The inventors of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, both subscribed to the theory that a woman's relationships with men is shaped by her relationship to her father, and likewise that a man's relationship with women is shaped by his mother. While this has become somewhat of a running joke as the "Blank Slate" was adopted as a principle throughout the western world, and Carl Jung's theory of the Anima and Animus was interpreted literally as "men should become more feminine" and "women should become more masculine", instead of being read figuratively in terms of archetypes, one cannot deny that humans are pattern based biological machines.

Humans are shaped by our experiences, and a large aspect of psychological self-improvement is self-analysis, to determine your innermost beliefs, unhealthy patterns and negative beliefs. This is often an uncomfortable process, but a very beneficial one, as the adult you should control you, not a child that had very little power in the world. However, this may become a dangerous path where one designs a victim narrative for oneself, and instead of accepting responsibility one slips into self-pity. A major difference between the hypomasculine and hypermasculine man, is that the former responded to his situation by letting the outer world dictate his inner states, behavior and beliefs, while the hyper-masculine man takes responsibility for his own behavior and inner states.

The latter has shades of stoicism, where one accepts that one cannot control what happens in the world, but one can control one's own reaction to what happens. Where the former is an attempt to control the outer world in order to protect one's inner states, in essence one does what one imagines the other person would want in order to control the other person's behavior, so as to protect one's inner state.

In most of my essays, I tend to advocate balanced approach, for the same reason why figuring out your BMR, and then adding or subtracting a few hundred calories is a good way to dial in your diet. Find a reasonable and attainable starting point, develop the habits and mindset to maintain it, then experiment to move forward in the direction you desire. In terms of body recomposition, this creates a situation in which the damage is limited if you are not dialed in. However, when it comes to this topic, I'm going to adopt the position that it's better to go over the top masculine than to attempt a balance and end up too low.

The primary reasoning being that while some adaptation to the outside world is necessary, being overly sensitive to external forces robs you of control of your own life. This is very similar to the ideas of internal and external locus of control, which represent to which degree a person feels they have control over events that happen in their lives or if such events are outside of their control.

To take the example of the hypomasculine man, he attempts to control his circumstances, inner states and context through managing the inner states of others. In childhood he would have become hyper-sensitive to the signals that a storm was coming, and then engaged in behavior to avoid that storm. In contrast the hypermasculine man attempts to control his context and circumstances by controlling his reaction to them, in other words state control.

The former sees that another is about to hit the button, and does everything in his power to dissuade them from doing so in order to maintain order in the outer world so that it does not upset his inner world. The latter sees someone about to hit the button and provokes them to hit that button, as his preference is to deal with chaos in the outer world, as opposed to chaos in his internal world.

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