Customer Reviews

The Birth of Pleasure

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. The other reviewers have expressed the basic idea of what she is up to. I found it to be an incredible strength of the book that Gilligan moves through such very different sources to develop her ideas: studies of children and couples in crisis, her experience in a theater/voice group, her reading of Psyche and Cupid, Anne Frank's diaries, there are just so many different pieces of the web she weaves. And she connects them together so beautifully (it helps that her writing is so beautiful-- read it just for her writing). One of the effect of all these different sources is that the reader ends up very supported in looking for the way these traumatic and tragic stories are revealed in cultural materials of very different origins, and in the cultural materials that we produce with our own lives. I have become much more careful about the stories of love I am willing to accept, and the stories of love that I want to resist or scrutinize, no matter what their origin (movie, novel, boyfriend, my own mind). Also much more careful about the stories of love that I live and tell.
This book really changed me . . it helps you trust yourself in orienting yourself towards pleasure as a road out from the domination system . . and what a beautiful strategy of resistance following pleasure and delight can be.

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.

I do not have much to add that has not already been stated in other reviews here. This book is truly transformative and is a must-read for anyone seeking greater clarity in their interpersonal relationships and also offers a roadmap for a deeper understanding of self.

I picked this up in London and read it during the disintegration of my marriage. I must say parts of it challenged me, even though I am a feminist and very aware of gender theory and literary criticism. I disagree with the reviewer who said there is more to love than pleasure... more to life, yes, but the point of having a relationship with someone is to discover joy in and with each other, no? To take pleasure in and have pleasure with the other person? Gilligan makes this point eloquently. I found the book refreshingly sympathetic toward what happens to make lively little boys into uptight and uncommunicative men. The point is, despire patriarchy, I personally like men and want to find a way to have a real connection with them even in an imperfect world. Reading this book was transformative for me in that respect, even if I skipped through all of the later literary references. This book is popular psychiatry, not meant to rival big texts in gender theory, and so, in its genre, is very effective. In fact, it changed the lives of several friends of mine that live in a culture even more patriarchal than ours; it lent them courage to try to seek a different sort of relationship with men other than just a traditional one. I have also given this book as a gift to four people, one of them a man, who all found it useful, though not perfect. Having some room for imperfection, even in a book, is a useful thing, I think. I found the book very useful despite its flaws.

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.