The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love Paperback – August 12, 2003

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.

This is a brilliant, beautiful, and hugely helpful book--one of a few that I feel has, on it's own, had a lasting and profound effect on me and my view of the world, for the better. I also recommend bell hooks' "The will to change," a very different book but through a similar lens on patriarchy. As hooks says, it has no gender.

This is a deep and profound look at many of the vital issues that affect our lives andrelationships.Carol Gilligan takes a long view through childhood and developmental psychology andbrings a new light to the issues faced by men and women as they struggled to relateand love one another.A dazzling piece of work.

I appreciated the discovery of an option we weren’t aware was available, something we forgot, our own joy in ourselves.

excellent

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 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.

Great book, fast delivery. Thank you!

Such a wonderful & amazing investigation on men & women behaviors in relation of the environment we are evolving in. Behaviors are so rarely look at in terms of what society exceptations are in the structural level of this society, not in term of mood swings or trends of this same society. And most of all, a perspective of action that can change not only our intimate relationship with our partners, but might even change the whole dynamic we are suffering from collectively.

Gilligan created a ground-breaking research in her book "In a Different Voice" - this work revisits that and progresses her research. For anyone interested in a balance, thoughtful and well founded exploration of the implications of gender as we construct it through our lives - this is a MUST READ.