Book

The Bonds of Love

Jessica Benjamin

A psychoanalytic and feminist exploration of domination as a distortion of the human need for recognition, examining how power dynamics emerge from the breakdown of mutual recognition between self and other, particularly in gendered relationships.

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What this book knows

Domination and submission emerge from the psyche's failed struggle for mutual recognition between self and other.

Sex: Primary
Work: Absent
Learning: Present
Religion: Absent

erotic-as-powerobedience-and-authorityself-and-identity

erotic-as-power

the longing for recognition lies beneath the sensationalism of power and powerlessness … how our deepest desires for freedom and communion become implicated in control and submission
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the masochist's submission is ambiguous, conflating the repetition of an old frustration and the wish for something new … a wish to break out of the false self
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ideal love—a love in which the woman submits to and adores an other who is what she cannot be … the phallus simultaneously signifies power, difference, and desire
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obedience-and-authority

woman functions as man's primary other … gender polarity underlies such familiar dualisms as autonomy and dependency
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narcissistic disappointment and fear of authority produces admiration mingled with dread … the fascist leader satisfies the desire for ideal love
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self-and-identity

intersubjectivity … the moment at which we know that others exist who feel and think as we do … the infant more consciously recognizes the other as like and different
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Illuminates

6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis

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