Books - Carol Gilligan

Product Description:
Carol Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women. Repeatedly, developmental theories have been built on observations of men's lives. Here, Gilligan attempts to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result reshapes our understanding of human experience.



Customer Review: Not a Different Voice for women at all....:
I was very disappointed in this book. I picked it out as part of a project for school among 5 book choices. I wish I had chosen White Teacher instead of this book. The author is a feminist and she has a forward that praises Roe vs. Wade. I thought--this doesn't even sound like the book I purchased when I read the forward. I went on to read the main parts of the book (with various chapters). The first chapter was interesting--talking about how child psychologists only use male children as subjects and not really female on child development. OK, I can see that this could be a problem later on as an adult. However, the author had a chapter about "moral development" and she defined morals as NO absolutes. I don't believe this at all. There HAS to be MORAL ABSOLUTES--in fact everyone has the 10 commandments written in their hearts. The author is denying this and denying the need for moral absolutes. So, her "abortion study" is so false and fake by using people who have NO MORALS as subjects that it is very bias and no wonder the results were in favor of abortion. If she wants to do a TRUE ABORTION STUDY--she needs to find people with some MORALS and redo her study. She will find that MOST women who have had an abortion go through REGRET and LOSS that is indescribable. I don't even know what they go through. I don't believe in abortion and I won't even consider it. I can only imagine if someone had a miscarriage that it would be similar but not the same. Anyway, I don't recommend this book for the truth about woman's development.

Customer Review: Did not enjoy the read:
Did not enjoy reading this book as I thought I would. Could not even finish reading the book. I think the style of writing did not suit me. Would recommend instead "Toward a new psychology for women" by Jean Baker Miller- more concise and to the point. Perhaps my expectations were too high after reading the latter book.

Customer Review: A rigor-less lens with which to view women.:
Gilligan's book launched a cottage industry of teacher in-service seminars on the disadvantages (and the corresponding advantages provided to men) that American women experience in our educational system. Unfortunately, her study lacked any rigor that is associated with sound research. While the study provides face validity (conclusions that seem to make sense), there is no predictive value to the study and its conclusions. Further, Gilligan has changed her story from this being a quantitative study, to it really being a qualitative study, to, eventually, it being an anecdotal study. There may be large differences in the way our schools treat women. They may even be placed in a disadvantaged position, but there is no valid evidence presented here.
Gilligan has been unwilling to open her research up to the academic community, a violation of accepted academic practice. Therefore, this study is less of a proof than it is a lens by which to view, a priori, a feminist perspective on the disadvantages provided to American women. As such, it would be useful to feminist theory, but not to science and reason. It did provide a useful tool to get Kohlberg to reformulate his research to be more inclusive, so that was useful.
Hoff-Summers wrote a critique of Gilligan called The War Against Boys. Hoff-Summers' interest was first piqued by being a feminist with a son in public schools, and her experience of the way she saw girls being favored in classrooms at the expense of the boys. It is an interesting read, and while it may not draw all the correct conclusions, it does shine a fairly bright light on the weakness of Gilligan's methodology.

Customer Review: "I get it":
I actually am still reading this book because I am taking my time digesting it all. It's really giving me insight on how women's thoughts and opinions have been influenced from birth. It's helping me validate my own feelings and opinions.

Customer Review: Interesting Idea -- but no proof !!!:
The data upon which this author's bold thesis is based has never been made available for public review, peer review, or any other kind of review.
Perhaps she just made it all up ?

Product Description:
Carol Gilligan, whose classic In a Different Voice revolutionized the study of human psychology, now offers a brilliant, provocative book about love. Why is love so often associated with tragedy, she asks. Why are our experiences of pleasure so often shadowed by loss? And can we change these patterns?

Gilligan observes children at play and adult couples in therapy and discovers that the roots of a more hopeful view of love are all around us. She finds evidence in new psychological research and traces a path leading from the myth of Psyche and Cupid through Shakespeare’s plays and Freud’s case histories, to Anne Frank’s diaries and contemporary novels. Groundbreaking and immensely readable, The Birth of Pleasure has powerful implications for the way we live and love.

Amazon.com Review:
A psychologist's fine-tuned ear and a scholar's penchant for illuminating key ideas with precise literary citations enable Carol Gilligan to trace love's path in The Birth of Pleasure. Her extensive research on children's communications and couples in crisis has revealed a rather disturbing truism: a child's inborn ability to love freely and live authentically gets thoroughly squelched by patriarchal structures. She shows how daughters' voices are systematically quieted, sons are shamed into masculinity, and those who pursue "inappropriate" knowledge or rapacious expressions are punished.

At the core of her study lies the timeless myth of Psyche and Cupid, a richly allegorical tale of passion and resistance to patriarchal norms. By meticulously interpreting this triumph, Gilligan challenges the standard "foundational stories" embraced by Western civilization (including the Book of Genesis, Oedipus Tyrannus, and The Orestia). Satisfying excerpts from dozens of authors flow easily alongside Gilligan's dialogues with couples, adolescent girls, and preschool boys. Clearly, her analysis of Anne Frank's diary--all three editions--provides Gilligan's best illustration of one's initiation into patriarchal tunnel vision. She credits many colleagues, students, and seminar and symposium attendees for fleshing out all parts of this lovingly crafted text; but her own ear for truth makes its message resonate. --Liane Thomas



Customer Review: transformative:
This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. The other reviewers have expressed the basic idea of what she is up to. I found it to be an incredible strength of the book that Gilligan moves through such very different sources to develop her ideas: studies of children and couples in crisis, her experience in a theater/voice group, her reading of Psyche and Cupid, Anne Frank's diaries, there are just so many different pieces of the web she weaves. And she connects them together so beautifully (it helps that her writing is so beautiful-- read it just for her writing). One of the effect of all these different sources is that the reader ends up very supported in looking for the way these traumatic and tragic stories are revealed in cultural materials of very different origins, and in the cultural materials that we produce with our own lives. I have become much more careful about the stories of love I am willing to accept, and the stories of love that I want to resist or scrutinize, no matter what their origin (movie, novel, boyfriend, my own mind). Also much more careful about the stories of love that I live and tell.
This book really changed me . . it helps you trust yourself in orienting yourself towards pleasure as a road out from the domination system . . and what a beautiful strategy of resistance following pleasure and delight can be.

Customer Review: Worth Reading Anyway:
Carol Gilligan has written a fascinating book. Using a multifaceted approach, she examines the origins of dissociative trauma -- that psychological split within ourselves where we can know and not know, feel but not feel -- and its path to the suppression of pleasure and authenticity. Gilligan argues that the foundational myths of Western society are virtually all based on trauma, societal control, and violence. The author takes her readers on a journey through memory, literature, psychological research, and ancedote to examine how we are societally trained to avoid experiencing genuine happiness. The book, though, ends where it begins. "Patriarchy" sets up the trauma and maintains it, Gilligan argues at the book's outset. The writer, though, never tells us what she means by "patriarchy" and, in the end, it becomes an amorphous demon, meaningless except as a convenient all-encompassing scapegoat. Still, "The Birth of Pleasure" is worth reading for its intriguing questions and for what it might have been.

Customer Review: Useful and helpful despite its imperfections...:
I picked this up in London and read it during the disintegration of my marriage. I must say parts of it challenged me, even though I am a feminist and very aware of gender theory and literary criticism. I disagree with the reviewer who said there is more to love than pleasure... more to life, yes, but the point of having a relationship with someone is to discover joy in and with each other, no? To take pleasure in and have pleasure with the other person? Gilligan makes this point eloquently. I found the book refreshingly sympathetic toward what happens to make lively little boys into uptight and uncommunicative men. The point is, despire patriarchy, I personally like men and want to find a way to have a real connection with them even in an imperfect world. Reading this book was transformative for me in that respect, even if I skipped through all of the later literary references. This book is popular psychiatry, not meant to rival big texts in gender theory, and so, in its genre, is very effective. In fact, it changed the lives of several friends of mine that live in a culture even more patriarchal than ours; it lent them courage to try to seek a different sort of relationship with men other than just a traditional one. I have also given this book as a gift to four people, one of them a man, who all found it useful, though not perfect. Having some room for imperfection, even in a book, is a useful thing, I think. I found the book very useful despite its flaws.

Customer Review: Re-learn What You Once Knew:
This is an important book to read for those searching out a deeper understanding of themselves and the role society has played in the development of self-denial.

According to the author, there comes a stage in a child's development (for boys when they are 5 and girls when they are 13 - later for girls cause the patriarchy has no need for women untill they are of birthing age) when they are forced to forget what they know in order to be in relationships. The patriarchy sets up a hierarchy that separates the "father" from children and women - creating a split in relationships but also in ourselves (we lose touch with the internal "father," or at least those characteristics in ourselves that have been deemed "masculine"). When you are a child you do not question your perception of the world or your emotional reactions to it. You instinctively know how to interpret and react to how other people are feeling. But once you reach a certain age, you have to unlearn these things, deny your knowledge in order to fit into the mold the patriarchy has devised as acceptable. In order to be in relationships (within the patriarchy) you have to shut away part of yourself, which raises the question, if you aren't allowed to be yourself within the patriarchy, how real are the relationships you are sacrificing yourself for? And that is the problem - deep down we are all yearning for real connections which we can't have, because none of us are truly being ourselves. And those parts of ourselves we had to deny because the patriarchy deemed them "wrong" (very often our sexuality and creativity) get repressed - we start to see those parts of ourselves as dirty and bad and hate them - hate ourselves. The book says that we need to reclaim these lost gems from our childhood in order to truly know ourselves - and some of what has been repressed might be hard to look at, might be unappealing, but the good stuff far outweighs the bad. The goal should be wholeness (good and bad) not perfection.

*For those that are tired of reading books that rail against the big bad "patriarchy," you will find this book's approach refreshing, as it does not focus on judging men or society, but rather looking at it from a different point of view.

