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Notes on Jean Baker Miller's "Toward a New Psychology of Women"

To what extent can a woman have her own center?

This involves connectedness, to other people, a strength, rather than independence, an idea for the way men are supposed to be.

Doesn't everyone need someone as a close confident? Should this person be a sexual partner? Wouldn't a woman get more objective advice from a girlfriend than from a lover, particularly where there is an inequality?

The inequality is both social and personal, because men are members of a dominant group and women belong to a subordinate group. Both men and women feel the effect of inequality psychologically. Women are the caretakers of men's emotions, which remain largely hidden to the men except in ways which they can objectify them, i.e., view what they need in a concrete way, a world in which women also fit into.

Women need to become authentic, to have their own center independent of a man. They need to derive their own power from connections with people, including other women. Human associations and connectedness is an important strength that women can develop. Cooperation in developing human relations is a basis for strength. Most of what is considered weak in women is really a social strength, just not recognized as such by society. It is what society needs more of.

Miller talks about all the aspects of what are considered weaknesses for women and turns them around as bases for strength. This is a theme of the book.

Women need to manage conflict instead of suppressing it, avoiding it. They also need to not be afraid of expressing anger where it is due. To suppress basic feelings in order to avoid conflict is not a good thing.

Women need to build social organizations that allow themselves to develop new ways of relating to each other, ways that are not centered around men. Social needs, such child raising, need to be seen as such and not just the responsibility of women. If women are automatically assigned this responsibility, as their sole or primary responsibility, then women will always have an extra burden, that which limits their participation in the larger world.

If the woman as individual fits into the world of men, ignoring other women, or disdaining them, then this is not real progress. It is not that women should become like men, but that society needs to be humanized and allow for the integration of women's strengths on a larger scale.

There needs to be a much greater emphasis on education and social regulation. Miller

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