Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to Be Wanted

By Polly Young-Eisendrath

Book Overview

An internationally recognized Jungian analyst and psychologist helps women reclaim true desire for themselves. Not since Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has female desire been explored so deeply and provocatively. This groundbreaking book delves into the complex world of female desire where women simply "want to be wanted." Many women encourage others to identify or validate images that give them feelings of worth or vitality and then feel resentful because they have sacrificed their real needs and desires. Instead of knowing who they really are and what they would like to do with their lives, they become trapped in their images. As a result, self-direction, self-confidence, and self-determination are undermined from adolescence through old age. Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath examines this damaging syndrome of female development, showing women, and girls, how to untangle themselves from the web of reflected images that confuses or conceals their authentic wants and needs. Women and Desire empowers women to understand and take control of their sexual, social, and spiritual lives.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 060960371X
• ISBN13: 9780609603710
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Amazing book

This book should be a must read for every woman. It's inspiring and life-changing.

Is Feminism the F Word?

I assign this book to students in my psychology seminar. These students at a women's college tell me that they find Women and Desire to be thought provoking, interesting, even helpful. I noticed a column in Newsweek by Anna Quindlen in October. She argued that women today still need the F word feminism because society hasn't changed as much as we like to tell ourselves. It appears that the need for books such as this one by Polly Young-Eisendrath continues to be valid.

Good Perspective Adjustment

The title of this book spoke volumes to me before I even cracked the cover. Reading about her perspective that women want to be wanted rather than fully know was right on target for me and because of the new found perspective, I felt released from the need of "wanting to be wanted." I resist some of her claims as to WHY women do this - from my point of view, she spends a little too much time blaming society, culture, men. I think the WHY is important to know, but I wanted to see the book focus a bit more on what women can DO about it. In general, the book more than serves its purpose to raise the issue and bring awareness to it. Overall, excellent, thought-provoking book.

Changed My Life

In the first 23 pages, this book changed my life. She hit the nail on the head, so to speak about the crux of my biggest subconscious issue, being the object of desire. This book is a must for all women and definitely for men who want to know and understand women more fully. This book opened me up to the knowledge that I am not irreparably broken, and that coming into my own power is still well within my reach. Thank you! Thank you!

An essential for those who have lived for others

Young-Eisendrath brilliantly opens the reader's eyes to the female's struggle for an identity in a patriarchal society. Fables, intertwined magnificently throughout each core concept, act as examples of the concocted lives women cling to and men (and women) perpetuate. I identified strongly with the author's comparison of being the "subject of one's own desire" versus being the "object of another's desire." Reading this book, I realized how both women and men are forced to act in a stereotypical drama. Men - aggressors, emotional corpses, breadwinners, dominators. Women - weaklings, dependents, passivists, bitches. Neither role is healthy, nor genuine. Young-Eisendrath has tackled one side of the problem. Who will take on the other?