ struggle with optimism notwithstanding, they did become more active and usable. This development allowed me greater flexibility in what I could draw on in the transference and, in turn, the extent to which Josh would allow me to enter into a therapeutic relationship beyond domination. For example, I was better able to speak about his anxiety regarding his own agency and opportunities to grow: Would there be room for him to get big? Could there be room for me to be big? Could he leave room for me to play? Could he be a winner sometimes and a loser at other times? But perhaps most important of all, I could begin to take up his anxiety about losing/smallness and the ways in which he defended against it. First, it was important to understand Josh’s experience of humiliation and loss at being small (the baby) and the ways in which he was so often forced to recognize that he would never be the biggest (the oldest). Daily occurrences brought this reality home: differing bed times, differing allowances, differing kinds of permission relative to activities outside the home (the fact that his brother could ride the subway alone was an especially bitter pill). In this vein, we worked toward understanding that Josh could not change the reality of his family; he would always be the youngest. He could, however, have an independent mind and body of his own that would be Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
22 Ken Corbett
recognized and prized. The ways in which he was unique could be seen and appreciated (for example, he began to practice golf with his father and bake with his mother, and his special abilities in these areas were noted within the family). As Josh’s predominating quest toward bigness and victory lessened, so did his defensive machismo. Fears of smallness and inadequacy emerged, as did anxiety about separation. Loss could be recognized and felt. Less driven in his efforts to fortify his phallic narcissism and to subjugate his own passive longings, he could both allow for and extend empathy. A loss at a game might occasion a request for a “do over” or an inquiry that would lead to a better understanding of the directions. As Phillips (1995) reminds us, Oedipus was ingenious enough to turn his losses into gains, whereas Narcissus was not (p. 79). Losses were also sometimes followed, at this point, by a shift in activity requiring that I be the one in the lead, such as reading a book. In this (nonverbal) regard we were able to address his defense against the pleasures of smallness–the pleasure of surrender to the care and ministrations of a big other (Ghent, 1990).
BOYS WILL BE BOYS
Josh’s experience highlights how many boys default to the narcissistic cathexis of their penis (however illusory or inf lated) over the libidinal cathexis of their parents. Such defensive cathexis is aided by the aggressive protest and bravado that is characteristic of machismo. As Person (1986) indicates, “the fundamental sexual problem for boys is the struggle to achieve phallic strength and power vis-à-vis other men” (p. 72). In a discussion of masculinity and violence, Chodorow (1998) makes a similar point when she suggests that “[f]or some men, and in some cultures, masculinity is cast as an adult-child dichotomy: being an adult man versus being a little boy; being humiliated by other men” (p. 35). The struggle is to be big, not small. The preservation of bigness (qua phallic strength) is posed as virtually equivalent to masculinity. To be a man is to be big. To be big is to have more power than other men. To keep that power (to stay big) requires the denial of smallness and the pleasures of smallness–this too is understood as equivalent to masculinity. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 23
This picture of masculinity was given its inaugural and perhaps best expression in Freud’s (1937) ref lections on the “psychological strata” of masculinity: We often have the impression that with the . . . masculine protest [against passive desire toward another man] we have penetrated through all the psychological strata and have reached bedrock, and that thus our activities are at an end. This is probably true, since, for the psychical field, the biological field does in fact play the part of the underlying bedrock [p. 252]. Masculinity, as Freud would have it, ends or concludes with protest. And, while he took note of the defensive character of this protest, which he described as the repudiation of femininity and a manifestation of castration anxiety, he nevertheless concluded that efforts to analyze this protest were in vain. Such fear composes masculinity. It is bedrock. It is beyond reach. “Bedrock” seems appropriate to machismo–a rigid solution that will brook no penetration; anxiety that cannot be questioned. But is it bedrock, or did Freud accede to the limits of a phallic narcissistic solution and thereby mistake this illusory solution for the foundation of masculinity? As opposed to recognizing that this is but one course that masculinity could take, Freud cast this as the masculine course. Freud too quickly foreclosed the question of masculine strata. In a way, he gave up on men. He encased them in bedrock. Fossilized, men were cast as lacking the empathy, capacity for surrender, and nurturant ability that are needed to relate to others outside a dynamic of domination. According to this model, men’s narcissistic cathexis of their penises and their quest for phallic agency/strength trumps their relational needs. Along with placing a limit on how we might entertain the psychic terrain of masculinity, this model also does not leave us in a position to understand and redress certain social consequences that follow on this male struggle to achieve power vis-à-vis other men. For example, if we accept this masculine limitation, must we also accept the sadistic and narcissistic consequences of masculine protest? As is well known, perhaps more in life than in theory, men and boys are often easily provoked into defending the honor of their masculinity through Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
24 Ken Corbett
violent means. Yesterday’s duels bleed into today’s drive-by shootings. The ravages of such sadistic mastery have an ignominious history. Included in this history is the hate and violence employed by men to defend the honor of their masculinity from the perceived threat of loss that is associated with homosexuality. Such hate and violence have often been considered as constitutive of masculinity; they are among the ways in which boys will be boys.
