The Birth of Pleasure

April 29, 2002
Through her work counseling couples, and complemented by a detailed reading of some of Western civilization's major texts (e.g., Genesis, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, Proust, Freud and Anne Frank), psychologist Gilligan finds a relationship between the larger social order—patriarchy—and the problems individuals may have in forming loving relationships. According to Gilligan (In a Different Voice), the damage starts very young. At four and five years of age, boys learn to cut off some key relationships (e.g., with their mothers) to be more "masculine," resulting in a host of behavioral problems in grade school. Girls' troubles appear in adolescence, when they realize that being "good" means muting or censoring aspects of their personalities to maintain relationships with others. For children, conforming to patriarchal expectations produces trauma, the "shock to the psyche that leads to dissociation." Following the gender rules entails losses for both sexes, attests Gilligan, endangering adult relationships in the end. After a marriage's "honeymoon" phase, Gilligan says, the husband is often emotionally unavailable and the wife so adept at concealing her true feelings that she has to leave the marriage to rediscover who she is. For Gilligan, pleasure in these relationships is compromised by the awareness of what is not said. While the evidence Gilligan summons from her experiences co-leading couples counseling sessions sometimes seems forced, her observations of boys and teenaged girls may provoke new understandings of these troubled—and troubling—groups. Her mastery of literary sources and her intelligent but nonacademic writing style make this an enjoyable, challenging work. Agent, John Brockman. (May 7)Forecast:It's been 20 years since Gilligan wrote a book on her own, and her fans will surely want to reconnect with her by buying this one. An NPR appearance and an author tour will drum up interest among the uninitiated.

February 1, 2002
Called psychology yet drawing on literature from Greek mythology to Shakespeare to Toni Morrison, this book by gender scholar Gilligan considers the path of loveDand pleasureDthrough time.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2002
As a psychologist, writer, and professor of gender studies, Gilligan is fascinated by how culture shapes and is shaped by interpretations of manhood and womanhood, love and marriage. In this original and elegant inquiry, a fine weave of vivid case studies of "couples in crisis" and brilliant literary analysis, she considers Western civilization's "foundational stories," which abound in tragic love and disassociation, and which she believes underlie the psychological disconnection that induces men and women to distrust pleasure, suppress their true selves, and accept less than true love. Observing that relationships between the sexes are changing rapidly in the wake of the great liberation movements of the last century, and curious about how children, especially girls, learn to conform to gender roles and stereotypes, Gilligan uses the ancient tale of Psyche and Cupid, who named their daughter Pleasure, as a touchstone for fresh and discerning readings of an unexpected array of works from " The Scarlet Letter" to Proust, Anne Frank's diary, and " The English Patient." Sensing the stirrings of an alternative to the paradigm of traumatic hierarchal relationships that has generated so much misery and denigrated joy, Gilligan writes, "collectively, we are stepping out of an old frame," and as bewildering as this change is, it promises freedom, the greatest pleasure of all.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)