“How His Hair is Growing Thin!”: On the Emotional Significance of Male Pattern Hair Loss

Abstract

Hair is a powerful symbol of individual and group identity: physical and therefore personal yet public rather than private. Despite the fact that male pattern hair loss causes men considerable emotional distress, its unconscious emotional significance is almost entirely unrepresented in the psychoanalytic literature, with a few notable exceptions. After a review of the sociological literature on male pattern hair loss and the relatively sparse psychoanalytic literature on hair and hair loss, four interlocking perspectives on hair loss in men are elaborated: (1) hair as the locus of maternal desire, (2) hair as evoking the helplessness of early infancy, (3) hair loss as a symbol of aging and death, and (4) hair loss as evoking paternal identifications and experiences with the paternal function. These ideas are illustrated with reference to T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and with a clinical case.