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The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love
The author of the classic In a Different Voice offers a brilliant, provocative book about love that has powerful implications for the way we live and love today.
“Compelling ... A thrilling new paradigm.” — The Times Literary Supplement
Carol Gilligan, whose In a Different Voice revolutionized the study of human psychology, now Why is love so often associated with tragedy? Why are our experiences of pleasure so often shadowed by loss? And can we change these patterns?
Gilligan observes children at play and adult couples in therapy and discovers that the roots of a more hopeful view of love are all around us. She finds evidence in new psychological research and traces a path leading from the myth of Psyche and Cupid through Shakespeare’s plays and Freud’s case histories, to Anne Frank’s diaries and contemporary novels.
“Compelling ... A thrilling new paradigm.” — The Times Literary Supplement
Carol Gilligan, whose In a Different Voice revolutionized the study of human psychology, now Why is love so often associated with tragedy? Why are our experiences of pleasure so often shadowed by loss? And can we change these patterns?
Gilligan observes children at play and adult couples in therapy and discovers that the roots of a more hopeful view of love are all around us. She finds evidence in new psychological research and traces a path leading from the myth of Psyche and Cupid through Shakespeare’s plays and Freud’s case histories, to Anne Frank’s diaries and contemporary novels.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Carol Gilligan
51 books207 followersCarol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work on ethical community and ethical relationships.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
December 27, 2017
Carol Gilligan, the woman whose writings helped me write my thesis. It’s her worldview, her perception of little things, her interpretation of myths and stories, her belief in the possibility of change, her faith in women as the harbingers of that change, her passion in her writings and her love for a better kind of living that makes her writings so interesting, so pleasurable to read.
October 9, 2008
When I saw this on the sale book table, looking very pink and whatnot, I thought "What's that dumb girly book going to be?" But when I saw that Carol Gilligan was the author, I had to pick it up. Carol Gilligan wrote In a Different Voice, which I read in my Development Psychology class in college. I haven't been really moved to dip back into psychology of this sort since but Gilligan has quite a lot of really important stuff to say in this book. I find myself wanting to tell people about it quite often, but just as often, I find I can't quite repeat it to my satisfaction.
She has so much to say about pleasure and patriarchy and knowing things and intimacy and the breaking of intimacy. It's actually a little overwhelming. I feel like I need to read it again or write or paper on it or something to get a full handle on what she's getting at. Actually, what I want to do is make a show about it. But that's for later, I think.
The biggest concept that keeps returning is the idea of people not knowing what they know. Her thesis is that girls start not knowing what they know at adolescence and boys start not knowing what they know around age five. It's really startling stuff and makes buckets of sense. She looks at a lot of case studies, particularly couples in crisis - all of which are fascinating. I particularly loved her analysis of Twelfth Night in relationship to these issues and also her take on Freud's career. She made me want to investigate Freud a little further, which I didn't think I'd ever want to do again.
It's a really lovely book about love and relationships and life and stuff. It's not always crystal clear; She veers from poetry to case study to concept in a sort of dizzying way. The nuggets of insight, though, are profound and I think are worth the confusion.
She has so much to say about pleasure and patriarchy and knowing things and intimacy and the breaking of intimacy. It's actually a little overwhelming. I feel like I need to read it again or write or paper on it or something to get a full handle on what she's getting at. Actually, what I want to do is make a show about it. But that's for later, I think.
The biggest concept that keeps returning is the idea of people not knowing what they know. Her thesis is that girls start not knowing what they know at adolescence and boys start not knowing what they know around age five. It's really startling stuff and makes buckets of sense. She looks at a lot of case studies, particularly couples in crisis - all of which are fascinating. I particularly loved her analysis of Twelfth Night in relationship to these issues and also her take on Freud's career. She made me want to investigate Freud a little further, which I didn't think I'd ever want to do again.
It's a really lovely book about love and relationships and life and stuff. It's not always crystal clear; She veers from poetry to case study to concept in a sort of dizzying way. The nuggets of insight, though, are profound and I think are worth the confusion.
June 20, 2011
Gilligan describes something I've perceived in the dance of male/female relationships -- the emotional disconnect that takes place and the ways they've come about. I will re-read this book. My first impression is that "Pleasure" should actually read "joy" and be related to an inner state, an inner marriage and not the relationship with another. Once the inner marriage between the opposites takes place, this gives birth to joy and contentment. When two people who have done their inner work and realized this marriage come together, then it might be possible to have a real, equal love and healthy marriage between two people and not just experience the disconnect of being an object of another's imagination.
May 29, 2018
A surprisingly interesting and experimental meditation on love--on how love requires repairing childhood breaks that teach us how to play our roles and cover our emotional range and intuition.
