Casey Smith PHIL 110 12/5/18 Dialectic: Gilligan Carol Gilligan pointed out the obvious flaw in psychology that we were all overlooking. Not only that we were basing most of our psychology off of men, but we were not looking at the big difference between men and women. One of the big differences that caught my attention, was the different way men and women view attachment and separation. "Thus, it appears that men and women may experience attachment and separation in different ways and that each sex perceives danger which the other does not to see - men in connection, women in separation" (Gilligan, 42). This led me to a long mental list of questions. I think these questions have been boggling around in the mind of most men and women, but the words were not being clearly articulated out loud. There seems to be a million ways that men and women differ from each other, but why is this? The two big questions being: Why do men experience anxiety from connection? And why do women experience anxiety from separation? I think these questions need to be further researched, and further researched beyond stories written by college students’ responses to the TAT, and beyond the responses of Jake and Amy. Although this research brings up the difference in the imagery of violence between men and women, and gives us a decent start to puzzle, it is simply not enough research or proof. We’re lacking evidence, and in some ways, we’re lacking an active curiosity. There is an abundant amount of intricateness between men and women, but we need to ask more questions. Why does intimacy appear so mysterious and dangerous to men, yet coherent and safe to women? Do men see a loss of themselves or their masculinity? Do women see losing others as losing themselves? Where do these different dependencies come from? Are these differences simply due to most children being raised by women, is it biology, is it culture, what are the reasons? It is a very sad, confusing dilemma for men and women. References Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Harvard University Press, 2016.
