Table of Contents

Acknowledgments • vii
Introduction  • 3

1. The First Bond  •  11
2. Master and Slave  •  51
3. Woman's Desire  •  85
4. The Oedipal Riddle  •  133
5. Gender and Domination  •  183
6. Conclusion  •  219

Bibliography  •  225
Notes  •  245
Index  •  295

About the Author

JESSICA BENJAMIN is a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City and is on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Her highly acclaimed articles have been published in feminist and psychoanalytic journals and are widely anthologized.

Reviews

"A clear, closely argued study of power and desire, which succeeds in making psychic life a social reality."
—Richard Sennett, author of The Fall of Public Man

"An important book . . . an amazingly lucid account of the way power all too often becomes intertwined with gender."
—Ethel Person, The New York Times Book Review

"Many of us have long admired Jessica Benjamin's intricate rethinking of social theory and psychoanalytic theory. The Bonds of Love gives us Benjamin at her best, and psychoanalytic social theory at its best, as she demonstrates brilliantly the complex intertwining of familial, gender, and social domination."
—Nancy Chodorow, author of The Reproduction of Mothering