Customer Review: Sentimental and Romantic:
Reading this book did not, alas, lead to the birth of pleasure. It was a painful experience. The highest value for Gilligan is the pursuit of the 'authentic self,' especially the female one, in the face of nasty 'patriarchy.' Twenty-five years ago, 'patriarchy' really meant something; it was a call to arms against those social, political, and economic structures entirely in the hands of men. But the word is at outmoded as is the sentimental and romantic stuff purveyed here. There is more to life, more to gender, more to maturity, and certainly more to human values than this pursuit of pleasure.

Product Description:
Why is America again unjustly at war? Why is its politics distorted by wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage? Why is anti-Semitism still so powerfully resurgent? Such contradictions within democracies arise from a patriarchal psychology still alive in our personal and political lives in tension with the equal voice that is the basis of democracy. The book joins a psychological approach with a political-theoretical one that traces both this psychology (based on loss in intimate life) and resistance to it (based on the love of equals) to the Roman Republic and Empire and to three Latin masterpieces: Virgil's Aeneid, Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and Augustine's Confessions. Democratic resistance in religion, psychology, the arts, and politics rests on free voices challenging patriarchal restrictions on the love of equals. In addition to examining why we are at war, this book explains many other aspects of our present situation including why movements of ethical resistance are often accompanied by a freeing of sexuality and why we are witnessing an aggressive fundamentalism at home and abroad.



Customer Review: Epic Work, Small Blinders, Over-All a MAJOR Integrative Work:
I only recently learned of the literature on voices of women, and this is the first of several books I ordered to explore the subject. At tempted as I have been to take away one star for small blinders (notably the gross over-selling of anti-Semitism, and the complete oblivion to the fact that Dick Cheney used 9-11, even if he is a cross-dresser our response to 9-11 was NOT some deep psychic rage stemming from our humiliation--Cheney sent 1% of the country to war, and Bush asked the other 99% to go shopping.

Having said that up front, I stayed with five stars because this is an epic work, and I am deeply impressed by the rigorous documentation in notes, the spectacular bibliography, and the deliberate mention of names of minds being quoted in the body of the book, a certain mark of integrity that I always look for. Hence, while some of the points below in my notes come without the cited source, be assured that the authors have been meticulous.

QUOTE p. 19: "...patterns of injustice and moral slavery are supported by the repression of resisting voice and to show how such resisting voice is rooted in the human psyche and preserved in cultural forms that preserve and maintain it. ...What patriarchy precludes is love between equals, and thus it also precludes democracy." For the political science version of this, see The modern state.

Part I starts with Roman Patriarchy and if you are not a cultural studies ancient literature obsessive, you can skim most of this. I have a note: "marvelous handbook for teaching literature as culture & psyche." See The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, and On the Psychology of Military Incompetence for the modern equivalencies...and other books I have reviewed.

Part II covers resistance across time and culture and is a brilliant survey in detail--while leaving much for others to cover in follow-on works--of religion, psychology (notably a wonderful chapter on Freud first embracing women's voices and then rejected them), the artists, and politics. The Catholic Church comes in for its fair share of condemnation as a patriarchal organization as well as a criminal and hypocritical organization, but it is here that I note the immaculate conceptions the authors both portray of Jews and Israel--"can do no wrong" gets annoying after a while.

Part III, the shortest part, provides a once-over on western colonialism, the war on terror, and where we are going wrong now in seeking to turn back the progress made from the 1960's. All good stuff.

Here are my fly-leaf notes and a couple of quotes.

+ Gender and how gender equality and sexual tolerance are handled is both the foundation for democracy (dignity and equality for all) and the canary in the coal mine for failing democracy such as we have in the USA.

+ Resistance, once it acquires critical mass, is the pre-condition for being able to achieve transformation. This is a very important point and merits its own book. See my review of Responsible History for supplementary insights from another author.

+ Over-all this is a fascinating holistic view of cultural relations and why the matter. I particularly appreciate the focus on how important "feelings" are and how the repression of feelings, including sexuality, cuts off half the soul-brain for the questionable desire to assert control.

+ I could not stand the "femi-nazis" in my own era of learning (1970's) but now they have come of age. It is no longer about aggressive women trying to fight men on men's terms; what we have here is brilliant women making a well-documented case for how stupid men are to fall for the patriarchy propaganda, and THAT I can respect. This book, for those of us not familiar with the Voices literature, is a milestone.

+ I completely buy-in to the author's view that patriarchy supports racism, Puritanism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism, the latter with a grain of salt. As "Responsible History" documents, way too many charges of anti-Semitism are defamation and no longer have standing in court.

+ The author's make a compelling case that a Republic in which the people are sovereign, equal, and entitled to equal voice, is completely anti-thetical to a top-down command and control patriarchy. Others have made this case and described Epoch B leadership, bottom up inclusive deliberative democracy. I cannot do justice to the originators, but see All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents (Hardcover)) and Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace for a taste.

+ They discuss how repression imposes disassociation that blocks ethical development as well as resistance.

+ They discuss the contradictions in laws that force women to disassociate their intelligence from their sexuality. I am moved by their citation of the work of others in which young girls learn they cannot have BOTH voice (honesty) AND relationships (steeped in patriarchy).

