This article was downloaded by: [Eindhoven Technical University]On: 17 November 2014, At: 06:12Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Contemporary PsychoanalysisPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uucp20

Charting a New PsychoanalyticMap of LoveElizabeth Lloyd Mayer Ph.D.Published online: 29 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer Ph.D. (2003) Charting a NewPsychoanalytic Map of Love, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 39:4, 717-720, DOI:10.1080/00107530.2003.10747231

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00107530.2003.10747231

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,

sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

6:12

17

Nov

embe

r 20

14

BOOK REVIEWS 717

dimensional model worth considering by every supervisor. Their effortto understand the negotiation of power and authority and their emphasison the co-constructed, mutually derived relationship is significant. Theirinvitation to engage in the transference-countertransference interactionbetween the supervisor and supervisee breaks new ground and theirdiscussion of the intricacies of such an attempt is profound. The spirit oftheir model is richly engaging as it invites the reader into a deeper dia­logue with supervisees. We enter into a relationship-eo-participants ac­tively participating in the discovery of meaning.

REFERENCES

Slavin, J. (1997), Models of learning and psychoanalytic traditions. Psychoanalytic Dia­logues,7:803-817.

Slavin, J. (1998), Influence and vulnerability in psychoanalytic supervision and treatment.Psychoanalytic Psychology, 15:230-244.

3121 East Madison Street, Suite 208ASeattle, WA 98112

CHARTING A NEW PSYCHOANALYTIC MAP OF LOVE

A Review of The Birth ofPleasure by Carol Gilligan. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. 253 pp.

ELIZABETH LLOYD MAYER, Ph.D.

T HIS is a book that goes to the heart of the psychoanalytic project.It's a book about love-what enables it, what inhibits it-and how

charting the development of love gives us the critical map for chartingthe development of being human.

Gilligan is Widely known for her groundbreaking study of female de­velopment, In a Different Voice, published in 1982. From there, she wenton to study adolescent girls and the abdication of voice that appeared tocharacterize girls' transition into womanhood. She coauthored a numberof books based in that research. Now, in a marvelously crafted accountof how love goes wrong in Western culture, Gilligan gives us her own

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

6:12

17

Nov

embe

r 20

14

718 BOOK REVIEWS

deeply personal voice-the voice of an author whose work has arguablydone more to free other women's voices than any in the twentieth cen­tury.

The Birth ofPleasure begins by describing how, through all her earlierwork, Gilligan was aware that her "discussion of self and morality restedon a deeper conversation about love." The Birth ofPleasure takes us intothat deeper conversation. It poses a central question: Why are we sodrawn to tragic love stories and how do we find our way to a new para­digm of love between men and women?

Gilligan's answer takes us to the center of psychoanalysis and Freud'sdetermined focus on the Oedipus myth as "a doom-laden story aboutpatriarchy and forbidden love." She shows us how deeply rooted thepattern of that story is in our culture-how it unfolds, generation aftergeneration, to the deep hurt of boys, girls, men, and women. She followsFreud closely, elaborating the implications he laid out and the conse­quences they have for individual lives as well as for human society.

But then, with the genius that has characterized all of Gilligan's writ­ings about psychoanalysis, she leaves Freud and his Oedipus myth be­hind. She gives us instead a new story to ponder: the tale of Cupid andPsyche, whose love gave birth to a daughter, Pleasure. She addresses thequestions Freud posed of the Oedipus myth, but answers them in a newvoice, the voice carried by Cupid and Psyche in their resistance to theinevitable tragedy imposed by the Oedipus taboo on seeing and know­ing. "Psyche falls in love only when she has broken the taboo on seeingand saying what she knows," says Gilligan. Love remains unrealized untilCupid welcomes Psyche'S seeing and knowing, permitting himself in turnto be known. Only then is Pleasure conceived. Only then do we hear"the psyche coming out of dissociation, tuning to the rhythms of thebody, of nature ... [to] the transformation of love that ends with freedomand ... a path leading to pleasure that openlsl into a world of radicalpossibility. "

A bold agenda. Just as bold is the voice in which Gilligan has chosento rewrite the psychoanalytic map of love. This is no academic tome.Instead it's a lyrically composed invitation into a different kind of writingabout psychology, a style of writing that's equally at home in neurosci­ence and poetry, social criticism and literature, clinical work and per­sonal memoir.

