In dit thema betoogt Woertman dat meisjes er tegenwoordig sexy uitzien: vertelt hoogleraar Toine Lagro-Janssen over man-vrouwverschillen in ziekten en gezondheidszorg: vertellen drie vrouwen over hun metamorfose zonder operatie: bespreken drie Opzij-medewerksters een recent verschenen boek over borstkanker.
In this special issue on masculinity Marie Maguire argues that there is a residual identification with mother, which is highly ambivalent. Maguire examines the implications of the ambivalent identifications in the relationship between a female psychotherapist and a male patient. Brian Denness elaborates on the ceremonies of initiation into manhood, which often involves physical marking of the body, such as tattooing or piercing, as the imposition of the reality of castration and of the paternal order. Stephen Frosh and his coworkers describe how boys and young men struggle as they grapple with the governing hegemonic modes of masculinity, and lays it out in such a way as to be helpful for psychotherapists. They make an attempt to show how these 'struggles' occur and the kind of impact they can make on young men's emerging identity positions. Tom Ryan sees in fetishistic cross-dressing the contradictory aims of maintaining both an intimate, ever-presence of mother, by primary identification, and mastery of the consequent anxiety of dissolution of a masculine self. Christina Wieland argues that the cost of inadequate separation from mother, in which a dyadic relationship with mother excludes father, is the denial of reality and the paranoid anxiety of intrusion by mother into the boy's masculinity. Mitch Elliott gives an insight into the masculine super-ego. Elizabeth O'Loughlin argues that Freud misunderstood the genesis of paranoia as repressed homosexuality.