Jessica Benjamin

Jessica Benjamin
Psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin, at the Freud Memorial Lecture in Vienna, May 2008
Born	1946
Nationality	American
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin, Madison, New York University
Academic work
Main interests	Psychoanalysis, feminism
Notable works	The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination, Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference, Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis
Notable ideas	Intersubjectivity

Jessica Benjamin is a psychoanalyst known for her contributions to psychoanalysis and social thought. She is currently a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City where she is on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Psychology Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. Jessica Benjamin is one of the original contributors to the fields of relational psychoanalysis, theories of intersubjectivity, and gender studies and feminism as it relates to psychoanalysis and society. She is known for her ideas about recognition in both human development and the sociopolitical arena.

Jessica Benjamin earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1967, and her MA from the University of Frankfurt in West Germany, where she studied Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy. Jessica Benjamin earned her PhD in Sociology from NYU in 1978. She received her psychoanalytic training from New York University Postdoctoral Psychology Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and engaged in post doc research on infancy with Dr. Beatrice Beebe at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Jessica Benjamin is considered to be one of the most important and influential psychoanalysts of the last four decades. She was one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, and was one of the first to introduce feminism and gender studies into psychoanalytic thought.

Her early studies included social structure and feminism, but more recently she is known for her effort to explain the classical aspects of psychoanalysis using object relations, relational psychoanalysis, and feminist thought. She has made significant contributions to the concept of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis.

In 2015 Jessica Benjamin received the Hans-Kilian-Award for her achievements in the fields of psychoanalysis, feminist psychology and the theory of intersubjective recognition.

Benjamin has published three books.

In The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination (1988) Benjamin undertook a major revision of Freud's theories of both human development and sexuality. Using contemporary research on infancy and gender, she argued for the importance of recognition and the intersubjective relationship. Against this background, she showed how relationships of domination involve the alienation of recognition, and a form of gender splitting she called gender polarity. She argued that we accept and perpetuate relationships of domination not because of an inherent aggressive instinct, but the difficulty of recognizing the Other. She theorizes that domination is a complex psychological process which ensnares both parties in bonds of complicity, and supports this by showing how it affects our family life, our social institutions, and especially our sexual relations, in spite of our conscious commitment to equality and freedom.