The Birth of Pleasure

Rating:
Summary: A Deconstruction of the Patriarchy & Map to Find Way Out
Review: Carol Gilligan has transformed our thinking of how adolescents experience their growing up in the modern world. With her new beautifully written and truly brilliant book, she shows the reasons why men start to think about leaving when they truly fall in love, and why it is so hard for everyone to know truly, viscerally, deeply what they know (but what might be painful for self or others to acknowledge fully). Ranging from empirical data, ancient myths, literature, her own life experiences growing up (movingly told with unflinching honesty), and her observations as a therapist, Gilligan eloquently sketches the reasons why the Western tradition has embraced the genre of tragedy to tell stories of love.
This is a complex, challenging, and courageous book. It stands on par with the most daring work of such thinkers as Freud or Darwin, using the author's unusual intelligence to discern unacknowledged truths behind everyday realities.
I could not put it down, and it resonates deeply in the most unexpected contexts. Buy this book; it is not only the birth of pleasure but also a pleasure to think with Gilligan.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Harvard Gender Trauma Study
Review: I'm honestly confused. Didn't we know thirty years or more ago that "the patriarchy" splits women into saints and sinners and men into "wimps" and "men"? The first 25 pages of Gilligan's Knopf title offer the 5 star promise of much needed Harvard research that documents the precise ages of precise traumas inflicted by patriarchal structures on developing human psyches (age 5 for boys, 13 for girls) and heartbreaking evidence of evolutionary adaptations to patriarchal structures that are preserving and protecting the intimate inner self of both men and women for future redemption -- and connect these adaptations to the fundamental issues of Trauma Studies (literary and psychiatric). The first 25 pages offer stunning hard research confirmation that at this point in evolution we are a traumatized, dissociated, masochistic lot. Gilligan then offers the extremely well worn map of Apuleius' tale of Amor and Psyche, while disparaging the "Jungians" who have long had the map memorized, to redeem authentic integrated being and love for humankind -- then really barely uses the map through the remainder of the book, presenting instead psychoanalytically eloquent and delicately poetic but also extremely worn case and literary examples of our dissociative splits. What happened after the first 25 pages? What was the point of transforming such important research into memoir and anecdote? Who is Gilligan's audience? Is Gilligan herself ironically holding back her own powerful erudition? ... Maybe Gilligan wrote this for her sophomore students; in that case and for that audience, it rates a very important 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Harvard Gender Trauma Study
Review: I'm honestly confused. Didn't we know thirty years or more ago that "the patriarchy" splits women into saints and sinners and men into "wimps" and "men"? The first 25 pages of Gilligan's Knopf title offer the 5 star promise of much needed Harvard research that documents the precise ages of precise traumas inflicted by patriarchal structures on developing human psyches (age 5 for boys, 13 for girls) and heartbreaking evidence of evolutionary adaptations to patriarchal structures that are preserving and protecting the intimate inner self of both men and women for future redemption -- and connect these adaptations to the fundamental issues of Trauma Studies (literary and psychiatric). The first 25 pages offer stunning hard research confirmation that at this point in evolution we are a traumatized, dissociated, masochistic lot. Gilligan then offers the extremely well worn map of Apuleius' tale of Amor and Psyche, while disparaging the "Jungians" who have long had the map memorized, to redeem authentic integrated being and love for humankind -- then really barely uses the map through the remainder of the book, presenting instead psychoanalytically eloquent and delicately poetic but also extremely worn case and literary examples of our dissociative splits. What happened after the first 25 pages? What was the point of transforming such important research into memoir and anecdote? Who is Gilligan's audience? Is Gilligan herself ironically holding back her own powerful erudition? ... Maybe Gilligan wrote this for her sophomore students; in that case and for that audience, it rates a very important 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Sentimental and Romantic
Review: Its difficult to summarize this amazing book--I just loved it. Everyone who has read this book has been so touched by it. I was not able to put it down. In this amazing book, Carol Gilligan tells the story of a young woman named Psyche who breaks taboos on seeing and speaking about love. In doing this, she frees herself and Eros or Cupid, her lover, from a tragic love story. The revolutionary implications of Gilligan's work have never been clearer and this book is bound to be attacked.
This is one of those rare books that will change the way you see the world.
Her telling of the Psyche and Cupid myth is brilliant and original. Once again,Gilligan is right on the edge, where artists always are. Everyone will be able to relate to many parts of this book. This is a must read book.

