ABSTRACT
The theory of male sex-role identity (MSRI) has been the dominant paradigm in American psychology for understanding male experience. In brief, this theory holds that for individuals to become psychologically mature as members of their sex, they must acquire male or female “sex-role identity,” manifested by having the sex-appropriate traits, attitudes, and interests that psychologically “validate” or “affirm” their biological sex. The first step in the explicit development of the theory of MSRI was taken by Lewis Terman and Catherine Miles in Sex and Personality. Margaret Mead’s cultural relativism directly challenged Terman and Miles’s interpretation of masculinity and femininity as universal psychological ideals or norms like intelligence. In the post-war period, Terman and Miles’s masculinity–femininity conception, which had equal application to both sexes, evolved into a theory primarily focusing on males. The theoretical development that led to a special focus on males was the introduction of the psychodynamic concept of identification to the study of masculinity–femininity.
