Are bodybuilders poor neurotic men?
I've been tempted to become a bodybuilder myself. Yet, there's something so laughable about injecting T, increasing it, adding HGH, and taking Dianabol or some aromatase inhibitor to counter elevations in estrogen by Dianabol.
But, I don't really think I'm that different. I've spent countless hours reading about promising compounds for treating depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. I even contacted labs in China to synthesize some compounds that you can find online through my efforts in creating them for the nootropic community.
But, akin to how bodybuilders dope themselves full of stuff to gain muscle mass and expunge water before contests, I feel like I'm doing the same to my self.
Believe me or not; but, I've spent 30,000 on drugs and supplements over 10 years. What have I gained from this? Nothing really. An empty wallet and some butthutness.
Is this all some neuroticism or "self-actualization"?
But, I don't really think I'm that different. I've spent countless hours reading about promising compounds for treating depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. I even contacted labs in China to synthesize some compounds that you can find online through my efforts in creating them for the nootropic community.
But, akin to how bodybuilders dope themselves full of stuff to gain muscle mass and expunge water before contests, I feel like I'm doing the same to my self.
Believe me or not; but, I've spent 30,000 on drugs and supplements over 10 years. What have I gained from this? Nothing really. An empty wallet and some butthutness.
Is this all some neuroticism or "self-actualization"?
Comments (90)
The former.
Can you try and please explain the psychology behind this whole process? It's like these people are actually hurting by being themselves, and hate their self-image or something of that sort. How do you explain the psychology of a Bob?
You mean of a bodybuilder?
Yeah, well, why doesn't Bob want to be a bodybuilder? Doesn't every male fantasize about being big and strong and look like Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Not what?
No. That's where the neuroticism comes in. Most males will never be able to have a body like Arnold no matter how much drugs they pump themselves with. So, desire x continued frustration of desire = neuroticism. Until they get some sense and concentrate on stuff they can actually achieve.
Possibly, but let me ask do you plan to compete?
If you're just being a casual bodybuilder you would be helping yourself by spending less on Testosterone and other things harmful to your kidney and liver and just use test boosters, supplements, and seasonal diet.
The desire to have a 'perfect body' (or, what amounts to almost the same thing: the desire to win competitions where a 'superior body' is the criterion of success) seems to be a paradigmatic case of vanity. Vanity itself isn't pathological. But dedicating a large portion of one's life and energy to attaining such a body may be, depending on the individual - their values, commitments and psychology.
It is possible to love the pursuit and have very little inner conflict about it. I wouldn't consider people in these types of cases to be neurotic because of their bodybuilding.
Personal story: Years ago I got into it causally. I enjoyed lifting weights and autistic eating schedules (I don't mean autistic in the technical sense). I eventually did steroids and the experience was positive in many ways. But for various reasons, that life wasn't for me. My body, and my soul, were not well shaped for that path, and the friction proved too much. The way it interfered with the rest of my life and functionality was too much. So, in my case, though I didn't reach an advanced stage, the bodybuilding pursuit was pathological.
I've let myself go to much to really get into it now, but I sort of wish I had gone down that road in the past just to see where it might have lead.
But how is it vain to compete? There are plenty of bodybuilders who do the sport because they love to get in and out of shape for competitions.
Are there no women into bodybuilding? :joke:
Seriously, though, if you want to get into strength-training, as opposed to bodybuilding, why not? It doesn't have to be about how you look, but rather about becoming the best you can be strengthwise (without the drugs of course!).
This will not just make you stronger (and better looking, though you don't care about that unless you are neurotic :joke: ) but will improve your general physical health and well-being. It will also, as a positive side-effect, improve your mental and emotional well-being.
So, if you have the discipline to pursue it and are not motivated primarily by vanity, then you need have no fear of becoming neurotic on account of pursuing strength-training.
You're right. I went for the most obvious diagnosis of the bodybuilder's impulse. But it is true that one can be interested in this type of competition/pursuit out of a certain fascination with aspects of the process rather than neurotic concern with looking a certain way. (E.g., self-mastery, control over the body, etc.)
Maybe it is neurotic to be (overly, at least) concerned with how you look, but there is nothing intrinsically neurotic about pursuing self-mastery or control over the body.
You mean there's nothing intrinsically neurotic about looking a certain way? I agree: there isn't. That's why I used the qualifier 'neurotic'.