+ I am sympathetic to their discussion of fascism as over-compensation for male humiliation that becomes a psychological basis for violence, and I am even more in turn with the varied observations that fear feeds violence.

They conclude: "The corruption of manhood has been our theme." They discuss the tension between voice and violence, and reiterate that the demonization of pleasure requires a split in consciousness--put another way, the USA has lost its mind.

QUOTE p. 266: "As we have found the roots of intolerance--whether racist, sexist, or homophobic--in the traumatic rapture of intimate relationships that marks the initiation into patriarchy, so the splits between mind and body, thought and emotion, self and relationships signal a disassociation that keeps us from knowing what we otherwise would know. It impedes the voice of experience, grounded in the body and in emotion and fostered by relationships, that would speak to the voices of authority, thus posing a threat to democracy in the same ways that totalitarianism targets the functions of the human mind."

We're there. See Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

See also:
Radical Man
Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House

Customer Review: Why turn the erudite review of a very good book into a vicious anti-semitic tirade?:
As the above reviewer says this is a splendidly written, and extensively documented work. Yet his review is full of venom, spiteful innuendos, and ends in a vicious and off-the-point anti-semitic tirade.

The authors start by analyzing written Roman records ranging from poetry to the law in order to explain various features of patriarchy. By doing so they convincingly show that Roman patriarchy still pervades the Western - and one would add the non-Western- world.
As the reviewer acidly says "The authors employ the by-now standard postmodernist techique of close reading of texts selected by them, through which they construct "voices" that convey to us the desires, disappointments, and resistances" of the times.
Saying this the reviewer reduces a rich and brilliant text to a well-prepared, ready-made recipe with no originality or depth.
Given the scarcity of Roman women's writing Gilligan and Richards are also accused of reconstructing practically from nowhere stereotypical views of women and men.
Strangely we continue to find such alleged stereotypes in the vast literature handed down through the centuries and in most societies contemporary or not.....
The reviewer condescendingly concedes that the authors convincingly show the pivotal role of Augustine in transforming Christianity into a sexually repressive culture fostering the "madonna" "whore" splitting of women and the equally oppressive split between the "macho" and the "feminized" man. He also concedes that one of the most valuable aspects of the book is "the brilliant explication of Judaism as a despised, effeminate religion" as seen by the Romans, and later by Augustine and his followers up to the present.

Having analyzed the origins and sources of the 'darkness' the authors proceed to analyze traces of it in fields ranging from psychology, to the arts, and politics.
Againg the reviewer acknowledges that "The treatment of Freud's writing in the segment addressing psychology is well done, the authors' argument being coherent and lucid." But immediately he launches an attack accusing the authors of being stuck in views expressed in Freud's early writings claiming that histerics suffered "from reminescences". Freud hiself soon rejected the idea that histerics had been sexually abused, and the authors too do not adhere to this idea.
Before concluding a long tirade against recontstructed memories even the reviewer feels symapthetic to the "judicious case being made by the authors". However -again an attack- as he adds, "I must reserve judgement on at least part of their critique. It is, nonetheless, well worth consideration."

The final, most vicious, and unwarranted attack is on the views expressed by the authors on contemporary foreign policies.
The reviewer takes just one (or perhaps two) phrases on Israel and says
"It is here that the authors go seriously astray, and where the faults of the postmodernist treatment of real human events shows its flawed underside." These erudite words precede a viscious attack on Israel and the Jews seen as the symbol of contemporary oppression and non-respect of human rights. All the nasty anti-semitic tirade that follows makes the book sound as a pro-Israel, anti-palestinian manifesto. This is clearly not in the intentions of the authors, which are very balanced in their views. But reveals a lurking and chilling hatred in the reviewer......Indeed.
PS I am not Jewish!


Customer Review: Worth Reading...Critically:
I give this book five stars and one star, for it has undeniable value and also a major, moral black hole. It is splendidly written, extensively documented, and contains many real insights. I hope you will read it, for it will be worth your time.

The authors begin with a selective review of extant literature from Rome during its post-republican era. They do so in order to explicate the character of patriarchy, for it is the Roman form of patriarchy that characterizes much of contemporary Western civilization. The authors employ the by-now standard postmodernist techique of close reading of texts selected by them, through which they construct "voices" that convey to us the desires, disappointments, and resistances (all these things must be in the plural, in the postmod way of writing) from the Roman era and empire. These are made possible from the sparse offerings of poets and other authors whose work has survived over a millenium. Gilligan and Richards are especially concerned to show--by indirection, given the paucity of Roman women's writing--the resistance of women to patriarchy, which always entails a struggle to preserve or recapture love from the demands of *honor*. This last is the soul of the soldier, a social and cultural system that imposes gender conformity and sacrifices tenderness for conformity, duty, and unhappy faithfulness.

They convincingly show the pivotal role of Augustine in transforming Christianity into the sexually repressive, hyper-Paulist culture that even today continues to foster the simultaneous "purity" and degradation of women. These same pressures also generate the warrior mentality of men who are fit and fitted to rule women and other, "feminized" men. In this last connection, one of the most valuable aspects of this book is the brilliant explication of Judaism as a despised, effeminate religion as seen through the eyes of first, the Romans, and later, the bigoted Church of Augustine (and following thereafter).

