Therapeutic masculinity in American literature and culture

My dissertation examines the definition of manhood in American literature, culture, and society of the post-1945 era. I emphasize the way that the therapeutic value of personal well-being provides the conceptual apparatus as well as the vocabulary for codes of manhood invoked by conflicts between individual identity and institutional identity. Within a society in which manhood is defined by team membership (i.e. the "organization man") and cool confidence, manhood is alternatively defined as an inward struggle for emotional and intellectual. self-sufficiency. From this conflict, we see the way that institutions create identity, thus affecting the way men move in the world. At the same time, the institutions aren't the real barrier to well-being. The obstacles to individual well-being are other people within groups and institutions. Individuality is achieved and retained through demonstrations of difference from other people.;Writers and social critics share an inquiry into how one can remain self-directed, in control of one's own direction in life as well as one's own thoughts and feelings, while participating with the group. At stake is whether or not one acts and thinks according to one's own independent mind or whether one's thoughts and actions are directed from without. It is within this framework that I read masculine identity in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Therapeutic masculinity is coded by inward separation between the individual and others with whom he interacts.;KEYWORDS: Therapeutic Culture, Masculinity United States, Men in Literature, American Literature-20th century History and Criticism, Literature and Society---United States---History-20th Century.