Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post?

by Darian Leader

Ranging from Freud to Hitchcock, from Dracula to Jane Austen, and from Agatha Christie to Greek tragedy, this contribution to the field of gender studies aims to tease out surprising insights of contemporary psychoanalysis to show why there is little chance of a harmonious relationship between a man and a woman. It suggests what it might be that Claudia Schiffer sees in the magician David Copperfield, and why women are more likely than men to fantasize about making love in public.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Psychology, Feminism, Relationships, Gender Studies, Theory

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Darian Leader is a British psychoanalyst and author. He is a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR).

Darian Leader is President of the College of Psychoanalysts, a Trustee of the Freud Museum, and Honorary Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis at Roehampton University.

From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darian_L...

Reviews

[Seppe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book on the Lacanian theory of sexuality. Filled with examples from high and pop-culture, as well as clinical case studies, it explores the Lacanian adage "There is no sexual relation." It does so following the intricacies of the positions between the male and female logic, through various acts such as giving presents, jealousy, guilt, and as the title shows writing letters and showing affection. Thought provocative, It reminds us how sexuality is not reserved to the biological act, but is meaning-making even at the seemingly most commonplace gestures and actions. A great introduction.

[Nathália · Rating 5 out of 5]

A banquet for thought.

"Have you ever loved anyone that did not make you feel guilty? The loved object will take place of the ideal: one will behave to this person as if they were exempt from criticism and truly ideal. If the love object is put into the place ideal and guilt is a relation between ego and ideal, being in love will generate a profound feeling of guilt.

It has long been observed how readily a man can fall in love with a different woman shortly after the end of a relationship. A man's love, even at an everyday level, is constantly subject to change, to oscillation from affectionate concern to wakeful suspicion and even hate. It is as if his ideal image of the partner is shadowed by the declamation 'Why aren't you someone else?'.

While a woman may spend a great deal of time concerned about whether her partner really loves her or not, a man is more likely to spend his hours doubting his own love for the one he has chosen.

The more focused quality of male narcissism is seen clearly in the relative speed with which men will become involved with a new partner shortly after the end of a love relation. In a sense, they can do this because their unconscious narcissistic link to the mother is so strong - the unconscious position of being the satisfying, darling object for the mother - that what actually happens from one female partner to another is diminished in consequence.

Loving the same person does not mean you can't desire someone else. Or several other people. If love is ultimately a demand, which aims to get rid of lack, desire shows its difference. It reintroduces precisely what love is designed to conceal, and hence the moment when it seems that the partners are finally satisfied, that all obstacles to their love have at last been lifted. Something has to happen which will reinstate the dimension of lack.

There is a fundamental incompatibility between what one asks for and what one wants. Desire, indeed, is there to persist as desire, not as anything else. It doesn't ask to be realized. He wanted to demand, not to get what he demanded. Desire has to be maintained beyond the dimension of demand.

We could say that having for a man is always based on the possibility of not having. As St Paul insisted, man must have as though he had not, possess as though he did not possess.

Giving for man is different. The more a man gives the more he aims at the destruction of his object. To give, after all, is a demand. The irony is that the more generous they are, the more selfish their love is, with only obliteration at its horizon."

[Sara Salem]

Super interesting on how men and women are socialized differently and how that feeds into relationships.

[Tom Syverson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a consistently engaging read for anyone interested in the psychoanalytic approach to sexual difference.

For a Lacanian, Leader is exceptionally readable and concise, and does a wonderful job of illustrating his musings with an equal amount of clinical and cultural examples. Many of his literary references can be a bit urbane, leaving some readers (including this one!) to feel a certain cultural inadequacy at times, but they're a welcome step up from the usual Hollywood stuff Zizek and others like to use.

As Leader emphasizes in his introduction, any frank study of sexuality is going to end up raising many more questions than it answers, and the answers that are given are often times unsatisfactory. But for readers with an appreciation for the intellectually stimulating ambiguity on which psychoanalysis teaches us to focus, this is just what makes Leader's book such a pleasure to read. Highly recommended.

[Carlos Valladares · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliance on every page. Good casual intro to the basic principles of Lacanian psychoanalysis in practice, i.e. the big practice: the tangled, twisted relations (or lack thereof!) among the sexes.

“But it is a fact that those men who spend their lives professing their terror or contempt of women always end up getting married, whereas those who continually discourse on their love of the opposite sex are quite likely to end up single.”

