Abstract
In her ground-breaking discussion of women’s lives, Carol Gilligan (1982) claimed that there is a second “voice” within adult moral reasoning. According to Gilligan, this voice indicates a central connectedness which functions as an organizing principle for moral and other decisions. She connected this voice with a sense of self that emphasizes relationships with other people rather than formal rules. In an explication of Gilligan’s idea of self, Nona Lyons (1988, 33) terms the two senses of self the “connected self” and the “separate/objective self”; the former is described as interdependent in relation to others, the latter is autonomous in relation to others. This characterization of two selves aligns in an interesting way with traditional stereotypes of culturally appropriate ways of being female and male in patriarchal cultures generally: males are to be autonomous, developing a separate self, while females are to remain connected or “nonautonomous.”
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Assiter, Alison. 1988. Autonomy and Pornography. In Griffiths and Whitford, 58–71.
Atwood, George, and Robert Stolorow. 1984. Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
Bar-tal, Daniel. 1976. Prosocial Behavior: Theory and Research. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Beahrs, John O. 1982. Unity and Multiplicity: Multilevel Consciousness of Self in Hypnosis, Psychiatric Disorder, and Mental Health. New York: Bruner/Mazel.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. Situating the Self. Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. New York: Routledge.
Bordo, Susan. 1986. The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11 (Spring): 439–56.
Bordo, Susan. 1987. The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Brown, Molly Young. 1992. Psychosynthesis: A Path toward Wholeness. Advanced Development 4 (January): 1–13.
Brown, Lyn Mikel, and Carol Gilligan. 1992. Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development. New York: Ballantine.
Burkitt, Ian. 1991. Social Selves: Theories of the Social Formation of Personality. London: Sage.
Butler, Judith. 1987. Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. New York: Columbia University Press.
Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cicchetti, Dante, and Marjorie Beeghly, eds. 1990. The Self in Transition: Infancy to Childhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cixous, Hélène, and Catherine Clément. 1986. The Newly Born Woman. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [orig. La jeune née (1975)].
Connell, James. 1990. Context, Self, and Action: A Motivational Analysis of Self-System Process across the Life-Span. In Cicchetti and Beeghly, 61–97.
Daly, Mary. 1979. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. London: The Women’s Press.
Di Stefano, Christine. 1983. Masculinity as Ideology in Political Theory: Hobbesian Man Considered. Women’s Studies International Forum 6: 633–44.
Eisenberg, Nancy, and Janet Strayer. 1987. Critical Issues in the Study of Empathy. In Eisenberg and Strayer, eds., 1–15.
Eisenberg, Nancy, and Janet Strayer, eds. 1987. Empathy and its Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Erikson, Erik. 1950. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton.
Ferguson, Kathy E. 1993. The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity in Feminist Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Freud, Sigmund. 1915. The Unconscious. Standard Edition, 14: 159–204. London: Hogarth Press, 1957.
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.
Gatens, Moira. 1991. Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, Carol, Nona P. Lyons, and Trudy J. Hanmer, eds. 1990. Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, Carol, Janie Victoria Ward, and Jill McLean Taylor, with Betty Bardige, eds. 1988. Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Goldstein, Arnold, and Gerald Michaels, eds. 1988. Empathy: Development, Training and Consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Griffiths, Morwenna, and Margaret Whitford, eds. 1988. Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Grimshaw, Jean. 1988. Autonomy and Identity in Feminist Thinking. In Griffiths and Whitford, 90–108.
Gunderson, John, and Margaret Singer. 1986. Defining Borderline Patients: An Overview. In Stone, 453–74.
Hartsock, Nancy. 1983. Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism. New York: Longman.
Haworth, Lawrence. 1986. Autonomy: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology and Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hilgard, Ernest R. 1986. Divided Consciousness: Multiple Controls in Human Thought and Action. Expanded ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1966. Philosophical Predicaments Concerning Government and Society. Ed. W Molesworth English Works of Thomas Hobbes. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Irigaray, Luce. 1985. Any Theory of the “Subject’ Has Always Been Appropriated by the “Masculine.” In her Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. G. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jack, Dana Crowley. 1991. Silencing the Self: Women and Depression. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Jacques, Francis. 1991. Difference and Subjectivity: Dialogue and Personal Identity. Trans. A. Rothwell. New Haven: Yale University Press. [orig. Fr. 1982 ].
Jordan, Judith V. 1991. The Meaning of Mutuality. In Jordan et al., 81–96.
Jordan, Judith V., Alexandra G. Kaplan, Jean Baker Miller, Irene P. Stover, and Janet L. Surrey. 1991. Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center. New York: The Guilford Press.
Kadi, Joanna, ed. 1994. Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists. Boston: South End Press.
Kernberg, O. 1975. Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
Klein, Melanie. 1950. Contributions to Psycho-Analysis 1921–1945. London: Hogarth Press.
Kohut, H. 1971. The Analysis of the Self. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Kohut, H. 1977. The Restoration of the Self Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Levinson, Daniel J. 1978. The Seasons of a Man’s Life. New York: Knopf.
Liedloff, Jean. 1977. The Continuum Concept: Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully. Rev. ed. New York: Addison-Wesley.
Lyons, Nona Plessner. 1988. Two Perspectives: On Self, Relationships, and Morality. In Gilligan, Ward, and Taylor, 21–48.
Mahler, Margaret S., et al. 1975. The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation. New York: Basic Books.
Majaj, Lisa Suhair. 1994. Boundaries: Arab/American. In Kadi, 65–86.
Metzner, Ralph. 1986. Opening to Inner Light: The Transformation of Human Nature and Consciousness. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Midgley, Mary. 1988. On Not Being Afraid of Natural Sex Differences. In Griffiths and Whitford, 29–41.
Miller, Jean Baker. 1991. The Development of Women’s Sense of Self. In Jordan et al., 27–50.
Millett, Kate. 1977. Sexual Politics. London: Virago.
Minhha, Trinh. 1989. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Natsoulas, Thomas. 1988. Sympathy, Empathy, and the Stream of Consciousness. Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior 18, no. 2 (June): 169–95.
Phelan, Shane. 1989. Identity Politics: Lesbian Feminism and the Limits of Community. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Pitkin, Hannah. 1984. Fortune is a Woman. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rowan, John. 1993. Discover Your Subpersonalities: Our Inner World and the People in it. London: Routledge.
Salome, Mary. 1994. Wherever I Am. In Kadi, 87–93.
Sliker, Gretchen. 1992. Multiple Mind: Healing the Split in Psyche and World. Boston. Shambhala Publications.
Stern, Daniel. 1985. The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books.
Stolorow, Robert D., and George E. Atwood. 1992. Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
Stone, Michael H., ed. 1986. Essential Papers on Borderline Disorders: One Hundred Years at the Border. New York: New York University Press.
Trevarthen, C. 1979. Communication and Cooperation in Early Infancy: A Description of Primary Intersubjectivity. In Before Speech, ed. J. M. Bullowar. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wilber, Ken. 1980. The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development. Wheaton, IL: Quest.
Wilber, Ken. 1986. Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution. Boston: Shambhala Publications.
Wispé, Lauren. 1987. History of the Concept of Empathy. In Eisenberg and Strayer, 17–36.
Wittig, Monique. 1992. The Category of Sex. In her The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press.
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Larrabee, M.J. (2000). Autonomy and Connectedness. In: Fisher, L., Embree, L. (eds) Feminist Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 40. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9488-2_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9488-2_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5563-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9488-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive