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by: Jessica Benjamin  Amazon.com's Price: $13.77 Prices subject to change.Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 155.3 EAN: 9780394757308 ISBN: 0394757300 Label: Pantheon Manufacturer: Pantheon Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 320 Publication Date: July 12, 1988 Publisher: Pantheon Release Date: July 12, 1988 Studio: Pantheon Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Salvaging FreudIn remarkably clear language, Benjamin reworks Freudian psychoanalysis so to include the possibility of mothers and fathers mutually recognizing each other as subjects thereby enabling a cooperative relationship where similarities and differences are acknowledged. Without this modification, she argues that traditional Freudian theories with their sole reliance on individual intrapsychic reality cannot help but reproduce patriarchal gender relationships which are characterized by domination and submission, ... Read More Rating: - The Ties that BindAre a bit ephemeral, according to Benjamin, for they suppose and originate in the constitutive acts of an other subject, acts which not only may recognize one's subjectivity but also fail to recognize one's subjectivity. Thus the pain when such a failure occurs. Thus the efforts individuals expend to manage their lives to avoid such pain. Benjamin's book was hardly the first to address these issues. It was, however, the first to address them systematically while relating them to feminist theory. ... Read More Rating:  - Very good but very dense.Initially I was shown this book by a friend because it contains an analysis of the "Story of O". I especially liked the attempt by Benjamin to work out a cogent explanation of the source and nature of feminine Sexual Desire. She doesn't arrive at adefinitive model but does present a convincing case that it lies in the sense of being able to feel safe and free within a "transistional space" wherein one feels ones drives as being from ones own self and not the result of identifcation with the other. Read More 
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