The Birth ofPleasure arrived with a splash. This is Gilligan's first solo-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

6:12

17

Nov

embe

r 20

14

BOOK REVIEWS 719

authored book since In a Different Voice appeared twenty years ago.Reviews in the popular press have swung wildly, some lauding the bookas setting a new agenda for the life worth living and the love worthhaving. Others reject it as nothing new and an exercise in literary self­indulgence, citing "l-poerns" that are overly personal and assertions thatare inadequately reasoned. The vehemence of reactions and the spec­trum they encompass point, on the one hand, to the meaning Gilligan'svoice carries for people. Perhaps, however, they also point to the factthat radically new ideas are rarely born perfectly formed. As Terri Apter's(2002) review suggests, maybe the "shifting responses-from 'Why didn'tI see this before?' to 'This is too big a change' to 'I already knew this!'­signal the force of [a] thrilling new paradigm."

The Birth of Pleasure issues a vast challenge to twenty-first centurypsychoanalysis. It asserts that the oedipal story does not chart the naturalcourse of love, but tracks instead a culturally deformed abortion of love,an abortion that of necessity deforms the experience of being human.The book raises radical questions about love between men and women,from there outlining the promise of a new and vastly more satisfyingworld. And just as Gilligan's portrayal of love rises from the ashes ofoedipal tragedy, so too does Gilligan's psychoanalysis. She finds in psy­choanalysis an unparalleled set of truths about how people know whatthey know and, to their cost, resist their knowing. She challenges us todisinter those truths about the human psyche from the psychoanalyticaccount of love's inevitably tragic unfolding.

Will we be able to meet her challenge? My sense is-we'd better. West­ern culture has never been in greater need of ways to nourish exactlythe freedom to love and work that Freud viewed as the ultimate goal ofpsychoanalysis. In recent years, psychoanalysis has come in for plentyof cogent criticism-much of it focused on the psychoanalytic view ofhuman nature, and a sense that psychoanalysis has too often confoundedhuman nature with human culture. Gilligan suggests we recognize thosecriticisms as legitimate, and acknowledge the degree to which the criti­cisms themselves represent healthy resistance to the love story psycho­analysis has made so central, a story that lodges humanity in a never­ending cycle of murder and remorse.

The Birth of Pleasure reads like fine literature. It offers us a radicalvision of hope. And-a rare accolade in psychoanalytic book reviews­it's a book that has already deeply touched two of my analytic patients,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

6:12

17

Nov

embe

r 20

14

720 BOOK REVIEWS

both of whom reached valuable insights into their own symptomatic his­tories of love as they reflected on what it evoked. Gilligan has once againmanaged to speak in the different voice waiting to be heard.

REFERENCE

Apter, T. (2002), Review. Times Literary Supplement, August 9.

2435 Russell StreetBerkeley, CA 94705E-mail: lisbym@aol.com

WITH SO MANY VIRTUES, WHY DO THEY PROTEST SO MUCH?

A Review of Relational Child Psychotherapyby Neil Altman, Richard Briggs, Jay Frankel, Daniel Gensler, and

Pasqual Pantone. New York: Other Press: 2002. xiv + 410 pp.

STEVEN TUBER, Ph.D., ABPP

I N bottom-line terms, Relational Child Psychotherapy is an important,very worthwhile book. As an introductory text for graduate and post­

doctoral students interested in a more "current" view of psychodynamicchild treatment, it is a worthy addition to, and in some respects an exten­sion beyond, similar recent endeavors by Chethik (1989) and Siskind(1999). At the same time, however, there is a tone throughout the work,but most especially in its last, integrating chapters, that creates an unnec­essary "straw man" argument that significantly lessens its appeal. Indeed,the authors' need to extol the virtues of the "relational" approach in con­trast to "classical psychoanalysis" renders the former an "all good," inte­grative tour de force, while reducing the latter to an anachronistic relicof a pre-World War II zeitgeist. This would have stronger credence if theauthors did a much better job of acknowledging how their approachrests on the shoulders of the Freuds (father and daughter) and Klein,instead of largely depicting their limitations.

But let us first return to the virtues of the book, as there are many. Thebook is presented in five sections that together constitute an elegant map

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ein

dhov

en T

echn

ical

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

6:12

17

Nov

embe

r 20

14