The Bonds Of Love Revisited

Jessica Benjamin is one of the most important and influential psychoanalysts of the last 4 decades. She is one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, a movement that has by now expanded over the globe and was also one of the first to introduce feminism and gender studies into psychoanalytic thought. Jessica Benjamin is the most known and quoted representative of these two movements within world psychoanalysis and beyond, in philosophy, gender/women’s studies, and cultural studies department everywhere. The publication of her book, "Bonds of Love" (1989) was nothing short of a revolution. Psychoanalysis was until then a field immune to a changing world, to the unrest of the 60s, to the feminist and queer liberation movements, to the new philosophies of the Frankfurt School in Germany and post-structuralism in France. The book was a game changer. It called psychoanalysis to doubt its most basic premises on the human condition. It read Freud through a feminist framework, and through Hegel, forever tipping our perspective on infancy, gender, and the interplay of power and dependence that drives human relationships from the start. This volume marks the 25th anniversary of Benjamin’s work. Pulling together 15 international scholars, it looks back on the book's first impact, as well as on its continued relevance to psychoanalysis and gender studies today. Chapters offer theoretical deliberations and elaborations of the book's original themes as well as reflecting on it from more intimate angles, as a source of personal and professional inspiration for feminists and clinicians around the world. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

Jessica Benjamin is one of the most important and influential psychoanalysts of the last 4 decades. She is one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, a movement that has by now expanded over the globe and was also one of the first to introduce feminism and gender studies into psychoanalytic thought. Jessica Benjamin is the most known and quoted representative of these two movements within world psychoanalysis and beyond, in philosophy, gender/women’s studies, and cultural studies department everywhere. The publication of her book, "Bonds of Love" (1989) was nothing short of a revolution. Psychoanalysis was until then a field immune to a changing world, to the unrest of the 60s, to the feminist and queer liberation movements, to the new philosophies of the Frankfurt School in Germany and post-structuralism in France. The book was a game changer. It called psychoanalysis to doubt its most basic premises on the human condition. It read Freud through a feminist framework, and through Hegel, forever tipping our perspective on infancy, gender, and the interplay of power and dependence that drives human relationships from the start. This volume marks the 25th anniversary of Benjamin’s work. Pulling together 15 international scholars, it looks back on the book's first impact, as well as on its continued relevance to psychoanalysis and gender studies today. Chapters offer theoretical deliberations and elaborations of the book's original themes as well as reflecting on it from more intimate angles, as a source of personal and professional inspiration for feminists and clinicians around the world. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

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.

Reveals Israel's intense relationship with YHWH: a masochistic dance on an epic scale.

After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Romance is still the most compelling discourse by which any one of us is inscribed. In this newly commisioned critical collection, romance is revisited across the discipllines, not just in fiction and film but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as the royal marriage, Valentine's Day, 'interracial' relationships and the romance of the scientific quest. All kinds of relationships are brought under the lens of feminist cultural theory - from sex and the single nun to Yukio Mishima, from snuglet puglet to safe sex.