The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession
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List Price: $25.00
Our Price: $4.94
Your Save: $ 20.06 ( 80% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Free Press
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.332
EAN: 9780684869100
ISBN: 0684869101
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2000-04-30
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Combining case studies with scientific research, this book reveals a threat that is as serious as the beauty myth for women or anorexia nervosa for girls. Growing numbers of young men are taking the quest for perfect muscles, skin and hair too far, crossing the line from normal interest to abnormal obsession. The symptoms of this body obsession, excessive workouts, steroid abuse, eating disorders, and body and muscle dysmorphic disorder lead to problems with sex and intimacy, relationships and work. This book shows what men really think and feel about their bodies, so no-one need suffer alone.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Charisma of Adonis
Comment: "The Adonis Complex" touches on a subject I've been interested in since childhood: the impact specific body types have on our psyche as well as the opposite sex. The salient point of the book is that male and females view things totally differently in defining attractiveness. According to the study, it isn't always what we think is the ideal, but what we think others believe to be the ideal. From a male perspective, when we see a woman ogling a muscular male, we believe that to be her ideal type. However, in her mind, she may prefer less muscle and more brains. Men, as visual creatures, view her ogling as her standard not indicative of mere appreciation of a certain body type. Consequently, we strive for the kind of body we "think" women want. In other words, what people say and do, might be different than how they really feel--Cognitive Dissonance.
"The Adonis Complex" is a good book in explaining how a media-centric society has made males equally insecure and obsessive over their physical appearance as has been the case traditionally for women. The book does a great job of breaking down the components of being physically "Big," but does not make a compelling case on how to overcome media influence. The typical bromides of "Loving yourself for who you are...and looking for acceptance within" are always the high road, but does very little in truly making a person feel complete within a social structure that values physicality. I recommend the book as a means of dissecting this psychosis for male victims and an aid for women who may come in contact with such males.
Edward Brown
Core Edge Image & Charisma Institute
Customer Rating:
Summary: The "Adonis Complex" is really part of a larger problem: the "Excellence Complex"
Comment: The promulgators of psychological health would like humanity to be as uniformly mediocre as possible so that no one will feel uncomfortable with his mediocrity. The program for achieving this dystopia is to make excellence into a disease, and pursuit of excellence into a disorder. Over time, as people are "cured" of their drive to achieve excellence, which is now re-labeled an "obsession," the paradise of uniform mediocrity will be realized.
One of the most efficient ways to kill the drive to excellence is to make it appear that excellence is impossible. The first step in this process is to remove from public view the people who have actually achieved excellence, to make them invisible. Such people demonstrate by their very existence that excellence is sometimes achieved, and so is possible. The fact of their existence must therefore be ruthlessly suppressed.
Thus the psychologists become irate when they see, for example, excellent male physiques in underwear advertisements. They label these "unrealistic" because in the dystopian reality they are trying to create, excellence is not real. The fact that the model has actually achieved an excellent physique, means, of course, that it is "realistic." It is realistic because it is real. This is the inconvenient fact that they desperately need to conceal.
The psychologists reason that not everyone can achieve an excellent physique, so we should not instill false hopes by placing models with excellent physiques before our children. But not everyone can write like Shakespeare. Does this mean that we should not instill false hopes by placing Shakespeare before our children?
In their dystopian world, the psychologists would require that only people with mediocre physiques appear on the covers of our magazines. This will ensure, they tell us, that no one develops "body dysmorphic disorder." But if we follow their reasoning, we must also require that only mediocre writing appears within our magazines so that no one will develop "writing dysmorphic disorder."
The fact that examples of excellence might inspire the talented person to become excellent himself is, to the psychologists, inconsequential; what matters to them is only the effect of such examples on the mental health of the mediocre.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Adonis Complex
Comment: Good educational book for males to understand other males with body concerns and females to understand the male psyche regarding their body concerns.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Long-overdue study on a "modern" men's crisis.
Comment: The same impossible expectations regarding attaining the "perfect" body that have been relentlessly imposed on women by (mostly) the media are now being imposed on men--albeit in a different context. This book examines the lengths that some men will go to in order to attain the "perfect" body--and the physical, mental and emotional damage that can result from trying to live up to unrealistic standards. While I do agree that staying fit is important I can assure you that ( in normal situations) it's NOT the guy with the most muscular or well-built body that wins. Face it: low self-esteem is what drives both women AND men to aspireto attaining the "Perfect" body knowing full well it's impossible.
Customer Rating:
Summary: needed book
Comment: I have a son and a daughter who struggle with body image. I could start a library with the books I own about a girl's struggle with an eating disorder! Books for males are hard to find. I'm thankful for this book. I first read it at the library, but ordered it because I wanted my own copy. It points out symptoms, has tests, case studies...a little of everything. Men tend to deny there is a problem and this book made it very clear that my son had one. Good read.
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