I appreciated the breadth of sources, the work done in recovering vocality and literal orality in the subjects. I think the poetics became obfuscatory at times, and I don't know that the knowledge gained here is new to the empathetic and literate individual, but on the whole, I was glad to have read this book.
I appreciated the breadth of sources, the work done in recovering vocality and literal orality in the subjects. I think the poetics became obfuscatory at times, and I don't know that the knowledge gained here is new to the empathetic and literate individual, but on the whole, I was glad to have read this book.
March 20, 2020
This is one of those books I'm [edit almost] giving five stars, but don't feel able to recommend. It feels like on a very deep level the author 'gets it'. What it is, I'm not sure, though I would point to the title. She revealed to me a world where it's possible to share pleasure with other people in a way that isn't shameful. Like, deep, wholesome pleasure. It was interesting to see that while sometimes this includes sex and is related to sexual exploration, what she's talking about is not sex and seems wholly independent.
As far as the 'getting it'. It comes through in glimpses. She holds her narratives loosely and this requires a feathery reading.
It's also weird though. I don't really get what the book is about. It seems like the author just read a couple of books and picked out stuff she liked about them and talked about the stuff she liked? But actually this is great? I think I'm still holding onto my old disdain for the epistemology of literary criticism--- which this is. But this is also the clearest example of what it *should be*. I'm a bit worried this review is incomprehensible so I'll try to be clearer. The book has some theories about how and when children adopt gender roles instead of being genuine, and their is a really rough theme about how being genuine helps heal psychological trauma and allow people to enjoy pleasurable love in their relationships. Mostly romantic relationships, but it's clear that the author considers this true for all human relationships.
This is done through analyzing a number of stories and making a bunch of analogies. I keep wanting and not wanting to address how a rationalist would read this book. I'll leave it at that for now.
Ah! It's that I don't trust other people to read this book in a way that they would get insights from it! I think it is possible to get insights from it, though it isn't totally packed, but it requires a style of reading that I doubt would have made sense to me years ago.
bumped back down to 4 stars because it just didn't seem right. Didn't seem like the insights were big enough.
As far as the 'getting it'. It comes through in glimpses. She holds her narratives loosely and this requires a feathery reading.
It's also weird though. I don't really get what the book is about. It seems like the author just read a couple of books and picked out stuff she liked about them and talked about the stuff she liked? But actually this is great? I think I'm still holding onto my old disdain for the epistemology of literary criticism--- which this is. But this is also the clearest example of what it *should be*. I'm a bit worried this review is incomprehensible so I'll try to be clearer. The book has some theories about how and when children adopt gender roles instead of being genuine, and their is a really rough theme about how being genuine helps heal psychological trauma and allow people to enjoy pleasurable love in their relationships. Mostly romantic relationships, but it's clear that the author considers this true for all human relationships.
This is done through analyzing a number of stories and making a bunch of analogies. I keep wanting and not wanting to address how a rationalist would read this book. I'll leave it at that for now.
Ah! It's that I don't trust other people to read this book in a way that they would get insights from it! I think it is possible to get insights from it, though it isn't totally packed, but it requires a style of reading that I doubt would have made sense to me years ago.
bumped back down to 4 stars because it just didn't seem right. Didn't seem like the insights were big enough.
April 6, 2020
"I dream I am wearing my glasses over my contact lenses. I am literally seeing double, although it does not seem like that in the dream. A woman, my therapist, says to me, “I cannot offer you myself,” and I am instantly filled with shame and remorse for wanting what seems so unreasonable, so extreme. Until, in the dream, I take off my glasses. My head spins around 180 degrees like an owl’s, and I feel an overwhelming sense of vertigo, as if I have been struck by lightning or suffered a severe shock, as I say “No.” Because suddenly I know. This isn’t it. This endless wanting of what is being withheld. Without the second set of corrective glasses, my desire loses its overlay of shame. I want what I had wanted with my mother and my women teachers: I want her to be herself. I do not want to enter the subtle and surreptitious competition among women that I remember from my adolescence - not the open contests that I knew as an athlete and a good student af school, but a competition that is said not to be a competition, a competition hidden in the guise of love. “I do not want you to compete with me,” I say to the woman in the dream. When I wake up, I realize that I feel dizzy in the dream not when I am seeing double - when I am wearing my glasses over my contact lenses - but when I take off my glasses and am seeing clearly."
"(Anne Frank's) openness is astonishing (...) it exposes her to be slapped down, told that she is being inappropriate, hearing herself called "unpleasant" and "insufferable" - words that she will use to describe herself and that explain why psychologically she goes into hiding. Vecause in contrast to the four-year-old boys who cannot name what they are doing, Anne, like other adolescent girls, describes the process of closing herself."
