What are you really working on at the gym?

Is atelophobia rife among the 'gymfam'?
 

Adopting a psychoanalytic stance to bodybuilding, Melanie Klein states that 'bodybuilding is, at the very least, a subculture whose [male and female] practitioners suffer from large doses of insecurity; hence, compensation through self-presentation of power to the outside world' (1993: 174).

 

Allegedly caused by antecedent personal and/or gender inadequacy and a masculinity-in-crisis within the larger society, bodybuilding...represent(s) an 'atavistic' strategy for concealing self-perceived flaws (Klein, 1993).

 

~ Bodybuilding, drugs and risk (Monaghan, L.)