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The Capacity to Care

Gender and Ethical Subjectivity

• By Wendy Hollway
• Series Editor: Jane Ussher

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• Price: $26.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 168
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 5th October 2006
• ISBN: 978-0-415-39968-5

About the Book

Wendy Hollway explores a subject that is largely absent from the topical literature on care. Humans are not born with a capacity to care, and this volume explores how this capacity is achieved through the experiences of primary care, gender development and later, parenting.

In this book, the author addresses the assumption that the capacity to care is innate. She argues that key processes in the early development of babies and young children create the capability for individuals to care, with a focus on the role of intersubjective experience and parent-child relations. The Capacity to Care also explores the controversial belief that women are better at caring than men and questions whether this is likely to change with contemporary shifts in parenting and gender relations. Similarly, the sensitive domain of the quality of care and how to consider whether care has broken down are also debated, alongside a consideration of what constitutes a ‘good enough’ family.

The Capacity to Care provides a unique theorization of the nature of selfhood, drawing on developmental and object relations psychoanalysis, as well as philosophical and feminist literatures. It will be of relevance to social scientists studying gender development, gender relations and the family as well as those interested in the ethics of care debate.

Reviews

'This book is significant for its scholarly exploration of psychological aspects of caring and compassion, marking an important development in the field.' - Dr Ann Weatherall, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

'Building on her ground-breaking earlier work on gender, subjectivity and method, Wendy Hollway's new book makes an exciting intervention in recent debates about care. It is a wonderful example of how psychoanalytic perspectives can transform social scientific, feminist and public understandings.' – Sasha Roseneil, University of Leeds, UK

'Wendy Hollway, one of the foremost psycho-social thinkers of our time, weaves psychic and social reality together in a fascinating account of the development and vicissitudes of the capacity to care.' - Lynne Layton, Harvard Medical School, USA

Table of Contents

1. Introducing the Capacity to Care 2. Care, Ethics and Relational Subjectivity 3. Intersubjectivity In Self Development 4. Maternal Subjectivity and The Capacity to Care 5. The Gender of Parenting, The Gender of Care 6. Difference, Ethics and The Capacity To Care 7. Conclusions. Self, Morality and Acquiring the Capacity to Care

About the Author(s)

Wendy Hollway is a Professor in Psychology at the Open University. She has worked in several social science disciplines and has pursued a critical psychology perspective in many areas. She is especially interested in the development of subjectivity and the use of psychoanalysis in qualitative methodology.