Bonds of Love

Zusatztext "A clear! closely argued study of power and desire! which succeeds in making psychic life a social reality." Richard Sennett! author of The Fall of Public Man "An important book . . . an amazingly lucid account of the way power all too often becomes intertwined with gender." Ethel Person! The New York Times Book Review "Many of us have long admired Jessica Benjamin's intricate rethinking of social theory and psychoanalytic theory. The Bonds of Love gives us Benjamin at her best! and psychoanalytic social theory at its best! as she demonstrates brilliantly the complex intertwining of familial! gender! and social domination." Nancy Chodorow! author of The Reproduction of Mothering Informationen zum Autor Jessica Benjamin Klappentext Why do people submit to authority and derive pleasure even others have over them? What is the appeal of domination and submission, and why are they so prevalent in erotic life? Why is it so difficult for men and women to meet as equals? Why, indeed, do hey continue to recapitulate the positions of master and slave? In The Bonds of Love , noted feminist theorist and psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin explains why we accept and perpetuate relationships of domination and submission. She reveals that domination is a complex psychological process which ensnares both parties in bonds of complicity, and shows how it underlies our family life, our social institutions, and especially our sexual relations, in spite of our conscious commitment to equality and freedom. CHAPTER ONE The First Bond Psychoanalysis has shifted its focus since Freud, aiming its sights toward ever earlier phases of development in childhood and infancy. This reorientation has had many repercussions: it has given the mother-child dyad an importance in psychic developments rivaling the oedipal triangle, and consequently, it has stimulated a new theoretical construction of individual development. This shift from oedipal to preoedipalthat is, from father to mothercan actually be said to have changed the entire frame of psychoanalytic thinking. Where formerly the psyche was conceived as a force field of drives and defenses, not it became an inner drama of ego and objects (as psychoanalysis terms the mental representation of others). Inevitably, the focus on the ego and its inner object relationships led to an increased interest in the idea of the self, and more generally, in the relationship between self and other. In this chapter I will show how domination originates in a transformation of the relationship between self and other. Briefly stated, domination and submission result from a breakdown of the necessary tension between self-assertion and mutual recognition that allows self and other to meet as sovereign equals. Assertion and recognition constitute the poles of a delicate balance. This balance is integral to what is called differentiation: the individual's development as a self that is aware of its distinctness from others. Yet this balance, and with it the differentiation of self and other, is difficult to sustain. In particular, the need for recognition gives rise to a paradox. Recognition is that response from the other which makes meaningful the feelings, intentions, and actions of the self. It allows the self to realize its agency and authorship in a tangible way. But such recognition can only come from an other whom we, in turn, recognize as a person in his or her own right. This struggle to be recognized by an other, and this confirm our selves, was shown by Hegel to form the core of relationships of domination. But Hegel formulated at the level of philosophical abstraction can also be discussed in terms of what we now know about the psychological development of the infant. In this chapter ...

"A clear, closely argued study of power and desire, which succeeds in making psychic life a social reality."
—Richard Sennett, author of The Fall of Public Man

"An important book . . . an amazingly lucid account of the way power all too often becomes intertwined with gender."
—Ethel Person, The New York Times Book Review

"Many of us have long admired Jessica Benjamin's intricate rethinking of social theory and psychoanalytic theory. The Bonds of Love gives us Benjamin at her best, and psychoanalytic social theory at its best, as she demonstrates brilliantly the complex intertwining of familial, gender, and social domination."
—Nancy Chodorow, author of The Reproduction of Mothering

Autorentext
Jessica Benjamin

Klappentext
Why do people submit to authority and derive pleasure even others have over them? What is the appeal of domination and submission, and why are they so prevalent in erotic life? Why is it so difficult for men and women to meet as equals? Why, indeed, do hey continue to recapitulate the positions of master and slave?

In The Bonds of Love, noted feminist theorist and psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin explains why we accept and perpetuate relationships of domination and submission. She reveals that domination is a complex psychological process which ensnares both parties in bonds of complicity, and shows how it underlies our family life, our social institutions, and especially our sexual relations, in spite of our conscious commitment to equality and freedom.

Leseprobe
CHAPTER ONE
 
The First Bond
 
 
Psychoanalysis has shifted its focus since Freud, aiming its sights toward ever earlier phases of development in childhood and infancy. This reorientation has had many repercussions: it has given the mother-child dyad an importance in psychic developments rivaling the oedipal triangle, and consequently, it has stimulated a new theoretical construction of individual development. This shift from oedipal to preoedipal—that is, from father to mother—can actually be said to have changed the entire frame of psychoanalytic thinking. Where formerly the psyche was conceived as a force field of drives and defenses, not it became an inner drama of ego and objects (as psychoanalysis terms the mental representation of others). Inevitably, the focus on the ego and its inner object relationships led to an increased interest in the idea of the self, and more generally, in the relationship between self and other.
 
In this chapter I will show how domination originates in a transformation of the relationship between self and other. Briefly stated, domination and submission result from a breakdown of the necessary tension between self-assertion and mutual recognition that allows self and other to meet as sovereign equals.
 
Assertion and recognition constitute the poles of a delicate balance. This balance is integral to what is called “differentiation”: the individual’s development as a self that is aware of its distinctness from others. Yet this balance, and with it the differentiation of self and other, is difficult to sustain. In particular, the need for recognition gives rise to a paradox. Recognition is that response from the other which makes meaningful the feelings, intentions, and actions of the self. It allows the self to realize its agency and authorship in a tangible way. But such recognition can only come from an other whom we, in turn, recognize as a person in his or her own right. This struggle to be recognized by an other, and this confirm our selves, was shown by Hegel to form the core of relationships of domination. But Hegel formulated at the level of philosophical abstraction can also be discussed in terms of what we now know about the psychological development of the infant. In this chapter we will follow the course of recognition in the earliest encounters of the self with the nurturing other (or others), and s…

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