"...the meaning of the changes she observed among the boys as they turned five and prepared to enter kindergarten. They were separating themselves from their relationships, and in the process they were becoming less direct, less attentive, less articulate, and less authentic. (...) to become one of the boys, they had to cover parts of themselves.
The changes (...) are analogous to the changes girls experience at adolescence when they speak fo themselves as becoming more indirect, more inauthentic in their relationships, not saying what they are feeling and thinking. (...) Boys at around the age of five, if they are to become one of the boys, must conceal those parts of themselves that are not considered to be manly or heroic. The cultural force driving this initiation surfaces in the often brutal teasing and shaming of boys who resist or do not fit cultural codes of masculinity. Girls, given more leeway until adolescence, experience a similar initiation into womanhood at that time, manifest in the often vicious games of inclusion an exclusion among girls that adults find so disturbing. (...) to resist the intiation is to risk one's claim to manhood or womanhood."
- srov. Barša (2002): "(...) u chlapce superego postupně přetavuje osobní tužby, strachy a resentimenty do neosobní míry nestranné a univerzální spravedlnosti (...) Jak píše (Juliet) Mitchell: Díky většímu spoléhání na vnější představitele autority musela být dívka během svého dětství poslušnější, méně rozpustilá... Chlapec si roztržku již prodělal v době řešení svého odipovského komplexu a jeho následná výchova je v souladu s jeho původním ustavením sebe jako "nezávislého". Ne tak dívka. Radikální roztržka na ni čeká až v adolescenci, kdy chlapci stačí pouze zopakovat své první snahy."
"We have witnessed Iphigenia's heroic attempt to resist the exigencies of patriachal society. When this resistance fails, she consoles herself as women for centuries wil console themselves: with the "secondary gain" that in sacrificing herself she is allowed to participate in the society that makes the rules."
"The conflict (between Psyche and Venus) is not really between the women but between the women and a practice of elevating one woman to a pedestal and worshiping her image - placing her in effect out of reach, out of relationship - and loving not her but the image of her, so that when she no longer fits the image, another woman can take her place."
"(...) the initiation of girls typically occurs later, ther participation in patriarchy becoming essential only at the time when they become young women, the time when the continuation of patriarchy depends on women being with men."
"I remember from the time of my own adolescence losses so shocking to me that I literally could not speak of them at the time (...) My shock came in part from the realization that others around me, mainly my parents, were not registering the loss I was experiencing, so that I suddenly felt out of touch with them. I remember submerging myself, as if I were a whale or a dolphin, a mammal that could live under water."
"But the brilliance of dissociation as an adaptation to trauma is that it keeps alive what had seemingly been lost. What is known and then not known remains out of reach, buried in the deths of the psyche; an innocence and ignorance that become frozen in time (...) sustaining a false consciousness and also a false rendering of history."
""She had always wanted words," Almasy (of Ondaatje's The English Patient) explains. "She loved them, grew up in them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.""
""(...) picking somebody so awful for me was my way of atoning." For wanting pleasure, for freeing herself. (...) she has a history of throwing away pleasure, overriding her own sense of truth with what others call the truth."
"(...) [A patriarchal culture] is filled with a dissonance that separates intellect from feeling. When here is no longer a "place" or "room" to strenghten their truth or practice speaking directly what they know, the girls then leave the vibrations of their speaking voice and move from breathiness to silence. In this silence, (...) resonating chamber keeps alive the energy of the initial thought/feelings, preserving an integrity that risks everything if taken back onto the speaking voice in a culture still unable to provide a resonance for such clarity, subtlety and power."
"The relationship with Freud, his ability to stay in the presence of such thoughts and feelings, releases Elisabeth from what Jean Baker Miller will subsequently call "condemned isolation": the feeling of being too bad to be human. As Elisabeth discovers that she can be with herself and also with Freud, as she responds to his interest in what she knows, we see a process of initiation reversing itself: knowing replacing not knowing, the touch of relationship speaking directly to the fear that in knowing what she knows, she will find herself condemned and isolated.
"In the year following his father's death, Freud begins his self-analysis. His discoveries become the basis for The Interpretation of Dreams (...) introduces the Oedipus story, finding his own dreams (...) as universal. (...) now instead of proceeding from a position of not knowing, he has seized the position of knower, the interpeter of dreams, the conquistador of the unconscious. He begins to override the voices of others (...) When Freud disavows what has come to be known as "the seduction theory" and questions the pervasiveness of incest, he places an incest story as the cornerstone of psychoanalysis. In doing so, however, he introduces a central displacement. In place of the young woman speaking about her experience of an incestuous relationship with her father, Freud puts the young boy, fantasizing about an incestuous relationship with his mother. The shift in emphasis from reality to fantasy follows this displacement, and with it we see Freud shift his alignment from the young women hysterics to the young Oedipus, the son who will grow up to be Oedipus Tyrannus, the father in the Oedipal drama."
