Review of This Changes Everything: The Relational Revolution in Psychology (Hardcover)

The philosopher Ken Wilber first alerted to the work of Carol Gilligan. I was already aware of some of the work of Jean Baker Miller and Judith Lewis Herman and the revolution in psychology that they had spawned. But some of the details I did not known and they are captured in the remarkable narrative of Christina Robb's book.

Almost thirty years ago, Carol Gilligan wrote an essay entitled "In a Different Voice," that was subsequently expanded into a book that I recommend highly. She described the marked discrepancies in morality and self-expression between men and women. For women, the whole notion of self tends to be inextricably bound up in a web of close relationships. Women tend to be more diligent about maintaining and nurturing these relationships, and inter-personal details tend to be more important to them, than they are for most men. At the time that she started writing about this, much psychological thinking in the United States had not yet dragged itself out of the confines of the post-Freudian theorizing that had dominated American psychology for decades. Gilligan and her co-workers identified relationships as the foundation of our psychological and physical states. At the time, the idea that men and women might tend to think and relate in different ways was anathema. I did a brief stint in Boston around that time, and it was pretty clear what could and could not be thought about. Despite the incredible liberal and intellectual traditions at Harvard, there were clearly some "no go" areas in psychology; gender differences being just one of them. Gilligan's work was courageous, and taken together with the findings of psychiatrists Judith Lewis Herman and Jean Baker Miller, would ultimately lead to radical alterations in the way that we understand the psychology of women. Are these gender differences social, political or biological? The answer is, I think, yes: all of the above.

Christine Robb has managed to capture the quiet revolution that these scientists introduced, and which is still being felt today. Though it is surprising how often discussion of gender differences are still omitted from much work on self-psychology. In an otherwise wonderful book - The Self in Neuroscience and Psychiatry, edited by Tilo Kircher and Anthony David - there is scarcely any mention of gender.

I would not normally expect to get through a 450-page book at one sitting: I'm not a speed-reader! But this is so well written and the biographies and interviews so enthralling, that I did indeed polish it off at one sitting. Though I feel sure that I shall return to it in the future.

Though this is a big juicy book with pages of references and a bibliography, I'm going to make a prediction that it is going to be one of those rare cross-over books that will be read not just by academics and psychology students, but also by people who really are interested in knowing more about themselves and understanding relationships. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this one gets featured on Oprah! It's that good.

Highly recommended!



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