How His Hair Is Growing Thin: On the Emotional Significance of Male Pattern Hair Loss

The paper discusses the emotional significance of male pattern hair loss, a topic often overlooked in psychoanalytic literature. It reviews sociological and psychoanalytic literature on hair loss and presents four perspectives on the subject: hair as a symbol of maternal desire, hair loss evoking feelings of helplessness from infancy, hair loss as a symbol of aging and death, and hair loss as a representation of paternal identifications and experiences. These perspectives are illustrated using T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and a clinical case. The paper emphasizes that hair loss can cause considerable emotional distress in men, highlighting the need for further exploration in this area.