No I'm saying there is nothing intrinsically neurotic about being concerned with looking a certain way; or to put it another way concern with looking a certain way is not necessarily neurotic concern, but your initial statement is ambiguous, and so perhaps you were not meaning to say anything to the contrary.
Yeah my mistake there should have been the words 'concern with' in there.
My first thought is this: vanity is concern with how one looks. Neurotic and non-neurotic vanity are distinguished in the following way: If in circumstances where S would fail to approximate looking a certain way, S would feel deeply inadequate, then S is neurotically vain.
If that's right, it's not clear most bodybuilders are neurotically vain. And it seems pretty certain that they aren't necessarily neurotically vain.
I wouldn't say that no bodybuilders feel that way, but I think it's relatively rare.
For most, even those who do it competitively/fairly obsessively, I think it's far more akin to any other skill or development that someone pursues, which can include things like learning to play a musical instrument, taking up sailing, learning philosophy, etc. People try to keep progressing at those things, try to increase their mastery of it, etc. This is expressed pretty literally in bodybuilding as being concerned with "gains." It's just that in bodybuilding, what you're developing is your physique. Bodybuilding, done with any degree of seriousness--basically so that it would be noticeable to others, is something that requires a lot of knowledge and dedication, even moreso than many of those other things, because it really requires a major lifestyle change.
Where it typically starts to become neurotic is when you start doing things that can potentially harm you just to make (apparent) gains. Steroids are one example. Synthol is a far more extreme example, especially since synthol doesn't even produce something that looks like bodybuilding gains. Synthol is more assuredly an indication of body dysmorphia.
To follow on from your thoughts... I think you are probably right that bodybuilding is just like another other project in that its core appeal and source of meaning for people is simply development of a skill or progress towards a goal.
In my experience, the public do not have this impression. The accusation I'd anticipate to your claim is: "you could choose anything to pour yourself into, why choose something that is so obsessed with your own body?" As you acknowledge, for some it may be true that the core appeal is something to do with vanity (neurotic or not). But for others, it is possible to imagine someone getting into it almost by accident - they try the gym like regular people, for instance, and find that they really enjoy it, or that their body responds very well to it, in that they grow easily. It is rewarding, and so they get deeper into it.
There are many reasons people might be disproportionately critical of bodybuilders qua hobbyists or sportspeople. One is that it's not taken seriously as a pursuit in the same way as other projects of this kind (tennis, train modelling, poker, track athletics), and so the substantial dedication it requires is seen not as a virtue in aid of a worthy goal, but as mere self-obsession. Why? Perhaps because the aim is transformation of one's own body, which is usually a means to some other end. The object of dedication is literally oneself in a way that it isn't in most other pursuits. But it's far from obvious that this constitutes a different and objectionable type of 'self-obsession', at least when it comes to solo-sports and pursuits. The results may be enjoyable to others just as they are in these other solo pursuits.
A lot of people get into as a means of improving or maintaining their health. Both calisthenics and resistance (weight) training are very important healthwise. The early stages of bodybuilding are an upshot of this.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that getting healthier can help one in the attractiveness department, too.
I didn't know @S was neurotic in that way. Let's ask him.
Quoting Wallows
It follows that an insightful fellow like Wallows will allow that homo sapiens are regular hot houses of neuroticism. Wikipedia provides this handy definition:
Neuroticism is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. People who are neurotic respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy, and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.
Right! So, there you go.
Personally, I wanted to look more like Olympic gold swimmers or Tour d'France winners than Schwartzenegger. Fat chance. At this stage of the game, I'm doing strength training so that I'll be able to get into my wheel chair some time down the road.
But you have raised a good point here: Men are not immune to the plague of body image issues. That doesn't mean that guys who want to lift weights should be cleared first by a psychoanalyst. Weight lifting doesn't make people neurotic; neurotics get carried away with it. Neuroticism distorts a healthy activity when it becomes compulsive; when one's sense of psychological well-being is impaired if delineation of some muscle group isn't perfect; when it begins to displace other, important, areas of life.
Don't get me wrong: If one can manage it (and most people can, theoretically) a man should be fairly lean. We should have enough cardio conditioning and be muscular enough to perform certain kinds of tasks like: swimming at least a quarter of a mile (9 laps of an olympic pool); jogging for an hour; bicycling 50 miles on a decent bike; walking 5 miles without difficulty; carrying heavy items; digging up soil for a garden; painting a house; shoveling a heavy snow fall; and so forth. We should maintain some level of fitness into our 60s and 70s, if possible.
In other words, over-all fitness rather than focussing on only 1 area of fitness.
