The Birth of Pleasure

With the channelling of boys into "masculinity"; the anxiety of girls in adolescence, the silences between men and women, and the split between our social and our inner voice, the underlying patterns and patriarchal structures remain. Carol Gilligan sets out to create a radical new map of love.

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In this work, Carol Gilligan sets out to create a radical new map of love. Although old patriarchal structures have been challenged, the underlying patterns remain: the channeling of boys into "masculinity"; the anxiety of girls into adolescence, the silences between men and women, the split between our social and our inner voice. In her work with children, adolescents and couples in crisis, Gilligan came to see how this "double consciousness" - already present in the violence and betrayal of ancient myths, like that of Oedipus - had developed over thousands of years. Hunting for a counter-myth, she discovered the story of Psyche and Cupid, a haunting tale of love and the searching soul, a model of resistance which she used to frame her quest, showing how joy can be discovered in the heart of pain. "The Birth of Pleasure" contains the voices of girls and boys, mothers and fathers, lovers and couples and echoes with telling readings of familiar writers, from Greek tragedy to Anne Frank, from Shakespeare to Proust, from Freud to Toni Morrison.