"(Anne Frank's) openness is astonishing (...) it exposes her to be slapped down, told that she is being inappropriate, hearing herself called "unpleasant" and "insufferable" - words that she will use to describe herself and that explain why psychologically she goes into hiding. Vecause in contrast to the four-year-old boys who cannot name what they are doing, Anne, like other adolescent girls, describes the process of closing herself."
"...the meaning of the changes she observed among the boys as they turned five and prepared to enter kindergarten. They were separating themselves from their relationships, and in the process they were becoming less direct, less attentive, less articulate, and less authentic. (...) to become one of the boys, they had to cover parts of themselves.
The changes (...) are analogous to the changes girls experience at adolescence when they speak fo themselves as becoming more indirect, more inauthentic in their relationships, not saying what they are feeling and thinking. (...) Boys at around the age of five, if they are to become one of the boys, must conceal those parts of themselves that are not considered to be manly or heroic. The cultural force driving this initiation surfaces in the often brutal teasing and shaming of boys who resist or do not fit cultural codes of masculinity. Girls, given more leeway until adolescence, experience a similar initiation into womanhood at that time, manifest in the often vicious games of inclusion an exclusion among girls that adults find so disturbing. (...) to resist the intiation is to risk one's claim to manhood or womanhood."
- srov. Barša (2002): "(...) u chlapce superego postupně přetavuje osobní tužby, strachy a resentimenty do neosobní míry nestranné a univerzální spravedlnosti (...) Jak píše (Juliet) Mitchell: Díky většímu spoléhání na vnější představitele autority musela být dívka během svého dětství poslušnější, méně rozpustilá... Chlapec si roztržku již prodělal v době řešení svého odipovského komplexu a jeho následná výchova je v souladu s jeho původním ustavením sebe jako "nezávislého". Ne tak dívka. Radikální roztržka na ni čeká až v adolescenci, kdy chlapci stačí pouze zopakovat své první snahy."
"We have witnessed Iphigenia's heroic attempt to resist the exigencies of patriachal society. When this resistance fails, she consoles herself as women for centuries wil console themselves: with the "secondary gain" that in sacrificing herself she is allowed to participate in the society that makes the rules."
"The conflict (between Psyche and Venus) is not really between the women but between the women and a practice of elevating one woman to a pedestal and worshiping her image - placing her in effect out of reach, out of relationship - and loving not her but the image of her, so that when she no longer fits the image, another woman can take her place."
"(...) the initiation of girls typically occurs later, ther participation in patriarchy becoming essential only at the time when they become young women, the time when the continuation of patriarchy depends on women being with men."
"I remember from the time of my own adolescence losses so shocking to me that I literally could not speak of them at the time (...) My shock came in part from the realization that others around me, mainly my parents, were not registering the loss I was experiencing, so that I suddenly felt out of touch with them. I remember submerging myself, as if I were a whale or a dolphin, a mammal that could live under water."
"But the brilliance of dissociation as an adaptation to trauma is that it keeps alive what had seemingly been lost. What is known and then not known remains out of reach, buried in the deths of the psyche; an innocence and ignorance that become frozen in time (...) sustaining a false consciousness and also a false rendering of history."
""She had always wanted words," Almasy (of Ondaatje's The English Patient) explains. "She loved them, grew up in them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.""
""(...) picking somebody so awful for me was my way of atoning." For wanting pleasure, for freeing herself. (...) she has a history of throwing away pleasure, overriding her own sense of truth with what others call the truth."
"(...) [A patriarchal culture] is filled with a dissonance that separates intellect from feeling. When here is no longer a "place" or "room" to strenghten their truth or practice speaking directly what they know, the girls then leave the vibrations of their speaking voice and move from breathiness to silence. In this silence, (...) resonating chamber keeps alive the energy of the initial thought/feelings, preserving an integrity that risks everything if taken back onto the speaking voice in a culture still unable to provide a resonance for such clarity, subtlety and power."
"The relationship with Freud, his ability to stay in the presence of such thoughts and feelings, releases Elisabeth from what Jean Baker Miller will subsequently call "condemned isolation": the feeling of being too bad to be human. As Elisabeth discovers that she can be with herself and also with Freud, as she responds to his interest in what she knows, we see a process of initiation reversing itself: knowing replacing not knowing, the touch of relationship speaking directly to the fear that in knowing what she knows, she will find herself condemned and isolated.