This leads to the sections on Resistance, which address religion, psychology, art, and politics. The treatment of Freud's writing in the segment addressing psychology is well done, the authors' argument being coherent and lucid. Whether it is valid, is another matter; much of their critique of Freud is based upon the implicit view that the hysteria of the women he interviewed early in his career--and reported in Studies in Hysteria--had in fact been sexually abused, and their memories were in fact intact and accurate. The issue of memory is a difficult one, for there are many contemporary cases of false-memory syndrome, the Wenatchee sex scandal in the US being one of the more lurid examples. Memory can be induced, distorted, and gotten wrong; some of us even know this from common examples in our own lives. Thus, while I found myself feeling sympathetic to the judicious case being made by the authors, I must reserve judgement on at least part of their critique. It is, nonetheless, well worth consideration.

The last section of the book prior to the Conclusion is entitled "Democracy's Future," and in this short segment, the authors show that the undermining of patriarchy is necessarily going to be opposed as too sexy, too "soft," too indulgent, and dangerously "loose." All these objections are hallmarks of patriarchal consciousness, which must control human urges towards happiness and fulfillment, in order to redirect them towards power and warfare.

Looking abroad, the authors rightly critique the ongoing "war on terror" as a reckless and largely counterproductive exercise. Islamic fundamentalism is correctly analyzed as problematic both in its failure to separate church from state and its extreme misogyny. In contrast to this, the authors cite the state of Israel as a shining example of democracy, though they make vague reference to its "violent response" to (unnamed) threats against it.

It is here that the authors go seriously astray, and where the faults of the postmodernist treatment of real human events shows its flawed underside. The authors are undoubtedly aware that Israel is one of the most egregious offenders in the international trafficking of women. They have undoubtedly read Victor Malarek's damning book, The Natashas, in which Jewish seminary students are described by the Ukrainian sex slaves in Israel brothels (legal, in that country), as putting aside their long curls before "relieving" themselves in their living machines...in order to obey the Torah's injunction against masturbation. Do the arch-feminists who authored this book consider this unworthy of attention, or is it just that it is inconvenient to their decision to *privilege* Israel as the shining house on the hill? Does rape and all its inherent violence, not interest them, or is it only the preservation of Jewish women's "purity" that motivates their silence?

Speaking of "resistance," one could mention something never named by the authors, and that is the matter of the Palestinian people. Remember them? Why do we have to go trolling to ancient texts, when we have at hand living (and dying) examples of a people who are routinely tortured, starved, kept from medicines, and murdered offhand by Israeli soldiers? A review of the article by Avishai Margalit in the December 6, 2007, issue of the New York Review of Books details how land is routinely stolen by the state of Israel...so that Palestinians can be herded into the ghettos such as Gaza, where they are dying from inhuman conditions imposed upon them.

Postmodernism is very convenient for touching down, here and there, apart from restrictions of time and place, abstracting all matters to mere "text," and thereby creating all manner of interesting patterns. However, when the authors will not name what is obvious and is at hand, the postmodernist critique is revealed to be the porous and artificial construction of someone who wants to sculpt reality to their convenience.

Ms. Gilligan and Mr. Richards speak much of "resistance"; could it be that they have overlooked the decades of resistance of the Palestinians to being dispossessed, degraded, and killed? This seems less than unlikely, and it is a major indictment of an otherwise interesting and admirable book, that they can privilege the theft, murder, torture, and oppression routinely carried out by a state created by British colonialism. I cannot improve upon the authors' own words: "We cannot be the democrats we believe we are until the persistence of patriarchy becomes a focus of resistance."

Indeed.

Product Description:
From the internationally renowned author of In a Different Voice, a remarkable debut novel: a love story that introduces an unforgettable character in modern fiction, Kyra, and a superb new fiction writer, Carol Gilligan. Kyra is an architect designing a new city, a woman of humor and courage living in a vibrant world of family, friends, and colleagues and determined to break out of old structures. When she meets Andreas, a director staging an innovative production of Tosca, neither wants to fall in love–and yet, inevitably, they do. Their story takes us from Cambridge and an island off the coast of Massachusetts to Vienna, Thailand, Cyprus, and Wales as Kyra seeks the deepest truths about herself, other people, loyalty, and love. This reaching leads her to commit singular acts that startle and shock, inspiring new freedom for others as well as for Kyra herself. Rich with Carol Gilligan’s signature gifts–emotional wisdom, subtle renderings of the intricacies of human relationship, conflict and choice, and lyrical prose–Kyra is a luminous, magnificent novel by a writer realizing the range of her powers.



Customer Review: sarah-the-reader:
This book was a contradiction -- it was well-written, but boring at the same time. This book dealt with some big topics, mostly the loss of loved ones, making it difficult to move on with life. Kyra is dealing with all of these issues and they are affecting her life, still, ten years later.

