Carol Gilligan becomes a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association

Carol Gilligan, who wrote an essay titled In a Different Voice in 1968, would go on to publish a book with the same name using the title essay as a central element.  In that book, she spoke not with the faux objective passive voice of the social scientist, but with a personal, deeply felt subjective voice that rang in the ears of women and men for decades, leading many people to rethink what it means to be a woman – what it means to be a man, and what it means to be human.  In honor of this and the other work that she has done, the American Psychoanalytic Association made her an honorary member and she, in turn, agreed to deliver the plenary address at the meeting of the association this year.

Gilligan spoke to an enthusiastic roomful of psychoanalysts with, as a female friend of mine sitting next to me noticed with some pride, not a hint of make-up on.  She was, most definitely, herself, including on the high-def screens that allowed us all to have a front row seat in her talk.  And she talked about another person who is very much herself – Greta Thunberg – who has taken the world by storm by being herself – and talking with passion about the world that she cares so deeply about.  Gilligan helped us see that our attraction to Thunberg comes from Thunberg's ability to hold onto the truths that an 8 year old experiences – Thunberg was first exposed to a film about global warming when she was in second grade and this experience precipitated a depressive experience for her.

Unlike her peers who learned to get along to go along as she entered puberty, Thunberg held onto her passionate little girl voice.  Gilligan talked about how Thunberg’s parents started altering their behaviors related to their carbon footprint because they saw that she was not consoled by their empty promises that "everything will work out".  Perhaps in part because of her parents responsiveness, though maybe also because she is on the autistic spectrum, Thunberg’s tenaciously intense ability to speak truth to power, has led her to rally people like no one else has been able to do to the cause of saving the planet.

This latter day version of Gilligan’s own assertion of her voice is one that Gilligan found evidence for in the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden.  But she had to dig for it.  There are two creation stories in Genesis.  One of them is about God creating the heavens and earth and creating humans in his own image – male and female he created them.  Then a second story gets crammed onto the first.  In this story, God creates Adam, but Adam is lonely.  He needs someone who will be an Ezer Kenegdov in the (transliterated) Hebrew.  This term – which is really straightforward – it means someone who will push back against – someone who will assertively question – has been translated by the King James’ version as a “helpmate”.  Well, the tenor of Ezer Kenegdov, according to Gilligan, is a bit more than someone who holds the ladder while the man fixes something – it is a person who asserts her position with her own voice.

Gilligan traced her own ability to articulate her voice back to her childhood.  Her mother took her to a class on how to raise children based on psychoanalytic principles, and the teacher proposed that her mother support Gilligan being able to call attention to things that need attention – that she should support rather than suppress Gilligan’s voice.

Of course, when Gilligan discovered psychoanalysis as an adult, she discovered that it contained all kinds of crazy things about women that were the result of men talking about the minds of women.  Her work became a clarion call for other women to take up the psychoanalytic mantle and shake it – to begin to assert – in a woman’s voice – what a woman’s subjectivity was actually all about.  The standing ovation that her address brought was a testament to her having served as an Ezer Kenegdov to an entire discipline without ever having been a member of it.  What a potent voice. 

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