The argument presented is that Type A man became the subject of a new medic
al discourse that in the late 1950s unveiled the "cause" of coronary heart
disease.:Type A man, identified by means of the Type A behavioral pattern,
became visible through a new medical gaze. The rise of this new social and
diagnostic category was through the medicalization of the attributes of tra
ditional masculinity. The approach of the paper is Foucauldian, and the met
hod is genealogical: it traces the social construction of Type A man in the
scientific medical literature in the 1950s and 1960s. It is argued that th
e fall of Type A man began when the construct was coopted by the psychologi
sts whose efforts to measure the psychological dimensions of the coronary-p
rone personality and behavioral pattern eventually fragmented the concept.
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