  Benjamin's analysis can be distinguished from those of Irigaray and Kristeva precisely by the way in which it tends to conflate or collapse the distinction between representation and social roles. While Anglo-American psychoanalytic feminism theorizes gender as derived from or dependent on social (including familial) inequalities and power relations, and thus aims to reduce its psychic effects by redressing social and familial domination/subordination, French feminism does not calibrate the psyche on socio-cultural relations but on imaginary and symbolic representations. Benjamin's partitioning of intrapsychic life into internal and external relations, and her vision of intersubjective equilibrium is, in contrast to Irigaray and Kristeva's assertion of discord within and between subjects, oriented by the conviction that social harmony is desirable and attainable.