How does it do away with athleticism? What, exactly, is athleticism? And whatever you define as athleticism, why does bodybuilding need to have that in order to be worthwhile? And why does athleticism legitimize an activity? Is an activity involving the body somehow illegitimate if it isn't athletic?
I suspect that for at least some bodybuilders, it is more of an aesthetic thing than a matter of pure athletic achievement. And the aesthetics might not be limited to enjoying the resulting physique. The practice and feeling of mindfully lifting heavy masses with flawless form has value in itself, not unlike tai chi. Simply exercising self-discipline is an aesthetically pleasing experience. There is something in just regularly pushing oneself to exhaustion in a set of exercises while part of the brain and body cry for us to stop. There is a cultivation of strength of character in such practices.
I am not a bodybuilder. I am a rock climber though, and we climbers tend to be a bit obsessive about physique too, not just for physical performance, but partly for visual appeal, as climbing is partly visual performance, and we like to be seen doing it, just as a musician likes to play for an audience. There is an element of dance to it. We think about how we look while moving over stone. But we tend toward a more wiry physique for maximum strength-to-weight ratio.
For me, climbing, with the technique, the setting, the practice of the requisite virtues, the movement, the grace, the appearance of the body in relation to the problem, the doing of something difficult, and so on, but especially the skillful and graceful execution of the carefully orchestrated sequence of moves demanded by the problem, each requiring deep biomechanical and kinesthetic insight, is far more about the beauty of the whole practice than about "athleticism" for its own sake, whatever that is, whatever value that imparts to an activity, if any. In my experience, knowing my own motivations and observing many others and talking to them, it seems to be more of an art than some kind of athletic ambition, even though it is arguably as "athletic" as anything. It even might be said to have many things in common with the practices of the samurai.
And for many of its practitioners, climbing is a highly obsessive activity. It is a lifestyle. Many lives revolve around it. We climbers often make our friends around it. We build businesses around it. We read and write books about it. We meet our significant others through it. We pursue self-mastery in it. We pursue a kind of spiritual development in it. We find incredible camaraderie in it. We collect lots of appealing gear, lots of satisfying toys. We abandon conventional careers for it. I imagine bodybuilding is similar to this in many ways.
Does it get in the way of other things? Sure! What doesn't? Are we neurotics? More than hard-working businessmen? More than philosophers?
Consider that all the accusations made about bodybuilders and their self-obsession, vanity, inability to feel okay with themselves without such a physique, and so on, could be leveled at just about anyone who does just about anything with enthusiasm and persistence.
Why do philosophers feel such a need to be intelligent? Why can't they be satisfied with everyday ideas and levels of understanding? Why all the reading of obscure and difficult books and performing their understanding for others? Why all the posing? Why all the pretense of profundity? Something to prove? Some sense of inadequacy? Oh, they are all driven by a pure sense of wonder or a pure pursuit of the good, are they?
Are the motivations behind bodybuilding or rock climbing or philosophy absolutely pure? Of course not. But what is that impurity anyway? And why is it wrong? Pulling on one of those threads could lead you to the heart of the problem of the good.
The idea of developing my own physique along the lines of the bodybuilder has appealed to me at times much in the same way that cultivating a beautiful bonzai would appeal to me. Obviously, I would enjoy the idea of my improved sex appeal (assuming my bodybuilding is kept within tasteful limits), but that isn't all there is to it. And sure, I am also dissatisfied with the way I look when I am out of shape. I feel dumpy. I feel like my vices are there for all to see. The same goes for letting flabbiness of mind get out of control. I also am unhappy to paint a picture that doesn't reach a certain standard. Is it wrong to be unsatisfied with what we tend to be when we fail to practice all discipline?
There is pleasure in excellence in all its forms.
And not all good things derive their goodness from the degree to which their practitioners are useful to others. On the contrary, I often think the best things are ends in themselves. Is what is found in bodybuilding on this level? That's up to its practitioners to decide. We, the larger community, have no claim on it. It doesn't need to be for us. It isn't up to us to decide. What is in bodybuilding belongs to the bodybuilders.
People outside worlds like these tend not to understand what they are about. Many people think climbing is about being a daredevil. I often get accused of being an adrenaline junkie or having a death wish or being an escapist. Or they make fun of someone "conquering" a wall or mountain. They just don't have a clue what it is about. It contains aesthetic dimensions, insights, and joys that they'd never suspect. I would guess that bodybuilding isn't so different. This is all difficult even for us to articulate to ourselves. I often find myself wishing I could share what it is I find in climbing with non-climbers, but it just isn't possible. Words fail.