The book was a slow, thoughtful read, which is probably what made it boring, but there was so much potential to have a really powerful story. Like I said, a contradiction. I had trouble getting through the book, but was kind of intrigued, but bored at the same time.

Carol Gilligan is an exceptional writer, however, I think her writing style might work better in psychology texts rather than novels.

Customer Review: FIRST-RATE:
"Kyra" is a gorgeously written, intelligent love story set against a cold New England backdrop. It's complex in the tradition of great novels of that past: It creates ambiance and makes you think. Few authors devote themselves to research and the craft of writing the way Gilligan does. There are many passages sculpted to beauty. The opening salvo, a chess game, is perfectly choreographed and hints at the many layers of thought and meaning contained in the novel and inherent in the complicated relationships that define us as human beings.

Customer Review: Hard to get through:
After finishing this book, I can understand the mixed reviews. Although this book is said to be a love story, I found the love story relationship part of the story boring. The author spent way too much time detailing each person's career. Their jobs certainly were unique, just not very interesting and at times I really struggled to not chuck the book. The storyline that kept me going was the relationship between Kyra and her therapist. I also really enjoyed Kyra's other relationships with her women friends and sister. That part of the book was really great and complex. Those themes were more universal and I could really relate to them.

Customer Review: boring, forgetable:
The book's dullness and heavy language put me asleep repeatedly. I did not like it. I left it in the seat pocket of a airplane on purpose. Hopefully it will help someone else go to sleep.

Customer Review: Disappointing ..:
I couldn't finish this book, no matter how hard I tried. And, I *always* finish a book. I think Professor Gilligan should stick with her academic work and leave fictional writing to others

Product Description:

"A vivid portrayal of the Lubavitcher community."
— Library Journal

"Levine does a splendid job of presenting how the girls cope, and paints vivid pictures of Shabbat around their family tables."
— The Jerusalem Post Literary Quarterly

"Stephanie Wellen Levine has written an intriguing and joyous account of the lives of young adult Hasidic women."
— Jewish Book World

"Eminently readable."
— Jewish Journal Book Review

"Levine steps back and lets the girls speak for themselves; their voices, layered with determination, yearning, confusion and wonder, emerge clearly."
— Na'amat Woman Book Reviews

"This absorbing ethnography acts as one subculture's corrective to Reviving Ophelia, in that it offers a refreshing portrait of adolescent girls who are far from insecure."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the ardently religious young woman who longs for the life of a male scholar to the young rebel who visits a strip club, smokes pot, and agonizes over her loss of faith to the proud Lubavitcher with a desire for a high-powered career, Stephanie Wellen Levine provides a rare glimpse into the inner worlds and daily lives of these Hasidic girls.

Lubavitcher Hasidim are famous for their efforts to inspire secular Jews to become more observant and for their messianic fervor. Strict followers of Orthodox Judaism, they maintain sharp gender-role distinctions.

Levine spent a year living in the Lubavitch community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, participating in the rhythms of Hasidic girlhood. Drawing on many intimate hours among Hasidim and over 30 in-depth interviews, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers offers rich portraits of individual Hasidic young women and how they deal with the conflicts between the regimented society in which they live and the pull of mainstream American life.

This superbly crafted book offers intimate stories from Hasidic teenagers' lives, providing an intriguing twist to a universal theme: the struggle to grow up and define who we are within the context of culture, family, and life-driving beliefs.

Customer Review: love, love, love it:
This was such a wonderful eye-opening book about the variety of girls in the Lubavitch community in Crown Heights. This book breaks the stereotype that says that girls from very religious families become "drone-like" or don't have their individuality. Within their very prescribed world, because of the teachings and influence of the rebbe, there are countless opportunities for personal exploration and expression. It was inspiring to me as a mother of a girl as well; I want my daughter to have some of the passion and commitment displayed in these pages!

Customer Review: Fascinating and Readable:
This is a book version of Stephanie Levine's doctoral dissertation, but don't let that put you off--all it means is that it is very well researched and has some theoretical underpinnings laid out in the opening and closing chapters, which are quite readable in themselves. HOwever, the meat of the book is the profiles of individual Hasidic girls who run the gamut from intensely religious to rebelling against the norms of their enclave. The girls all come across as fascinating individuals and Levine is a sympathetic portrayer of them. She can appreciate both the strengths and the confining aspects of the Hasidic world, and marvels at the strong assertiveness of these girls who have been educated and largely socialized in a single sex environment. For anyone who has looked at these communities from the outside and wondered what it's like to live or grow up within them, particularly as a woman, this is a fascinating book that in no way reads like a textbook or a heavy academic tome. Excellent!

Customer Review: interesting, insightful and a little long:
This book was really different. The introduction and the conclusion were really too long and drawn out, however, the stories of the girls Levine met with and talked to were captivating and insightful. The writing seemed to be twofold, a long, drawn out sociological blah blah, but a great, funny, quirky, interesting middle. Worth the read for anyone who wants to learn more about the Lubavitch culture, about frum teenage girls and who wants a light read.