“This search for a dead man as lover is perhaps the reason why people are so often amazed at the fact that a friend has fallen in love with the most incredibly boring man. Men who are particularly boring shouldn’t worry too much about finding a partner, since it is precisely for their mortification that they will be loved. Beyond the register of the living is the love a woman claims from the dead man.”

[Abi Rhodes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book will teach you about gender, psychoanalysis and literature all in one go! A great read.

[Fuat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more complicated and confusing than the cover and the title suggest. Also makes your normal everyday life seems gross. It's good!

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book that introduces you to psychoanalysis, has helped me understand why women think different. See I always knew the ancient Greek philosophers were onto something when they said women think different. This book explains that, women aren't as illogical as many men think, but rather have their own set of logic based in their perspective, something that is hard to grasp as a man. Indeed some parts of this book, though I understand how, I can't fathom why someone would think this way. So the Greeks were right, and you can't be a "women," in the same sense as you can be a "man." All the cryptic shit testing makes more sense, not that I feel better about it, because inherently I find it silly.

[Hannah Campbell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fucking Freud

[Yahya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Çok fazla genelleme içeriyor. Yani eğlencelik olarak okunabilir. Biraz Freud biraz Lacan'a hakim olmak lazım yine de. Ama genel olarak ortalama altı bir kitap. Kitabın ismi de biraz dikkat çekmek amaçlı.

[Will Daly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this on the internet archive. While reading I became cognizant of how culturally bound the insights of psychoanalytic systems can be. A lot of the stereotypes the author brings up aren’t anything I’ve heard of, or things thatve even reversed in recent years. I don’t get Lacanian theory. I think it’s too complicated; I don’t know if I’ll ever get jt. I’m kind of amazed that anybody does.

I don’t remember much about this book. I guess there weren’t enough case studies.

[zeyno · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Belki de anlayan kişi daima yanlış kişidir ve doğru kişiyle ilgili sorun da, en basit şekliyle, anlamamasıdır."

kadın erkek ilişkilerine dair okuduğum tek güzel şey.

[Yamiyumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çeviri üzdü...

[Laurel Nyx · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the premise of this book intrigued me along with the introduction, I struggled to keep my mind open to the ideas about how men and women view the world and interact with each other differently. I feel as if the middle chapters were the hardest to read through, with the convoluted ideas being easier to finally realise near the end. This book presents a psychoanalytical perspective only in a heteronormative sense, and relies mainly on individual cases and literature from which to source its arguments and theories. There were at various points interesting ideas I mulled over about the function of guilt and desire, of the relationships between children and parents, and about the ways in which men and women perceive themselves within the environment differently. Where it came apart for me were 3 things:

1) The complicated stringing of sentences and ideas. So darn many of them.

2) Random statements at the end of sentences/paragraphs that are rooted in stereotypes or don't really mesh seamlessly to the original idea.
For example: On page 81-82 the author talked about how wives secretly want men to combat against their mothers and "it is much more sensible for a man who wants a woman to like him more to be nice not to her mother, but to cats. Many women not only love cats but love men who love cats". I mean no shit?? But also many women prefer dogs? Or birds? Or when men are nice to their pets and animals in general? What do cats have to do with it?

It felt like an unnecessary tangent into generalisation land, and unfortunately the author makes claims that to me are so immersed in psychoanalysis they lack common sense, empirical evidence, or the openmindedness the book originally asks for.

3) There is a lack of real empirical evidence to back up statements made that to the author is a 'given'. The author scatters mentions of other psychoanalysts, authors, and case studies, but always there is a vagueness which allows him to say whatever he pleases without being able to verify his sources. There are no direct quotes or direct references to texts that he has used, only 'Freud' and 'some of Freud's students' or names of novels and characters. He could be extrapolating out of thin air and I wouldn't know where to begin first.

With all of that said, if you're interested in trying to expand your mind and mull over some intriguing theories about how the psyches of men and women work, be my guest! I just needed a lot of time to wrap my head around some of his ideas and also ignore the blatant assumptions used as a foundation for his gendered analysis.

[maddie]

With my unfamiliarity with nonfiction and specifically psychoanalysis, I do not necessarily have the context to judge how accurate the sentences are. However, the author appears to appreciate this as his introduction contains acknowledgement of the generalizations he makes. He remarks that even disagreeing with what he has written is better than not engaging at all. So I find this unique and interesting, with some parts particularly dated but some not at all, and could probably reread it with the same fascination.

