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The topic of sexual functioning in its broadest aspects has been of central concern to psychoanalysts. There has always been an intense study and reexamination of our concepts about sexual conflict and the psychosexual phases of development, but recent trends in research and psychoanalytic investigation have given greater impetus to the emergence of new ideas and further clarification of the place of sexual development in the total functioning of the personality.
The editors of this book, concerned that recent work in the neurobiological and behavioral fields has tended to eliminate conflict theory from its central role in understanding sexual disturbances, felt that there was a "need to present to psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and other behavioral scientists the latest developments in the field of human sexual behavior from the psychoanalytic point of view" (p. vii). In this volume they have gathered together 17 new papers, each of them providing interesting views on various aspects of our understanding of sexual development. The editors, contributors themselves of three papers, have chosen an excellent representative sample from diverse points of view within psychoanalysis. Like other volumes of collected papers, the book's value could have been enhanced by some brief critical discussions of each of the papers so that the reader could place them into a more specific framework of current interest or controversy. Some attempts could also have been made to organize the papers into sections that dealt with an overall related theme.
There are, for example, four papers dealing with the general themes of sexual and gender identity, although approaching the topic from different vantage points. A paper by Eleanor Galenson and Herman Roiphe on "The Development of Sexual Identity" offers an excellent review of their findings concerning an early genital phase and early castration anxiety. Their observation that a little girl's reaction to the discovery of anatomical dif