Customer Review: An excellent read:
Having been Lubavitch, I read Levine's book as both former insider and outsider. Her portrayal of the Lubavitch world captured its essence, and her description of the variety of personalities within it was also apt. Unlike an earlier reviewer, I considered the deliberate care taken to obscure the identities of the girls to be important and in keeping with academic ethics.

The Lubavitch world holds within it a certain comfort and certainty, simply because all the answers are there. Unfortunately, as we read in the cases of several of the girls portrayed in this book, there is little to no place for the girl or woman who thinks critically, questions the tenets of Chabad-Lubavitch, or who is called to higher education. For example, I wonder if one of the women portrayed ever completed her medical training.

An excellent study that offers the reader insightful glimpses into the world of Lubavitch girls.

Customer Review: Great insight into a different world:
I loved this book. I really got an inside view of a world far different than the secular one I live in. The author was honest about her own points of view and her own biases. I really feel like I understand and know about the Lubavitch lifestyle after reading this book. As a secular Jew, I felt like I related to the author and how she viewed the unique culture of Crown Heights. A wonderful ethnography!

Product Description:
"Should sound a national alert to society that even our most privileged girls still pursue normal femininity at great risk to personal and civic health."
THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE
Lyn Mike Brown and Carol Gilligan ask "What, on the way to womanhood, does a girl give up?" One hundred girls gave voice to what is rarely spoken and often ignored: that the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence and disconnection, a troubled crossing when a girl loses a firm sense of self and becomes tentative and unsure. These changes mark the endge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development and the stories the girls tell are by turns heartrending and courageous. Listening to these girls provides us with the means of reaching out to them at this critical time, and of better understanding what we as women and men may have left behind at our own crossroads.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR




Customer Review: Old Dog, New Tricks:
This is a necessary and revolutionary book for anyone interested in adolescent psychology, the female coming of age experience, and relationships between girls, young women, and adult women in and among our U.S. society. Although this book was written 13 years ago, I still found it relevant and full of insight pertaining to girls and young women today. What was most helpful to me as an educator and researcher on this very topic was the Listener's Guide which could easily be modified in the classroom as a "Reader's Guide" in order to assist students/readers in analyzing a coming of age novel or text. Although I found the book repetitious at times, it is still a fascinating study which results in well-documented research and "new" psychological theory pertaining to girls' development as they come of age.

Customer Review: Articulate description of girls' journey to adolescence:
This book was based on five years of interviews with nearly 100 girls between the ages of seven and eighteen at a private girls' school in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1986 - 1990. The goal of this Harvard project was to explore girls' psychological journey from childhood to adolescence. The researchers began with a more traditional approach, separating the girls into an experimental group (using open-ended, more flexible interviews) and a control group (using more standardized methods). They soon discovered that this strategy was preventing the authentic relationships needed to gather useful information, so the researchers wisely re-evaluated and revised their approach. In this well-written book, the authors clarified the issues faced by the girls studied at three stages of development-childhood, pre-adolescence, and adolescence-primarily by describing the journeys of three individual guides for each stage. For example, the stories of Jessie, Sonia, and Lauren, the three childhood guides, connect the reader to the real-life issues faced by each girl over time. The guides' moving stories clearly documented the challenging journey from being able to speak clearly, directly, and honestly about relationship issues in childhood to often negating real feelings and thoughts through disassociation by adolescence. The researchers highlighted the psychological perils of silencing one's own voice and the potential political risks of not doing so. Given the all-girl setting, one might wonder how different the results would be in a mixed-gender school. There were hopeful signs, too. By the end of the project, the school's adult women realized that they needed to overcome their own self-silencing to provide healthier role models for the girls. Also, by listening to and validating girls' experience, adults, particularly women, can serve as hopeful beacons for change.

Customer Review: A thought-provoking but heavily jargonistic book:
The early chapters of this book, are very hard going, as the authors justify and re-justify their research methodology. However, when you get clear of this, the conversations with girls as they grow older, at different points in their lives, are fascinating. I found myself thinking through episodes in my own life and the life of my 13year old girl, to see how she has changed, and how my interventions or questions or just being there have helped (and hopefully not hindered too severely) her grow strong and confident. In the end, a powerful story of girls growing into womenhood, and the challenges they face.

Product Description:

In the fourteen articles collected in this volume, Gilligan and her colleagues expand the theoretical base of In A Different Voice and apply their research methods to a variety of life situations. The contrasting voices of justice and care clarify different ways in which women and men speak about relationships and lend different meanings to connection, dependence, autonomy, responsibility loyalty, peer pressure, and violence. By examining the moral dilemmas and self-descriptions of children, high school students, urban youth, medical students, mothers, lawyers, and others, the authors chart a new terrain: a mapping of the moral domain that includes the voices of women. In this new terrain the authors trace far-reaching implications of the inclusion of women's voices for developmental psychology, for education, for women, and for men.

Customer Review: 1988 Precious Gem--Richly Deserves Appreciation Today:
Amazon appears to be depriving customers of top reviews from the past--part of a concerted effort they have been making to ease the path for new reviewers, never mind the cost in lost wisdom. I am personally appalled that this incredibly important book, obviously in a new edition, has no reviews carried forward.

