Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis: Edited by Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2001,  x + 466 pp., $25.00 paperback.

Because psychoanalytic knowledge about the homosexualities has long been clouded by political forces and prejudice, open-minded psychoanalytic clinicians should be eager for new insights on this topic. Decades of psychoanalytic theorizing misappropriated moralistic anti-sexual attitudes, allowing prejudice and coercion. More recently, oppositional forces of political correctness and an exclusive focus on the pathogenicity of homophobic attitudes have contributed to a similar constriction of scientific investigation. Many basic questions in this area remain unresolved. How do such factors as biological forces, identifications, familial cognitive direction and seduction, a child's use of sexuality to resolve developmental conflicts, cultural pressures toward conformity, and adaptational needs to develop a sociosexual identity contribute to an individual psyche? Does structure building involving gender identity, gender role consolidation, and oedipal resolution serve an essential role in maturation toward capacities for relating and loving? Are there a variety of possible pathways for consolidation of object choice during development, for both males and females, and is such consolidation crucial for psychic health? Is bisexuality a developmental potential, or is it actively ongoing in adult psychic life? Does development require conformity and therefore entail some loss? When