And why do we like to judge bodybuilders, but not quilters or something like that? People similarly attack money-makers. Are we jealous? Is it our own dissatisfaction with our own bodies and our own lack of discipline that drives the armchair criticism and psychoanalysis? Explain it all away as pathology and then we can go back to our tub of buttered popcorn and our Netflix series with a clear conscience. No?
Bodybuilding is fine. If you find it rewarding, don't mind all the critics. Don't seek their approval. You don't need their permission.
And I don't even see the big problem with using performance enhancing drugs. It just depends on what it is all about for you. Whether it is "cheating" depends on what kind of game you are playing, if you are even playing a game.
I used to think that the body and mind are not toys, but I am beginning to question that. Perhaps we are all just playing with form in one way or another. And we tend to take it all way too seriously! Especially death!
Some years ago, considering the next directions in my life, I was focusing on choosing the long term hobby/recreational activity to which to dedicate more passionately. I opened up the topic of lifting weights at the gym and got stuck on exactly the aspects being discussed here: namely the vanity, artificiality and pointlessness of it, to keep it super simple.
My issue was, if the activity did not contain enough substance, intrinsic value, or utility I would not buy into it and get serious. And half-assing just for fun was not what I was going after.
So at that time I did some web searches for "the philosophy of bodybuilding", the "psychology of bodybuilding" etc.. and didn't find anything worthwhile. I wish I had found this board back then, would have been very eager to partake in the discussion.
I am happy you touch so many of the interesting questions @petrichor. And make a few good points as well. That said I can't help but feel like not all questions are answered in a thoroughly enough way.
To say, reading your post my itches have reappeared but did not get scratched just enough :(
I'll pass on a definition of athleticism since I think you probably have a pretty good idea of what I mean already. However, for me at least, the beauty of muscle is its kinetic function. Bodybuilding*, for this poster, is muscle without muscular purpose. Regarding whether it's 'worthwhile' or not; I have no idea, is it?
*I understand this as the very extreme end of the gym spectrum; competition, steroids, posing pouches, fake tan and veins.
Quoting petrichor
This is where we differ. I don't believe the value of muscle is merely aesthetic so I'm unimpressed by your aesthetic relativism.
Great posts. You helped me see climbing in a new way. I also agree with the attitude expressed below.
Quoting petrichor
I agree with what I think is your notion that our motives are often mixed. We do this or that to some degree for its own sake and to some degree for status. Smarter, stronger, sexier, richer, more righteous,....
And here:
Quoting petrichor
Thanks!
Quoting gumi
I can't help but think that some would argue that most things we do are vain and pointless in the end, if not artificial. In my mind, pointlessness isn't a good reason to reject something.
Consider the old question people ask about basic work, the very definition of the useful. Why do I work? To live. Why do I live? To work? Does work just serve work?
You can't fully justify things by instrumental value. You reach the heart and head eventually. Not everything is best justified in the way that feet and screwdrivers are. That which gives value to all the useful things in the end is itself without instrumental value.
Quoting Txastopher
Honestly, I am not exactly clear on what is meant by athleticism. I think it could be an interesting discussion to try to define it and see what consequences we can draw out of that.
And actually it is exactly the heart of what bothered me.
From one side, you can't easily attack bodybuilding without also throwing punches at a lot of other activities we do in life. Starting from hobbies, unconscious habits, ending up with whatever profession you do daily. And so the discussion very easily reaches fundamental life philosophical dimensions and then turns into a stalemate.
And yet.. There seem to be so many other options for you to satisfy each and every one of those positives that going to the gym offers. Options which don't suffer from the same level of artificiality, vanity and pointlessness.
E.g.
- You want to become excellent at something?
OK, take up carpentry and build something crazy original.
- But you also want it to be something primal and pleasurable for the body?
OK have more sex then.
- But you also want it to be something real manly, provide physical benefits, confidence, compensate for your office job lifestyle?
Heck why don't you at least do a martial art, then? Sure can see a number of situations where it would be more beneficial than bodybuilding
Regards
Exactly. And it takes a lot of trial and error to learn what works for your body, both nutrition-wise and workout-wise. It's very easy to plateau if you're not paying enough attention to what you're doing all around, as a complete lifestyle, if you're not approaching it systemically and experimenting with the system to figure out what works. That's why you don't see a lot more people who are really built--because it's very difficult to get there; it takes total commitment. And that's why some people try to "cheat" and use ridiculous things like synthol instead.