"In the year following his father's death, Freud begins his self-analysis. His discoveries become the basis for The Interpretation of Dreams (...) introduces the Oedipus story, finding his own dreams (...) as universal. (...) now instead of proceeding from a position of not knowing, he has seized the position of knower, the interpeter of dreams, the conquistador of the unconscious. He begins to override the voices of others (...) When Freud disavows what has come to be known as "the seduction theory" and questions the pervasiveness of incest, he places an incest story as the cornerstone of psychoanalysis. In doing so, however, he introduces a central displacement. In place of the young woman speaking about her experience of an incestuous relationship with her father, Freud puts the young boy, fantasizing about an incestuous relationship with his mother. The shift in emphasis from reality to fantasy follows this displacement, and with it we see Freud shift his alignment from the young women hysterics to the young Oedipus, the son who will grow up to be Oedipus Tyrannus, the father in the Oedipal drama."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 28, 2008
This is an excellent book on modern culture/psychology/male-female relationships. It takes the Psyche-Cupid myth as its core theme and uses modern psychology, literature, biology, sociology to try to understand why we are often so screwed up in our relationships with ourselves and with others. It has too much in it to cover in a short review, but here are a few memorable pieces:
- Anne Frank's diary has 3 versions, the one she wrote originally in her own voice, a version that she edited after hearing that the Dutch government-in-exile was planning to publish war diaries, and the third edited by her father. the important one is to see how she modified her "voice" in moving from the free voice of her original diary to the version of what she thought "a writer" would publish. The changes involved making it less complex(e.g. she couldn't love her mother and hate her mother at the same time) and less personal (e.g. excitement at something turns into a more studied appraisal).
- Freud's early works make sense because he was listening to his patients; the later works get screwed up because he started imposing external judgments and views.
Reading this book has really changed how I understand people around me.
- Anne Frank's diary has 3 versions, the one she wrote originally in her own voice, a version that she edited after hearing that the Dutch government-in-exile was planning to publish war diaries, and the third edited by her father. the important one is to see how she modified her "voice" in moving from the free voice of her original diary to the version of what she thought "a writer" would publish. The changes involved making it less complex(e.g. she couldn't love her mother and hate her mother at the same time) and less personal (e.g. excitement at something turns into a more studied appraisal).
- Freud's early works make sense because he was listening to his patients; the later works get screwed up because he started imposing external judgments and views.
Reading this book has really changed how I understand people around me.
March 15, 2010
I must confess, this is not the kind of book that tops my reading list but after a very memorable meeting with Carol Gilligan herself I couldn't pass the opportunity to get a signed a copy of one of her publications.
The Birth of Pleasure captured my interest because of it's title but inside is a superb side by side analysis of her interviews with children and couples in crisis as well as literary work from the allegorical myth of Cupid and Psyche to Anne Frank's Diary to Proust, Tennessee Williams and much more in between.
Dissecting the path of love in patriarchal society she leads the reader into self-analysis ad hopefully into the discovery of a new map for love.
The Birth of Pleasure captured my interest because of it's title but inside is a superb side by side analysis of her interviews with children and couples in crisis as well as literary work from the allegorical myth of Cupid and Psyche to Anne Frank's Diary to Proust, Tennessee Williams and much more in between.
Dissecting the path of love in patriarchal society she leads the reader into self-analysis ad hopefully into the discovery of a new map for love.
December 1, 2018
Originally published in 2002, this book is a must read now! Carol Gilligan's research interwoven with myths and memories paint a picture of when girls and boys dissociate from pleasure and their voices. In this era of #metoo and #timesup, her observation of adolescent girls and when they begin to deny what they know, the underlying question asked by one woman, “Do you want to know what I think? Or do you want to know what I really think?” Another question, "Can we change the patterns?"
June 12, 2010
"My tongue suddenly flew above me then
Suddenly light and limitless
I turned my eyes toward it
astonished at its ambition
I never intended it to say that much!
But it sang, on and on
I put the diamond in my ear
Closed my eyes
And embraced the arias my tongue sang and sang
Above my head, free, unbound and tireless." Elizabeth Austen
Suddenly light and limitless
I turned my eyes toward it
astonished at its ambition
I never intended it to say that much!
But it sang, on and on
I put the diamond in my ear
Closed my eyes
And embraced the arias my tongue sang and sang
Above my head, free, unbound and tireless." Elizabeth Austen
February 15, 2023
I liked this more than I expected after picking it up in a sale stack at Unnameable books. I found myself cringing a bit to what at times felt like sweeping claims with little backing...it was very gender essentialist/heteronormative....but maybe I didn't mind the gender stuff too much simply because (and I hate to admit it but) I did relate to a lot of it. Namely, the figure of the daughter or young girl as truth-teller—the one to break culturally sanctioned dissociation, instead pointing out and advocating for association. Connecting to pleasure via relationship.
I enjoyed Gilligan's interweaving of the myth of Cupid & Psyche, Shakespeare, Anne Frank, and other stories. I liked her examples from her own therapeutic practice the most. I admired the experimental form connecting psychoanalysis and literary analysis (although the poetry had my head spinning a bit).
