Psychoanalysis and Homosexuality: A Contemporary Introduction. By Leezah Hertzmann and Juliet Newbigin. New York:  Routledge, 2023,  172 pp., $21.56 paperback.

Two decades after the psychoanalytic works about lesbians and gays by O'Connor and Ryan (1993), De Lauretis (1994), and Domenici and Lesser (1995) were published, I attended a social event for my institute community. A senior analyst approached the group of three lesbian candidates who had gathered for mutual support and comfort. The analyst regaled us with his idea of organizing a conference about love and homosexuality, planning to show that gays and lesbians love the same way heterosexuals do. He seemed confident that we would be excited by such a conference. My institute had admitted three out lesbians in the same cohort, progress toward acknowledging that homosexuality was not in itself pathological and reason to deny people psychoanalytic training. Yet the message from this senior analyst was clear. We could come into the psychoanalytic playground—as long as nothing about the game really changed.

As I contemplated Psychoanalysis and Homosexuality: A Contemporary Introduction, a volume in the Routledge series Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis, I wondered for whom this introduction was intended. Perhaps the title provides a clue—homosexuality rather than queer—queer indicating more contemporary language. Associations abound with just one word. In the world in which I came out, my friends and I were lesbians, distinct from pre-Stonewall gay women. These designations carried implications for the closet, feminism, and gender roles. Homosexual, gay, lesbian, and queer are words front and back laden with the aftermath of second-wave feminism, gay liberation, the AIDS epidemic, and the emergence of a transgender movement. Just as the psychoanalytic

world was becoming more accepting of gays and lesbians, the game has once again changed. The new challenge is the world of queer.

Psychoanalysis and Homosexuality is a history of