1988 is when this book was published, which for me means that in very personal terms, I have been "out of touch" and "unknowing" of the deep social relevance of this work and its focus on the caring voice of women (as opposed to the "justice" voice of men in both psychology and sociology.

In a nut-shell, this book is a collection of edited works ably integrated by the contributing editors, which pioneered the "voices" discussion from the female point of view. While there have been many books about the voices of the oppressed, the indigenous, and other marginalized groups, this book focuses on the voices of women in their dialectic with men--women as "caring" men as focused on rational "justice." I am reminded of Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West and E. O. Wilson's book,Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

Underlying the female focus on caring is the female focus on intangibles such as community and good will.....so much so that I have a note, women may be the archetype of what it means to be human. The book opens very ably with observations about how detachment and dispassion are in fact moral choices with tangible outcomes and consequences.

The contributing authors make the next logical point, which is that the male moral archetype over-emphasizes the individual and leads to the Culture of Narcissm while de-emphasizing, even disparaging, any culture of community.

The varied authors make the obvious but important point that how we teach our young will impact on every single discipline and endeavor, i.e. on we perform both the social sciences and the sciences, and how we manage our organizations and networks. In the absence of BOTH the female caring morality and the male justice morality, we are half-human and therefore ill-equipped to achieve what Barbara Ehrenreich calls Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential and Steve MacIntosh Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution

I am totally engrossed by the discussion of how the same terms have different meanings depending on the perspective, e.g. "improving the city" means investing in tangible infrastructure for the male view, while the female view is more focused on intangible relationships. Similarly, the female view of land is one of "ours" versus the male view of "mine," and one can easily understanding why Mother Earth is female rather than male as it engenders the more sustainable proposition.

I have a note to myself; this book is a definitive and vital step in establishing the urgency and necessity of integrating women's voices as a counter-balance to men's voices, not just in psychology and education, but across every aspect of human life.

The contributing authors cause me to realize that "dependence" can be reinterpreted as "inter-dependence," which is certainly more consistent with Whole System thinking, and that in this frame of reference, dialog is REQUIRED, CONTEXT matters, and blind obedience is idiocy. I have note from the book, "Morality is consciousness," FULL consciousness.

The authors teach that morality is not just individual choice in the moment but also choice in the social context (aggregation of moral choices, a very interesting concept meriting more research).

I feel connected to both Gandhi and Martin Luther King as well as Bonhoffer as the book's varied contributions make the case of a theory and practice of love, of human RELATIONSHIP as central to moral theory. In many ways I feel that Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom backed into this area from a male perspective, and that love is a wealth-producing practice.

The book as a whole furthers my deepening regard for DIVERSITY as an essential foundation for adaptation in complex rapidly-changing environments. I quote from the book: "Attention to differences in interpretation, thus, is central to making connections with others."

Further on I am impressed by a discussion of morality for the whole, noting that the "least painful choice for the largest number of people" demands both an awareness of pain, and an inclusion of all people, not just the few making the rules and hoarding the gold.

The core take-away from this book for me is that relationships define humans much more so than rights or things. The female and male morality frames of reference determine how individuals and aggregations of individuals respond to conflict, make decisions, and carry on with both minute individual and larger social responsibilities.

Ways of knowing matter--this book, from 1988, is a compelling indictment of our continued discrimination against women and our continued social disdain for the female voice of caring. I cannot help but feel that the elevation of women and the restoration of balance is an essential pre-condition to eradicating the ten high-level threats to humanity from poverty to crime--threats that have NOT been contained by the male-dominated system of "justice" and in all probability could be more properly addressed by the female emphasis on caring.

Beyond 5 stars, at least half in part because of its impact on me as an unbalanced male. Better late than never. It would be good to see this book re-issued, and in the process, to see the authors and publishers expand to embrace all forms of dispossessed voices, mapping that terrain with the female perspective perhaps central, but then various forms of marginalization around the edge.

As an afterthought, I find a REMARKABLE, almost devine, convergence among the three books I took on vacation this week, the other two being Conscious Globalism: What's Wrong with the World and How to Fix It and Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World. All three emphasize the inherent good in community and the terrible cost that we all bear when the male, the scientific or rational, the industrial paradigms, submerge the voices, feelings, and perceptions of the larger group.

A couple of other recommendations:
The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series)

To be reviewed tomorrow:
Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

Product Description:

This is the little book that started a revolution. First published almost twenty years ago, it made women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond. Translated into sixteen languages, with more than three-quarters of a million copies sold around the world. In a Different Voice has inspired new research, new educational initiatives, and political debate-and helped many women and men to see themselves and each other in a different light.

Carol Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women--their motives, their moral commitments, the course of their psychological growth, and their special view of what is important in life. Here she sets out to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result is truly a tour de force, which may well reshape much of what psychology now has to say about female experience.

Product Description:
Harvard University Trade Paperback with 184 pgs. Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women, their motives, their moral commitments, the curse of their psychological growth, and their special view of what is important in life. Gilligan attempts to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result reshapes our understanding of human experience.