Here are some fun questions that are answered in the course of this book:
why do women dye their hair after a breakup?
why do women date boring men?
why do men like being cucked?
why are women's' rooms cleaner than men?

The unanswered question is this: Is this book a love letter in itself?

[ضحى · Rating 4 out of 5]

قرأت ترجمة طارق عثمان له - إذ وصلني إشعار على البريد يفيد بتحميل طارق له -صدفةً بعدما علقت على تغريدة قبل بيومين تقول أنّا نكتب عن المدن لما نغيب عنها، لأن الكتابة تنبع من نقص أو غياب، فقلت:
يحدث هذا الأمر كذلك مع الناس، كنت بالكاد أكتب عن أحدهم وهو حاضر، ولما غاب صرت أكتب أكثر، فانتبهت كيف صارت لغتي شفافة وحنونة أكثر، من فترة مرت عليّ معزوفة بعنوان: أكتب لأني لا أستطيع لمسك، ويبدو نعبر عن جوعنا للمس بالكتابة

أختلف في البعض مع الكاتب، وبعض آخر ينهار إذا افترضنا حال مختلف، لكن استمتعت بها جداً، كنت أضحك لما أقرأ مقاطع أتفق معها أو تصفني. شكراً لداريان وشكراً لطارق على سلاسة الترجمة بالرغم من وعورة التحليل

[Bihter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kadın ve erkek arasındaki sosyal ve cinsel farkları Lacancı teori üzerinden örneklerle inceleyen bu kitabın her sayfasında altı çizilecek ilginç sorular ve bilgiler buldum. Özellikle birinci ve ikinci bölümlerdeki “kadın olmak” daha doğrusu kadın’ın “yokluğu” hakkındaki psikanalitik savlar, cinsellikle ilgili kültürel formasyonlar ve Agatha Christie’nin kayboluş öyküsü o kadar ilginçti ki bende yazarın diğer kitaplarını okumak için istek uyandırdı. Oldukça kısa ancak inanılmaz doyurucu bir okuma deneyimi olmasına rağmen kötü çevirisi kitabın anlaşılırlığını zorlaştırıyor.

[manaal · Rating 4 out of 5]

v meandering but really thoughtful and creative. some really interesting ideas. first few chapters are better than the rest, probably bc of the loose structure - harder to separate the later chapters into distinct points

[Murat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lacan ve Freud referanslı bir çok olgu yazarın cinsiyetlere atfettiği özelliklerle harman edilerek incelenmiş. Dili çok iyi değil, kitap konudan konuya sürekli atlama içerisinde yürüyor.

[Müge Kübra Oğuz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kadın ve erkek hakkında bildiğimiz ama dile getirmediğimiz tespitlerin bir araya getirilmesi, bilimsel temellerde örneklerle sunulması keyifli bir okuma süreci sağlıyor. Sorgulayıcı.. Sorgulatıcı..

[Mina Herz]

Loved this

[Colton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just brilliant. Leader's books are a great gateway into the rich field of psychoanalysis. Fun, enlightening, unnerving.

[Oğuzcan Önver · Rating 4 out of 5]

goodreads'e girerken şifre sordu oo unutturmuşuz kendimizi. oysa adresim kitabımın ilk sayfasında yazıyor. adres belli mektuplar kayıp. ama unutturmuşuz kendimizi.

[Kaplumbağa Felsefecisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kadın için yaşadığı, yaşıyor olduğu her ilişki organizma gibidir. Hala sürüp giden ve ilişkiye dair hala gözlemlerini yapan konumundadır. Onun için bitmiş bir şey olmaması burada bir metafor olarak korunan mektuptur. O yüzden o mektup en özenli şekilde saklanır ve bitmesi sanki bir şeylerin sonuymuş gibi gelir. Yazar, erkeklerinse o mektubu alalade masasında, açıkta ya da unutacağı bir yerde bırakması durumundan bahseder. Onun için hala yaşıyor olmanın kadınlar kadar saklanması ya da düşünülesi yanı yoktur. Lacan bakış açısıyla irdelese de, yazar, çok da derine inmeden insanı düşündürecek; çoğu yerde de kesinlikle doğru dedirtecek değiniler yapmıştır.

[bluetyson]

Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post by Darian Leader

[Sessiznehir]

Mükemmel. Cem TOKLU'ya teşekkürler

[Emma Wilkins]

(((put list of ideas i found interesting here later!!!)))

[Laçin Tutalar · Rating 4 out of 5]

İsabetli notlar kitabı.

[Robert Day · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute codswallop.