THE BONDS OF LOVE: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

by Jessica Benjamin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 31, 1988

Psychotherapist Benjamin (New School for Social Research) mounts yet another attack on Freudianism: in concentrating on the father-son struggle, she says, it ignores the importance of maternal nurture, relegates the development of gifts to penis envy, father fixation, etc. This, plus further criticism of more recent psychoanalytic theorists (Horney, Lasch), turns out to be a lint-picking backdrop for Benjamin's tortuous, also much-documented (Winnicott, Erikson, Mahler) explanation for the supposed prevalence of male dominance/female submission in our culture. Its breeding ground, she says, is the once-traditional nuclear family, with a homebound mother and a breadwinning father. Toddler-age boys and girls both look to the father as a symbol of freedom to which they can aspire. A gift's attempts to transfer identification to the father has been traditionally discouraged (which accounts for the prevalence of depression in female toddlers). The boy, however, is encouraged to dissolve his identification with his ""first loved one,"" to define himself as a different sex from the all-nurturing, passive mother, and to embrace the freedom and assertiveness of the father. Boys who fail to complete the separation process, claims Benjamin, are likely to regard women as ""objects"" to be devalued, and to he dominated in erotic love. Even today's liberated woman ""expresses not so much her desire, as her pleasure in being desired."" To break this cycle of domination-submission, ""women must claim their subjectivity. . .They may thus offer men a new possibility of colliding with the outside and becoming alive in the presence of an equal other."" This sort of psychobabble--which pervades the entire book--will likely repel readers in droves. However, psychiatric professionals and some feminists may find Benjamin's critique of Freudianism and her dominance-submission theory of some interest.

Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION