A “User-Friendly” Guide to Therapy With Men

Reviews the book, Beyond the crisis of masculinity: A transtheoretical model for male-friendly therapy by Gary R. Brooks (see record 2009-10636-000). This book is a product of the new psychology of men, a field of study resulting from the second wave of feminism (1960s and 1970s) that Brooks identifies as the catalyst for the crisis of masculinity and resultant men’s movement. His model for counseling men is placed within three theoretical perspectives: feminist theory, multicultural counseling theory, and gender role strain theory. What is new to the field that Brooks offers is a transtheoretical model for therapy with men based on the Prochaska and Norcross (2007) stages-of-change model. Additionally, Brooks tells the reader how he or she can adapt traditional approaches to psychotherapy to make them more male friendly, identifying cognitive and behavioral approaches as being most likely to appeal to men and psychoanalytic approaches as being least likely. He is comprehensive in covering a variety of therapies: interpersonal, humanistic, feminist, marital, family, and all-male group therapy. Brooks references, discusses, and integrates the work of many scholars of the psychology of men. In offering a transtheoretical model, he adds to the body of literature on psychotherapy in general and therapy with men in particular. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)