FROM DIFFUSE DEFENSE TO SPECIFIC HATRED
I have been concerned within this essay with the diffuse use of “faggot” to mean loser. I turn now to consider how this diffuse use of the word faggot may develop toward a more specific form of hatred: homophobia. Historically, the subjectivity of male homosexuals has been theorized around the trope of loss: the losses both of masculinity and of power (mirroring the central tropes of the psychoanalytic theorization of masculinity). The loss of masculinity is configured on the homosexual’s experience of passivity in relation to other men: passivity = femininity = loss. The loss of power is configured according to the homosexual’s assumed relinquishing of power to another man: passivity = smallness = loss. The pleasures of gay male passive oral and anal sex have historically been represented with a kind of fantastic intensity as feminine, impotent, grotesque, unnatural, pathological, even sinful (Boswell, 1980; Foucault, 1985; Bersani, 1989; Halperin, 1989; Corbett, 1993). A penetrated man is looked upon as powerless, sullied, unmanly, and immoral. As Foucault (1985) and Halperin (1989) have pointed out, the only “honorable” male sexual behavior (and I would add fantasy) is active penetration. Activity, and the assumed underlying fantasy of domination, is held to be equivalent to authority. Prostrate and prone, the homosexual has become a cultural site of loss (Bersani, 1989; Crimp, 1989)—a cultural condition or position that has been fortified and sanctioned, as well as obscured, by the cultural ego ideal of macho sexuality. Despite the great variety of cultural idioms through which male homosexuality is expressed, including the dominant role of the macho clone in contemporary gay culture, homosexuals continue to be viewed as feminine and small. As such, Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 25
homosexuals are both feared objects of loss (pitiful) and repositories for the fear of loss (condemned): bogeyman losers. While anxiety about loss (like all anxiety) always begins at home (like all bogeymen), it eventually moves into the outside world. Consider how boys use “faggot” in a manner that is diffuse, and naïve about its customary meaning. In time, however, they learn the customary meaning of “faggot” and more knowingly understand its power to threaten. The threat of “faggot” becomes a way to extol and inf late their own masculinity as they (dis)identify from those boys they believe to be losers, including those they believe to be homosexual. We could further speculate that depending on the anxiety aroused by their own internal homosexual desire, or the heterosexual desires that they associate with homosexuality (surrender and passivity), boys may learn to respond to such anxiety through what Moss (1992) has identified as a “phobic solution.” The offensive wish is projected into another. The marked other is then hated. We might chart the multiple consequences to these combined narcissistic and phobic solutions as follows (while this list reads as linear, these consequences do not unfold in a linear fashion):
1. Rigid distinctions between masculinity and femininity and heterosexuality and homosexuality are constructed. A hierarchy of value is placed on these distinctions. 2. Phallic monism rests on the hierarchical positioning of masculinity as superior to femininity. 3. Phallic narcissistic solutions follow on the false demand of phallic monism. Men and boys repeatedly enact a kind of illusory/inf lated virility in order to sustain the hierarchical rule of masculinity. 4. Gender segregation (often fueled by sadistic phallic defenses) follows on the hierarchical rule of masculinity. 5. Brittle narcissistic solutions must lean on and incorporate other solutions , including phobic solutions, to further their course. 6. By creating a homosexual “them” and a heterosexual “us,” offensive homosexual wishes are displaced onto another. 7. Desires that infuse heterosexual relations, but are linked with homosexuality (e.g., surrender and passivity), are disavowed. Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
26 Ken Corbett
8. The other, the disavowed is hated. 9. Armed with hate, young men seek to reassure themselves of the viability of their active heterosexual virility. 10. This virility is often amplified and distorted into an erotics of mastery and subordination. 11. The pleasure of passivity and surrender is denied as activity and power are aggrandized. 12. Pleasure is gained from triumphing over those who are seen as passive and weak.
