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This slim volume is a contribution to the as yet scanty psychoanalytic literature relating to lesbians. The seventeen essays, written by both analysts and nonanalysts, are an interdisciplinary collection exploring sexuality between women from a variety of perspectives. The essays emphasize the diversity rather than the unity of this group of individuals, defined as a group only by their gender (female) and their desire (for another woman or women). Some of the essays contain rich clinical material drawn from the treatment of individual women. There is an excellent bibliography.
No single theoretical psychoanalytic frame is accepted by all the authors, and some dismiss all psychoanalytic theories. The one point of theoretical unity among these papers is the rejection of theories that consider homosexuality or homoeroticism to be evidence of abnormality. This book can be regarded as a partially successful effort to correct prior bias. Some of the authors regard analytic neutrality with suspicion, and advocate that analysts adopt a validating stance with regard to their lesbian patients' sexuality. Some of the chapters are weakened by the polemical intensity of their arguments, and should be read with an understanding of the feeling of outrage evoked by the historical psychoanalytic position that any same-sex object choice must be severely pathological.
The book is divided into four sections. However, the essays do not lend themselves easily to this attempt at categorization. For example,