Silencing the Self

In 1996, Time magazine named feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan one the 25 most influential Americans for her ground-breaking work on gender studies. Gilligan worked as a research assistant to Lawrence Kohlberg at Harvard. Kohlberg pioneered the field of moral development, and much as Freud and the early psychoanalytic thinkers did, he concluded that women were not as morally developed as men. Gilligan learned that Kohlberg’s findings were based on research done exclusively with male subjects. When she interviewed women about their moral development, she found that women made moral decisions in a manner that was more situated in the context of the relationships in their lives, and that men tended to make moral decisions in a more compartmentalized a relational manner.

This finding led to the publication of the landmark work, In a Different Voice, in which Gilligan argued that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women and that women speak in a different voice which has been pathologized in mainstream theories.

Psychologist Dana Jack built on Gilligan’s theories in her research about the negative psychological effect of women’s voices being silenced in their intimate relationships. She found a significant relationship between depression and the extent to which women’s voices are silenced in their intimate relationships in cultures around the world. Jack’s hypothesis was that women in heterosexual relationships silence parts of themselves in a vain attempt to avoid conflict and emotional distance from their partners. Unfortunately, this silencing of the self is not only ineffective in maintaining closeness in the relationship but often also leads to a loss of a sense of self that can be the start of depression in women.

Jack and her colleagues believe that this strategy of silencing the self is prescribed for women by patriarchal norms that dictate that women be pleasing, unselfish and loving. Surprisingly, four studies found that men silence themselves in relationships as much or more than women. Researchers surmised that men, like women, silence themselves in relationships in order to comply with patriarchal norms for men, which include injunctions to remain silent and stoic.

Alternatively, I would like to suggest that men silence themselves in relationships because of the variety of ways in which they are afraid of their female partners. One of the surprising reasons that men silence themselves in relationships with women is that they are afraid of being found to be emotionally inadequate in their relationships with women. One man put it this way:

In conversation with women, I find I spend the first few minutes just establishing myself as a safe person for her to talk with. After that things are OK, until she starts to get deeper and more emotional, then I start to feel nervous inside, wondering whether I can handle her. So I use words to slow down the speed at which she emotes to the level I can handle. I often feel bad about doing this, like it’s not fair on her if she wants to express. However, when I can see her building up, I can feel this fear rising up inside me – it feels like a spidery touch of fear, mixed with anxiety and a slight sense of suffocation. It often seems the level she is comfortable with is a lot higher than mine. I think a lot of that is that women are so much more comfortable with expressing emotions. It’s like they are more literate – they know what they are feeling and have the ability to know how to express it that is appropriate to the context, situation and immediate social environment. As for me, I don’t know what I am feeling, so if I let it out in front of her, I don’t know in advance what it will be, whether it is good or bad or how big or small it will be. Is this the right time, the right place, the correct situation? I don’t know that either

Women and men both silence themselves in intimate relationships, hiding some of the most authentic parts of themselves in a counter-productive attempt to preserve closeness in the relationship. Understanding the fears that lead men to hide their selves is a critically important part of helping them to risk being more fully and authentically themselves in their intimate relationships.

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