Rating:
Summary: A MUST READ-In its Own Class
Review: Its difficult to summarize this amazing book--I just loved it. Everyone who has read this book has been so touched by it. I was not able to put it down. In this amazing book, Carol Gilligan tells the story of a young woman named Psyche who breaks taboos on seeing and speaking about love. In doing this, she frees herself and Eros or Cupid, her lover, from a tragic love story. The revolutionary implications of Gilligan's work have never been clearer and this book is bound to be attacked.
This is one of those rare books that will change the way you see the world.
Her telling of the Psyche and Cupid myth is brilliant and original. Once again,Gilligan is right on the edge, where artists always are. Everyone will be able to relate to many parts of this book. This is a must read book.

Rating:
Summary: Fusion of Science and Poetry--Love and Pleasure
Review: One of the most incredibly enlightening books I have ever read. A book about pleasure and love. A book that everybody can relate to. It fuses science and poetry and makes a unique contribution to our understanding of love and pleasure. It is so beautifully written. It transforns our understanding of the modern/historic civilization as they have liberated or limited our potential for intimate and pleasurable relationships. I will read this book over and over.

Rating:
Summary: Sentimental and Romantic
Review: Reading this book did not, alas, lead to the birth of pleasure. It was a painful experience. The highest value for Gilligan is the pursuit of the 'authentic self,' especially the female one, in the face of nasty 'patriarchy.' Twenty-five years ago, 'patriarchy' really meant something; it was a call to arms against those social, political, and economic structures entirely in the hands of men. But the word is at outmoded as is the sentimental and romantic stuff purveyed here. There is more to life, more to gender, more to maturity, and certainly more to human values than this pursuit of pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: Ancient Advice to Escape the Self-Slaughter of Patriarchy
Review: The Oedipus myth and its tragedy and pain is in this
book associated with the costs of patriarchy, where
both boys at a younger age and girls at puberty lose
themselves and are forced by our patriarchal culture
into inhuman roles, that slaughter the true selves of
those involved. The myth of Cupid and Psyche becomes
the alternative myth showing a way out and beyond the
tragedy of the Oedipus myth, where in the final scene,
after Psyche is made a god, on par with her husband
Cupid, the baby "pleasure" is born. It is love between
the lovers, and the courageous revelation of the true
self that enables breaking out of the patriarchal mold,
allowing for those involved to be truly themselves in a
mutual, loving relationship, instead of merely frozen
into roles with the true selves repressed.

Carol Gilligan traces this theme through myths, case
studies, the diary of Anne Frank, literary writings
from Shakespeare to modern authors, and even a
reinterpretation of Freud, vividly illustrating how the
patriarchal culture causes repression of true selves,
causing great amounts of pain and dissociation. Yet
the tone is constantly one of hopefulness as she also
points a way out of this tragic "patriarchal" culture,
through interpreting the myth of Cupid and Psyche (the
advice drawn from the myth is succinctly summarized in
the second-last paragraph of the book, but you would
miss a lot of engaging imagery and illustration if that
was all you read).

Rating:
Summary: Re-learn What You Once Knew
Review: This is an important book to read for those searching out a deeper understanding of themselves and the role society has played in the development of self-denial.

According to the author, there comes a stage in a child's development (for boys when they are 5 and girls when they are 13 - later for girls cause the patriarchy has no need for women untill they are of birthing age) when they are forced to forget what they know in order to be in relationships. The patriarchy sets up a hierarchy that separates the "father" from children and women - creating a split in relationships but also in ourselves (we lose touch with the internal "father," or at least those characteristics in ourselves that have been deemed "masculine"). When you are a child you do not question your perception of the world or your emotional reactions to it. You instinctively know how to interpret and react to how other people are feeling. But once you reach a certain age, you have to unlearn these things, deny your knowledge in order to fit into the mold the patriarchy has devised as acceptable. In order to be in relationships (within the patriarchy) you have to shut away part of yourself, which raises the question, if you aren't allowed to be yourself within the patriarchy, how real are the relationships you are sacrificing yourself for? And that is the problem - deep down we are all yearning for real connections which we can't have, because none of us are truly being ourselves. And those parts of ourselves we had to deny because the patriarchy deemed them "wrong" (very often our sexuality and creativity) get repressed - we start to see those parts of ourselves as dirty and bad and hate them - hate ourselves. The book says that we need to reclaim these lost gems from our childhood in order to truly know ourselves - and some of what has been repressed might be hard to look at, might be unappealing, but the good stuff far outweighs the bad. The goal should be wholeness (good and bad) not perfection.

*For those that are tired of reading books that rail against the big bad "patriarchy," you will find this book's approach refreshing, as it does not focus on judging men or society, but rather looking at it from a different point of view.