Also, there's an underlying assumption throughout the book that the opposite of patriarchy is democracy. I guess 2002 is 20 years ago at this point...Idk, I feel I'm missing something here at the end. We just keep digging and find our "inner voice"??? And this is all supposed to upend patriarchy?
At the same time, I could let myself indulge the sappiness for what it was: "Maybe love is like rain. Sometimes gentle, sometimes torrential, flooding, eroding, joyful, steady, filling the earth, collecting in underground springs. When it rains, when we love, life grows."
I enjoyed Gilligan's interweaving of the myth of Cupid & Psyche, Shakespeare, Anne Frank, and other stories. I liked her examples from her own therapeutic practice the most. I admired the experimental form connecting psychoanalysis and literary analysis (although the poetry had my head spinning a bit).
Also, there's an underlying assumption throughout the book that the opposite of patriarchy is democracy. I guess 2002 is 20 years ago at this point...Idk, I feel I'm missing something here at the end. We just keep digging and find our "inner voice"??? And this is all supposed to upend patriarchy?
At the same time, I could let myself indulge the sappiness for what it was: "Maybe love is like rain. Sometimes gentle, sometimes torrential, flooding, eroding, joyful, steady, filling the earth, collecting in underground springs. When it rains, when we love, life grows."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
June 19, 2011i should really be liveblogging this. i just got to an extended (inset) quote of indigo girls lyrics. usually i am probably the best possible audience for something like that but i think the intro of "The Indigo Girls, two women who are among the many contemporary popular women singers..." jarred. apart from getting me to sing galileo to myself, i'm not sure the intended point, because it led without commentary into an extended recap of a dream carol gilligan had about her mother's life choices. i mind the personal dream recaps less than when she extracts her clients' therapy sessions into poems, e.g.:
I think
I just shift into thinking
I can think
I am.
I didn't feel
I didn't feel
I don't know.
I didn't feel
I belonged there.
I dealt with it
by disappearing.
so, so far into my fresh attempt to read gilligan after spending my 20s antagonistically avoiding her book 'in a different voice': this is bad, but for mostly wholly different reasons than i'd expected. i do think her reading of the cupid and psyche myth is pretty powerful (same her close reading of the successive editing of anne frank's diaries and anne's relationship with her mother), but it's undercut by her lazy readings of the greek tragic plays and her opening the whole mess with this sentence: "For years, without knowing why, I have been drawn to maps of the desert, drawn by descriptions of the winds and the wadi - - dry watercourses that suddenly fill with rain." no comment.
if you want to read about the the psychic life of teen girls and the disassociation and splitting that results from trying to love, express yourself, and experience relationship within social structures that treat women as objects and not subjects of love and sex, read 'dilemmas of desire' by deborah tolman. apart from the analysis being better, i promise that you won't have to deal with a middle-aged upper class white feminist unreservedly describing how she read w.e.b. dubois's 'the souls of black folk' and saw herself and her struggles in his description of double consciousness. the same can't be said for 'the birth of pleasure.'
I think
I just shift into thinking
I can think
I am.
I didn't feel
I didn't feel
I don't know.
I didn't feel
I belonged there.
I dealt with it
by disappearing.
so, so far into my fresh attempt to read gilligan after spending my 20s antagonistically avoiding her book 'in a different voice': this is bad, but for mostly wholly different reasons than i'd expected. i do think her reading of the cupid and psyche myth is pretty powerful (same her close reading of the successive editing of anne frank's diaries and anne's relationship with her mother), but it's undercut by her lazy readings of the greek tragic plays and her opening the whole mess with this sentence: "For years, without knowing why, I have been drawn to maps of the desert, drawn by descriptions of the winds and the wadi - - dry watercourses that suddenly fill with rain." no comment.
if you want to read about the the psychic life of teen girls and the disassociation and splitting that results from trying to love, express yourself, and experience relationship within social structures that treat women as objects and not subjects of love and sex, read 'dilemmas of desire' by deborah tolman. apart from the analysis being better, i promise that you won't have to deal with a middle-aged upper class white feminist unreservedly describing how she read w.e.b. dubois's 'the souls of black folk' and saw herself and her struggles in his description of double consciousness. the same can't be said for 'the birth of pleasure.'
July 25, 2010
Mired amidst a virtual avalanche of incomprehensible feminist bullshit are bad poems, bad song lyrics, a badly re-tooled Oedipus, a soporific recitation of Psyche & Cupid, and (very occasionally) a genuine insight or two.
This book must exist simply to increase the number of books in the world: I can see no other purpose for it. The only possible reason to read such a meandering, faux-intellectual, threadbare bromide is for the sport of hunting down the seemingly accidental point, far too few of which appear.