These solutions–both narcissistic and phobic–are held in place by a number of cultural standard bearers, including the insufficient psychoanalytic theorization of masculinity. Analysts have mostly been content to let stand a theory of masculinity that rests largely on narcissistic and phobic defenses. In making this assertion I am not unmindful of significant reassessments of the psychoanalytic theory of masculinity that have appeared in the last two decades. For example, vital retheorization has been undertaken within the feminist analysis of gender; of particular note here are Benjamin (1988) and Chodorow’s (1989) efforts to retheorize masculine subjectivity through their examination of boys’ relationships with their mothers. In a different register, Ross (1994) has reread and refashioned the classical psychoanalytic theory of boyhood. By my assertion I do mean to point toward the fact that these revisionist efforts have had a limited clinical and cultural reach. This limitation stands in marked contrast to the impact that the feminist retheorization of female subjectivity has had, not only clinically but also culturally. Perhaps it has served us (clinically and culturally) to fossilize men in a bedrock of protest and aggression. At the very least, it serves men, who, after all, have largely been the ones who theorize masculinity, to the extent that they do not have to take responsibility for their hate and anxiety. Boys will be boys. But perhaps such fatalism serves us all to the extent that we do not have to participate in the difficult task of engaging boys in a process of thirdness. If we abandon boys to biological bedrock, we do not have to see ourselves simultaneously in interaction with them while entertaining their points of view, including their aggressive reach for agency and their anxious turns from loss. We can funnel aggression and hate into boys Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
Faggot = Loser 27
and men. We do not have to locate their hate and anxiety within ourselves in order to ref lect on ourselves as we reflect on them. Instead, we make them brittle winners who are left to defend against inevitable loss. Left to thrust and parry through the aggressive protest of machismo. Left to make losers of us all.
REFERENCES
Benjamin, J. (1988), The Bonds of love. New York: Pantheon. Bersani, L. (1989), Is the rectum a grave? In: AIDS: Cultural Analysis/ Cultural Activism, ed. D. Crimp. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 197–222. Boswell, J. (1980), Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Britton, R. (1989), The Oedipus Complex Today. London: Karnac Books. Chodorow, N. (1989), Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (1998), The enemy outside: Thoughts on the psychodynamics of extreme violence with special attention to men and masculinity, J. Psychoanal. Culture & Society, 3:25–38. Corbett, K. (1993), The mystery of homosexuality. Psychoanal. Psychol. 10:345–357. Crimp, D. (1989), AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism. In: AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, ed. D. Crimp. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 3–16. Fonagy, P., Moran, G. & Target, M. (1993), Aggression and the psychological self, Internat. J. Psycho-Anal., 74:471–485. Fonagy, P. & Target, M. (1996a), Playing with reality I. Internat. J. Psycho- Anal., 77:217–234. (1996b), Playing with reality II. Internat. J. Psycho-Anal., 77:459– 480. Foucault, M. (1985), The Use of Pleasure. New York: Pantheon. Freud, S. (1937), Analysis terminable and interminable. Standard Edition, 23, 209–253. London: Hogarth Press, 1964. Ghent, E. (1990), Masochism, submission, surrender. Contemp. Psychoanal., 26:108–136. Halperin, D. (1989), One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. New York: Routledge. Moss, D. (1992), Introductory thoughts: Hating in the first person plural: The example of homophobia. Amer. Imago, 49:277–292. New York Times (1999), Columbine students talk of the disaster and life, April 30. Person, E. (1986), The omni-available woman and lesbian sex: Two fantasy themes and their relationship to the male developmental Copyrighted Material. For use only by icpoffice. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).
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experience. In: The Psychology of Men, ed. G. Fogel, F. Lane, & R. Liebert. New York: Basic Books, pp. 71–94. Phillips, A. (1995), Terror and Experts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ross, J. M. (1995), What Men Want. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (1986), Beyond the phallic illusion: Notes on man’s heterosexuality. In: The Psychology of Men, ed. G. Fogel, F. Lane, & R. Liebert. New York: Basic Books, pp. 49–70.
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