What make any of these things artificial or not? Vain or not? Pointless or not? You should have some criterion for that, and some justification for the criterion, if you're going to criticize anything versus support anything on those grounds.
When you get under the heavy loaded bar you simulate a necessity to lift it, and stimulate the muscles. This to me is "artificial".
When you take every possible opportunity to stop at the mirror, take peek at your abs, and concern yourself with bodifat digits, and arm circumference, that to me is "vain".
About "pointless", clearly this is exeggerating a bit. In effort to better illustrate the critical side of the argument.
I wasn't asking you to tell me what you think is artificial, vain, etc. about bodybuilding.
I was asking you to basically give your definition of artificial, vain, and pointless so that (a) under the definition, bodybuilding qualifies as artificial, vain, pointless, but (b) under the same definition, carpentry, having sex, doing martial arts, etc. don't qualify as artificial, vain, pointless.
Right..
Well to me those seem pretty straightforward answers as well, but perhaps there is something more to consider in that direction.
Of course it is artificial. In the good old days, men got magnificent physiques by building temples and city walls and houses out of stone with their bare hands and a minimum of tools. Or by working in steel mills, or iron mines, or coal fields, or plowing, planting, and harvesting, and so forth. All that has changed.
Modern "Body building" got going as a specialty in the late 19th century. Eugene Sandow, born 1867, was the modern promoter. Of course, the Greeks were interested in physical culture long before us, and they worked on their physiques competitively (I think more for olympic performance than S & M -- Stand & Model.
Historically, industrial revolution era working class men didn't have the leisure or necessity to body build. Work took care of that. They worked hard and then they died. Bodybuilding and athletic practice takes a certain amount of leisure. The more time that one puts into it, the more free time one needs. Most likely athletes have belonged to a somewhat higher class, where leisure was more plentiful.
In our era (century or two) quite a few people no longer engaged in heavy labor, and had more leisure time. Athletic activities could become a specialty for a broader spectrum of classes.
Of course, a 90 lb. weakling is at a disadvantage in martial arts. The guys in the karate club at the U were a pretty lean muscular bunch (drool).
A: The male muscular body is universally appealing to the human perception. (strong notion maybe, but we could define something more acceptable like: intrinsic beauty, attractiveness to the majority of the population, etc.)
B: The underlying reasons for A can be broken down and iterated many times, until they largely draw from primal instincts, which are pure and universal for all humans. Instincts born out of survival necessities: aggression, toughness/resistance, security; as well as hedonist: enjoyment of foods, sexual partners.
C: The bodybuilder takes advantage of such instincts, but goes a step too far by creating the external appearance without basis in real-life scenarios. The visual result is disproportionate to promise it makes.
D: The motivation behind C is not noble or morally exemplary, and thus opens the door to assumptions like: vanity and narcissism, lack of self-confidence, and desire for social acceptance beyond what the individual offers to the collective.
Point D is very loose and subjective, but if I see opinions supporting A thru C, it is already an interesting conclusion in my opinion.
Re your B, you're leaving out the health aspects. That's also part of the instinctive attraction, because it's part of "security," part of having a stable, non-risky mate to help raise offspring.
Re your C, I don't understand "creating the external appearance without basis in real-life scenarios." There's no real way to cheat to a bodybuilding physique aside from something like synthol, but that doesn't really work--it only produces a grotesque caricature of a bodybuilding physique. Even with steroids, getting a bodybuilding physique is very hard work that takes a total lifestyle commitment and a lot of time. There's always a misconception about steroids and PEDs in general that you can just take them and be Barry Bonds or Arnold Schwarzenegger. You can't. It still takes natural talent/natural gifts, years of hard work, and a pretty total lifestyle commitment.
Yes absolutely, to B we can add something like:
"On a more subconscious level, a muscular body may suggest good genes, resistance to a crippling illness. Good to mate with that one."
About C, the clarification is:
In any other situation - outside of the gym - the acquired physique does not serve a purpose in the direction of aspects listed under B. Or - it does, but to a far far lesser degree than the appearance suggest. This represents a illusion towards the observers instincts
But the whole point is that the work it requires to get a bodybuilding physique can't be faked, and it does really have all of those benefits. You can't get to that point and not be healthy, for example.
No. That is a pretty valid point (with exceptions), but not the whole point, and not the point of my C.
Something like this.