This book must exist simply to increase the number of books in the world: I can see no other purpose for it. The only possible reason to read such a meandering, faux-intellectual, threadbare bromide is for the sport of hunting down the seemingly accidental point, far too few of which appear.
April 15, 2019
Gilligan uses a questionable but confident poetic method to analyze the myth of Cupid and Psyche. She arrives at a hidden message about gender, relationship and inner emotion; then, she proceeds to make that message universal, buttressing it by applying the same poetic method to many different texts, such as Anne Frank's diary, her own couples therapy sessions, Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", Jamaica Kincaid, Freud's early case studies, and others. This idea was novel to me and the book works surprisingly well to convey it.
May 30, 2024
An agonizing read I cannot recommend, but will not deem totally useless. She’s onto something here but she’s trying to speak in the terms of ancient Greeks, which is not the language we speak today, basically. She is trying though… some kind of translation is happening. The problem is that that content configurations is so incredibly disorienting- it reads like a book report, parts of a thesis, a poem, a medical chart… bits of real beauty in a kind of chaotic heap. One of those books I started because I was heartbroken and finished because I felt like I had to.
August 31, 2018
This was a very uneven book. The title, which makes sense in the context of what she wrote, makes sense but is utterly misleading to someone browsing. The highlights of this book were the individual passages where she talked about specific stories about couples or Anne frank or her own life, but unfortunately she spaced them out with vague discussions of the birth of pleasure and trauma which were both repetitive and ultimately in-enlightening.
June 28, 2024
epic insights into ancient mythology and its application to modern psychology. an exploration of the radical geography and rhythms of love! <3
people navigating relationships within the patriarchy, coping with dissociation and trauma when relationships end, the sacrifice of pleasure (and sense of self) in relationships that we are all taught, and ultimately how we process our conception that love must end in trauma, loss, or betrayal based on ancient stories. the culmination of decades of scientific, political, and literary revolution always circling back to love. a compelling, at times very personal and raw, account of gilligan and the young women, young boys, and parents she worked with.
at times i found the format of it- the jumping back and forth from different references- a bit distracting. i felt like there could have been less references & more analysis (or perhaps just more analysis specifically involving eros and psyche (as the title suggests) or perhaps just a slightly shorter book).
some favorite quotes:
“The self that girls and women conceal, like the voice they mute or the identity they are taught to despise, is a vital, curious, pleasure-loving soul that also has adaptive value. Dissociation is a brilliant although costly way of ensuring this soul's survival. If dissociation is also the psychic mechanism that allows survival in patriarchy, an adaptation to the splits in relationship among and between men and women, the soul in its affinity to life and to love will resist this adaptation” (9-10).
“Masculinity often implies an ability to stand alone and forgo relationships, whereas femininity connotes a willingness to compromise oneself for the sake of relationships. But both strategies (forgoing relationships to maintain one's voice and muting one's voice to maintain relationships) entail a loss of voice and relationship. By holding voice and relationship together, a confiding relationship offers protection from this loss” (16-17).
“The dissociation between image and memory, between the look of things and the feeling of what happens, holds two worlds in place simultaneously: what you know and what you really know, what you feel and what you really feel, the story you tell about yourself and the experience of what happened. I have been following the voice of pleasure, and it has led me into a discussion of trauma” (205).
“The essence of love is love, and love by its very nature is free. Freeing love means releasing it to find its own form. Like wind and water, love crosses borders and boundaries: when we fall in love, we fall into relationship and out of categories, because love is always particular. This person.”
people navigating relationships within the patriarchy, coping with dissociation and trauma when relationships end, the sacrifice of pleasure (and sense of self) in relationships that we are all taught, and ultimately how we process our conception that love must end in trauma, loss, or betrayal based on ancient stories. the culmination of decades of scientific, political, and literary revolution always circling back to love. a compelling, at times very personal and raw, account of gilligan and the young women, young boys, and parents she worked with.
at times i found the format of it- the jumping back and forth from different references- a bit distracting. i felt like there could have been less references & more analysis (or perhaps just more analysis specifically involving eros and psyche (as the title suggests) or perhaps just a slightly shorter book).
some favorite quotes:
“The self that girls and women conceal, like the voice they mute or the identity they are taught to despise, is a vital, curious, pleasure-loving soul that also has adaptive value. Dissociation is a brilliant although costly way of ensuring this soul's survival. If dissociation is also the psychic mechanism that allows survival in patriarchy, an adaptation to the splits in relationship among and between men and women, the soul in its affinity to life and to love will resist this adaptation” (9-10).
“Masculinity often implies an ability to stand alone and forgo relationships, whereas femininity connotes a willingness to compromise oneself for the sake of relationships. But both strategies (forgoing relationships to maintain one's voice and muting one's voice to maintain relationships) entail a loss of voice and relationship. By holding voice and relationship together, a confiding relationship offers protection from this loss” (16-17).
“The dissociation between image and memory, between the look of things and the feeling of what happens, holds two worlds in place simultaneously: what you know and what you really know, what you feel and what you really feel, the story you tell about yourself and the experience of what happened. I have been following the voice of pleasure, and it has led me into a discussion of trauma” (205).
“The essence of love is love, and love by its very nature is free. Freeing love means releasing it to find its own form. Like wind and water, love crosses borders and boundaries: when we fall in love, we fall into relationship and out of categories, because love is always particular. This person.”
April 10, 2021
this was my second time reading this book. i think the first part (of three) of the book was life-changing and one of the reasons i re-read this book. it made me feel as a woman very seen, less alone in many of my behavioral traits that i find to be hindering at times and i just a terrible time of shaking. i made my partner read this book literally. gilligan has a wonderful way of approaching and illustrating patriarchy as something that harms men as well and people in general by creating uneven playing grounds in which we are to have relationships. granted, the second two parts are a bit more chaotic, and less poignant, i do think this book is worth reading for all peoples looking to be in relationship.
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December 23, 2023Didn't realize it was considered a feminist book until it started referencing the patriarchy a lot. Personally I find this aspect a bit reductive, but I found the overall book compelling. It relates various myths and works of literature to the author's own experience, and argues that social constructs artificially limit our capacities and kinds of love because of fear of tragedy and pain. This rings true for me, not in a "society is bad" kind of way, but in a "we can tentatively do better" kind of way. Loving openly without creating suffering is no easy task, but its gotta be worth a try. As for what love means, and how it relates to pleasure - that conversation can happen another day. It doesn't seem central to the stories in this book despite the title.
November 23, 2021
I absolutely love this book, because it shows us how stories can become etched onto our hearts, crawl up to our throats, so we cannot speak or be anymore.
The Birth of Pleasure is about digging and digging to unearth the voice that has been buried – to find ourselves again – beyond the domineering story of patriarchy that plummets us down, that we forget how to exist anymore.
Easy to understand writing style, informative, digestible, and insightful.
The Birth of Pleasure is about digging and digging to unearth the voice that has been buried – to find ourselves again – beyond the domineering story of patriarchy that plummets us down, that we forget how to exist anymore.
Easy to understand writing style, informative, digestible, and insightful.
April 1, 2019
Simultaneously relatable and cerebral, Carol Gilligan tells the stories that have colored and informed our ideas and narratives of love and relationship, all while interweaving real stories or brokenness, journey, and healing. The book was a tad dense and would’ve felt more approachable if had more than three chapters, but overall well pleased!
July 2, 2022
i loved this book. it was so fascinating the way the story of cupid was woven throughout, almost narratively. it was also an interesting read with a perspective of the way things have shifted/haven’t shifted at all 20 years later. i could've done without the freudian references but i think they served their purpose.
March 13, 2017
Sumptuous journey through western mythology and psychology, fully redeeming our joy, pleasure, and embodied knowing as women. A must read.
April 18, 2018
Speaks of love, romance and relationships. Uses classic books, stories, and myths to point out that yes, “love hurts”. Love is often accompanied by tragedy and pain.
December 21, 2023
Very repetitive, could have easily been a paper 1/4 of the size instead of a book. What wasn't repeated had some good insights.
June 13, 2024
Carol Gilligan do u wanna hang out
June 26, 2024
Nobody does it like my girl Carol…… simply a visionary
August 29, 2024
hmm too many anecdotes not enough answers but maybe i’ve just been reading too many french authors
April 5, 2025
This book led me to an alignment; Ms./Mrs. Gilligan’s usage of vocabulary set a path for my personal development that I wouldn’t have dreamed of. Thank you. This book is an amazing read.
August 23, 2015
Carol Gilligan has written a fascinating book. Using a multifaceted approach, she examines the origins of dissociative trauma -- that psychological split within ourselves where we can know and not know, feel but not feel -- and its path to the suppression of pleasure and authenticity. Gilligan argues that the foundational myths of Western society are virtually all based on trauma, societal control, and violence. The author takes her readers on a journey through memory, literature, psychological research, and ancedote to examine how we are societally trained to avoid experiencing genuine happiness. The book, though, ends where it begins. "Patriarchy" sets up the trauma and maintains it, Gilligan argues at the book's outset. The writer, though, never tells us what she means by "patriarchy" and, in the end, it becomes an amorphous demon, meaningless except as a convenient all-encompassing scapegoat. Still, "The Birth of Pleasure" is worth reading for its intriguing questions and for what it might have been.
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