Normative Male Alexithymia: a conversation with Ronald F. Levant

Dr. Ellie Anderson interviews Dr. Ronald F. Levant, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Akron and former President of the American Psychological Association. They discuss one of his most important contributions to psychology, normative male alexithymia—a concept that has been a big influence on Ellie's work on hermeneutic labor—as well as his recent book, Assessing and Treating Emotionally Inexpressive Men (2024, Routledge). They break down the concept of normative male alexithymia and dive into many related questions: how is gender socially constructed and historically contingent? How do omnipresent gender norms impact child development? How can men learn to understand and change their relationship to their emotional life?

Graphics and editing by Aaron Morgan

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[robertalenrichter]

Ellie Anderson streams an infectious enthusiasm which always makes me feel better.

[billmiller]

Pure gold! As a childhood trauma survivor, this was ingrained in me from the time I started elementary school. Now at age 64, I'm learning to feel my feelings AND be able to identify them. I feel like I'm finally getting into that functioning male mindset. Thank you for a very informative discussion!

[jimesalinas]

Overthink raised my bar too high and now I cant listen to other podcasts without thinking about how you would have approached the topic ❤

[ercano]

Sincerity spontaneity and sophistication all together have made me watch the conversation with full of surprise and joy. Thanks a lot.

[jerrypeters]

Thank you for sharing this interview.

I'm in my fifties and still processing my traditional, conservative upbringing. I innately wasn't interested in group sports or machinery. This automatically put me on the social periphery. I was creative, and music seemed to be the most allowable public expression of deep emotion within my religious community. I also learned to channel my most personal emotions in prayer, mostly at night. So, i was use to living without a listening response to my greatest heart-felt expressions as a human being. I was jealous of kids in 80s TV shows with Dads who basically counselled their kids. I felt like i was in a black and white tv show working jobs with mostly men and in a color TV show working jobs with mostly women. After journaling through depression i've felt, i realized i struggled to articulate my emotions. I looked up the emotion wheel and forced my self to come up with personal experiences of each emotion listed. When I started therapy after a devastating loss in my personal life, i warned my therapist in our first session that i struggle to communicate emotionally - because i feared i would be misrepresented when evaluated.

All this to say, I'm working through my own growing resentment as i learn about how my environment/society stunted my emotional/relational life just because i happen to be male. And when pronouns became a prevalent matter on social media, i thought, I'm "he/him" among my liberal-minded friends, but i'd consider "they/them" in public just to not be associated with toxic masculinity. So, my relationship with myself has become complicated. Lol.

[billmiller]

Thank you for clarifying Stoicism, it's NOT about shoving one emotions down, but more about managing one's emotions despite people, places and things.

[SnarkyOverload]

Loved Dr Levant's point that whilst women have been forced to change, perhaps standard social rhetoric has suggested men should NOT change, which is a really interesting point to consider when thinking about gender equality in general. Fascinating discussion as usual!

[Mika-ldfl]

Thank you for this interesting conversation! Perfect for me, as my undergrad consisted for a large part of philosophy and as I'm doing a master's in social psychology now. Dr. Levant writes truly valuable papers and your interview was a great opportunity to hear a bit more about the story behind his research. 😊

[PlixlyPrincess]

This was such an interesting topic and conversation! Thank you for sharing the intervju, love the mutual enthusiasm!

[DavidJohnson-vdcu]

In your 2023 podcast on Continental philosophy, you mentioned that you read 60 philosophy books in the process of getting your Ph.D at Emory. A video or two outlining the 60 works would be informative. A list of the works should be offered in the notes and/or transcript. Preferred translations/editions would be helpful as well. Thank you.

[ulysseh]

What a fascinating conversation. It really hit home! I didn't know the guest but he was great and his work seems very important, loved the anecdotes.

Using men's competitive "nature" to have them find more words for emotions lol, I would have fallen right in 😭

And it seems so obvious but I never heard put quite this plainly that while women gender expectations progressed tremendously in decades, men's have pretty much remained the same.

[saturdaysequalsyouth]

When I was growing up sports was the only place where it was even remotely acceptable for boys to cry.

[isakmloyeni]

I wish i could glimpse the inner psychological and emotional life of people living in the future.

[madzjelly]

Thankyou, this helped me understand my male relative who has aspergers better

[Anson]

Severe clinical depression/multiple mental health conditions (neuro divergent), and my potent SNRI kinda gives me Alexithymia. But, if you get me around animals and nature I a bowl of mush. I think I am tired of how society (and people) works too.

[aosidh]

Excited to listen to this! My first (perhaps unfair) thought is that Ohio is a great place to study depression 😹

[robertalenrichter]

An interesting conversation which couldn't help but make me think about my father, who clearly had difficulty articulating his emotions; my mother was certainly an extreme example of a "hermeneutic worker", though I think it was a little more complicated than that. Life is always a bit more complicated than that. Anyway, aside from wartime trauma suffered on the German side, which is easy to make out as a contributing factor, there was another aspect to his character which I wonder about. Namely, that he was highly creative and definitely smart, yet this didn't extend to language. There was a kind of anti-intellectualism. Perhaps there are two different modalities to this male alexithymia -- one is to become hyper-rational and use words as a kind of defensive weapon; the other, an inner rejection of the notion of articulation itself. Words can be dangerous.

[sharpsheep]

I feel like I am really good at expressing my emotions.
Happy: Mmmm
Sad: Hmm
Scared:
Angry: MMMmm
Confused: Mmm?
I might be the exception I suppose.

[yclept]

Women's place is covered nicely in Choreographies an interview of Christie MacDonald and Derrida, look at the first 5 pages or so. Feminism has been marching in place for 100 years for a reason. Showed up in Diacritics long ago and has been republished in various places, and is somewhere on the web as a pdf.

[nathanrohde]

Expressing vulnerability makes you a target.