Observer's sub-conscience:
Wow this dude probably eats like a tyrannosaurus, snacking on a pack of hippos with cheese, on his way back from hunting down a brontosaurus
Reality:
He weighs the 34g of oats on a digital scale, and has fears of the glycemic load of an apple.
Observer's subconscience:
Wow this dude probably can manhandle a sabretooth tiger and smash it to the ground
Reality:
No, but he should be able to bench 4 sets of 12 reps with the tusks, provided he gets into position and then another such dude spots him.
That would just be saying that others might have ridiculous beliefs about the person, but why would bodybuilding be a special case for that?
But is not so upfront and transparent about it. It masquerades as pursuit for health when it is a pursuit for attention (.. more so than other hobbies like carpentry).
Of course I may be wrong.
Those are not actual beliefs by anyone, you see right?
Those are supposed associations on subconscious level that a muscular body invokes.
I don't buy the notion of subconscious mental content, but even if I did, that would have to be actual subconscious mental content of particular individuals.
Even if health concerns aren't primary, you can't get to the destination --a bodybuilder's physique --without being intentionally healthy.
Is this actually the case? As I understand it, competitive bodybuilding is massively unhealthy. If, on the other hand, you mean something else by 'bodybuilding'; working out with weights, for example, then I suppose it is, as you put it, 'intentionally healthy', but I'm not sure if it's bodybuilding though. Perhaps we need to clarify terms.
Because of?
All true; but, isn't that the kettle calling the pot back?
Well, two wrongs don't really make a right, so calling the objectification of females by all males wouldn't constitute only a pot-kettle analogy but a gross overgeneralization too.
One does these things unconsciously, though, as their aptly called biases.
Well, that is de facto the definition of objectification. Or at least applied objectification.
Nevermind, I don't know where you're going with this. Just spill the beans already!
Using drugs can be problematic, because of all the side effects. But I imagine bodybuilding without drugs could be as healthy and harmless as playing tennis or the cello.
Somebody said that a bodybuilder physique is considered the ideal. I don't think that's correct. Ancient Greek and Roman statues favour proportionate, healthy body types with sold, well-defined, but not overly large muscles. When I have discussed this with people that are attracted to men, that is the message I have received. My observation from these discussions is that the idealised body type is that of an Australian Rules footballer.
Interesting. So, the heart valve complications and issues with heart disease can' be mitigated in any way?
This is a mark:
Watch 'em fly! Wonderful stuff.
Quoting andrewk
Yep. Unless bodybuilding is taken on as a way of stretching towards some notion of bodily perfection that is imposed by others. Then it is problematic.
Who's "others"?
Who bay that be?
may.
This silly twisting of what was said does you proud.
SO is your point a profound rejection of existentialist thought that points to how there is never really an "other"?
Or are you just playing sillybuggers.
Quoting Banno
dunno you tell me.
Whatever floats your boat.
Quoting Wallows
Now, if you had said that, I might have cause to stop and think. But instead...
So, I say that neurotic men congregate towards the attainment of a perfect body? What's wrong with that? Perhaps too much generalizing?
Because it cause some of those who engage in it to have serious health problems?
Human behavior is loaded with neuroticism. It just goes with the territory [of being human].
There is nothing inherently bad about spending hours at the gym sculpting one's physique. What might make it neurotic is the motivation. For instance, a man might be attempting to compensate for a low estimation of his personal worth by trying to make himself buff. Kind of neurotic. Someone else might engage in the same sculpting activity because he is a model and will get more jobs if he has the right physique.
Men who are jealous of other men who have gym-dandy physiques are neurotic.
I spent quite a bit of time on a nude beach one summer getting an all over tan. The act of undressing in public resolved all sorts of neurotic body issues. For somebody else, undressing in public might cause neuroses.
People are at least a little crazy. It's called the psychopathology of everyday life. People who eat compulsively. People who don't bathe, floss, shampoo, trim, etc. People who shoplift for excitement. People who engage in sex they don't want. People who won't have the sex they do want. Road rage. It's all crazy. Neurotic.
Examples?
Examples
Which one of those would you say are good evidence of it being unhealthy?
If we're simply saying that it's possible to hurt yourself should you do particular things, that's true, but it's true of anything, including eating, walking to your bathroom, etc.
Yeah, and in this case it gives the impression of "I don't know--why don't you look it up! There must be something you could find that suggests what I just claimed if you look hard enough."
Perhaps a uselessly technical reply, but one I am satisfied with.