Throughout In a Different Voice, Gilligan explores the theories of both separation and attachment in human and moral development. Freud’s developmental psychology begins with the attachment of infant to mother and the developmental necessity of the infant detaching from the mother as the source of literal nourishment. Attachment transitions to separation, marking one of the first stages of human development. Attachment in Western psychology has thus often had a negative connotation, indicative of an infantile state out of which one must “progress” to independence.

Gilligan, however, is not interested in attachment as a one-way relationship in which there is utter dependence, as in the case of an infant. Rather, she is interested in the relational attachments that are formed in which people are able to fully use their voices and fully be heard in relationships. These attachments are not ones of dependence—or exploitation.

At the same time, Gilligan acknowledges that separation is also a truth of psychological and moral development. In the case of Gilligan’s central study of women trying to decide whether or not to have an abortion, Gilligan gauges women’s moral development, in part, in their consideration of themselves. She argues that women often have to assume a sense of detachment and separation from others to consider their own lives as valuable in relation to others.