Why do people submit to authority and derive pleasure even others have over them? What is the appeal of domination and submission, and why are they so prevalent in erotic life? Why is it so difficult for men and women to meet as equals? Why, indeed, do hey continue to recapitulate the positions of master and slave? In The Bonds of Love, noted feminist theorist and psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin explains why we accept and perpetuate relationships of domination and submission. She reveals that domination is a complex psychological process which ensnares both parties in bonds of complicity, and shows how it underlies our family life, our social institutions, and especially our sexual relations, in spite of our conscious commitment to equality and freedom.

Jessica Benjamin is one of the most important and influential psychoanalysts of the last 4 decades. She is one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, a movement that has by now expanded over the globe and was also one of the first to introduce feminism and gender studies into psychoanalytic thought. Jessica Benjamin is the most known and quoted representative of these two movements within world psychoanalysis and beyond, in philosophy, gender/women’s studies, and cultural studies department everywhere. The publication of her book, "Bonds of Love" (1989) was nothing short of a revolution. Psychoanalysis was until then a field immune to a changing world, to the unrest of the 60s, to the feminist and queer liberation movements, to the new philosophies of the Frankfurt School in Germany and post-structuralism in France. The book was a game changer. It called psychoanalysis to doubt its most basic premises on the human condition. It read Freud through a feminist framework, and through Hegel, forever tipping our perspective on infancy, gender, and the interplay of power and dependence that drives human relationships from the start. This volume marks the 25th anniversary of Benjamin’s work. Pulling together 15 international scholars, it looks back on the book's first impact, as well as on its continued relevance to psychoanalysis and gender studies today. Chapters offer theoretical deliberations and elaborations of the book's original themes as well as reflecting on it from more intimate angles, as a source of personal and professional inspiration for feminists and clinicians around the world. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

Twelve stories of wayward travelers. Twelve stamps on the passport of the soul. Walter struggles to see past his disfigurement, but a trip to Thailand and a mysterious woman may challenge his quest for perfection. Married to a workaholic, Leslie is accustomed to solitude until her overbearing Indian mother-in-law turns her kitchen into a verbal battlefield. A woman looks for the perfect souvenir in the Turkish Bazaar and instead finds a passionate love affair. From ice storms in Maine to swimming pools in Vera Cruz, errant souls must grapple with past baggage to forge profound connections and a new sense of direction. At home and abroad, solitary travelers embark on journeys that take them where they never expected to go. Bonds of Love & Blood is a poignant collection of award-winning stories featuring life’s unexpected arrivals and departures. If you like intimate accounts of lives at the crossroads, vibrant portrayals of global locales, and elegantly-crafted prose, then you'll love Marylee MacDonald's compelling tales of travel. Buy Bonds of Love & Blood to embark on a heart-wrenching journey of love, loss, and redemption today!

"Beautiful Ranmaru and sweet, serene Kei fell in love at first sight when they were just boys, and now that they're finally old enough, they're moving in together! College should be all about new experiences and freedom-- but what will the couple do when their home-sweet-home is invaded by the brash and spoiled Kai, Kei's half-brother? Is their relationship strong enough to weather a sudden storm of sibling rivalry?"--Publisher's web site.

This book is about the central figure of our contemporary, ‘liquid modern’ times – the man or woman with no bonds, and particularly with none of the fixed or durable bonds that would allow the effort of self-definition and self-assertion to come to a rest. Having no permanent bonds, the denizen of our liquid modern society must tie whatever bonds they can to engage with others, using their own wits, skill and dedication. But none of these bonds are guaranteed to last. Moreover, they must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change – as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again. The uncanny frailty of human bonds, the feeling of insecurity that frailty inspires, and the conflicting desires to tighten the bonds yet keep them loose, are the principal themes of this important new book by Zygmunt Bauman, one of the most original and influential social thinkers of our time. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology and in the social sciences and humanities generally, and it will appeal to anyone interested in the changing nature of human relationships.

In this important book, a well-known psychoanalyst and feminist makes a case for what she calls "gender heterodoxy"-a highly original view of the similarities and differences between the sexes-and, in the process, illuminates aspects of love, sexuality, aggression, and pornography.

St Peter Damian (1007-1072) is an exceptional example of a paradox that is found in many saints and thinkers through the ages (St Jerome, St Bernard, St Bridget of Sweden, St Teresa of Avila and Thomas Merton come to mind) – of a lifelong tension between two competing vocations: the call to solitude and holiness and the call to prophetic social and ecclesial engagement. The author has explored this tension throughout his adult life, both in his published work and in his own life as an Episcopalian/Anglican priest and later bishop. Damian’s “The Book of ‘The Lord be with you’” is a profound exploration of the spirituality of solitude, whereas his “Book of Gomorrah” is an intense attack on clerical sexual abuse which has helped to give Damian a new recent prominence in the light of the huge challenges facing the Church today. The Bonds of Love shows that the paradox at the heart of Damian's life and everything he cared about was rooted in the remarkable theology of love which finds expression across the whole of his work and gives it both coherence and dynamism. His life and spirituality are of far more than academic interest, and will make a major contribution, not only to those committed to ecclesial reform and renewal, but to all who struggle to live with the kind of competing tensions that made St. Peter Damian who he was.

Bonds of love offers a fresh interpretation of a selection of prophetic texts that present the covenant relationship as a marital relationship. The accent in this study is on method: historical and biographical categories such as ‘the prophet’ and ‘his career’ are left aside in order to concentrate on the composition and internal cohesion of the text. The reading strategy developed in this book is both synchronic and communication-oriented. Since prophetic texts essentially consist of speech, it is insufficient to study the text in abstraction from the audience that it addresses. The texts have a communication purpose, and a three-part model is developed in order to investigate the communication effects of the text on the implied audience and the contemporary reader. The studies of Isaiah 50 and 54, Hosea 1-3 and Jeremiah 2-3 reveal that a synchronic interpretation of these texts can be very fruitful. Larger patterns of coherence come to the surface when one refrains from the procedure of atomizing the texts in original and secondary parts.The final chapter is devoted to the theological implications of the marriage imagery. What intriguing model of divine and human partnership is presented here? And what sort of intimate interaction between Yhwh and Israel is precisely envisioned?

Willful and defiant, New England beauty Katherine Devereaux is abducted by Confederate Captain Matthew Hampton and taken to England. By the author of Rosewood. Reprint.

In Beyond Doer and Done To, Jessica Benjamin, author of the path-breaking Bonds of Love, expands her theory of mutual recognition and its breakdown into the complementarity of "doer and done to." Her innovative theory charts the growth of the Third in early development through the movement between recognition and breakdown, and shows how it parallels the enactments in the psychoanalytic relationship. Benjamin’s recognition theory illuminates the radical potential of acknowledgment in healing both individual and social trauma, in creating relational repair in the transformational space of thirdness. Benjamin’s unique formulations of intersubjectivity make essential reading for both psychoanalytic therapists and theorists in the humanities and social sciences.