In Beyond the Crisis of Masculinity, Gary Brooks explores the "psychopathology of men's everyday lives"—the maladaptive strategies that men use to maintain a traditional male role that has increasingly come under assault. He then delves into the related question of why men overwhelmingly reject psychotherapy at a time when they need it the most. The key to engaging men in therapy, Brooks argues, is devising a "male-friendly" therapy, involving flexibility, consciousness-raising in men's groups and other "out-of-office" settings, and the therapist's emphasis on an authentic empathetic bond with the troubled male client to discover meaning in the client's relational pressures and problems at work, with loved ones, and, most of all, with himself. Standard therapeutic models don't work for men, Brooks argues, so therapists must be eclectic—transtheoretical—in negotiating therapeutic goals and tasks with their troubled male clients. The central tenets of multicultural counseling and therapy figure prominently in the transtheoretical model, as they allow the therapist to separate out and tackle peculiarly male problems that span different cultural and socioeconomic contexts. Inclusive cultural empathy and the transtheoretical model's stages-of-change framework can sustain men's initial interest in the therapeutic option and, beyond that, in a transformative relationship. In such a way, Brooks concludes, the transtheoretical model advances a hesitant male client from the level of consciousness-raising and awareness of gender role strain to the level of action and change, as the locus of therapeutic agency shifts from the therapist to the client himself.
--- from the publisher Contents: Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Crisis of Masculinity
How Psychotherapy Has Failed Boys and Men
Therapeutic Interventions Outside the Therapist's Office
On the Doorstep—Engaging Men in Psychotherapy
Male-Friendly Psychotherapy for Boys and Men
The Challenge of Diverse Masculinities
A Transtheoretical Model
Conclusion
References
Appendix: Resources for Multicultural Competence With Boys and Men in Therapy
Index About the Author: Gary R. Brooks, PhD, is professor of psychology at Baylor University's Department of Psychology and Neuroscience in Waco, Texas, and a core faculty member in the graduate clinical program there. He was staff psychologist (1976–1996) and chief of psychological services (1996–2000) at the Veterans Administration Center in Temple, Texas. He is also a licensed psychotherapist specializing in men and masculinity issues. Dr. Brooks is the author or editor of a variety of books on the male experience with psychotherapy, including The New Handbook of Psychotherapy and Counseling with Men: A Comprehensive Guide to Settings, Problems, and Treatment Approaches (with Glenn E. Good), The Centerfold Syndrome: How Men Can Overcome Objectification and Achieve Intimacy with Women, and Men and Sex: New Psychological Perspectives (edited with Ronald F. Levant). He is former president of the American Psychological Association's Division 51—the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity. | 
