Mothering Psychoanalysis sets out to tell the story of a ‘revolution’ in psychoanalysis from a ‘father-centered phallocentrism’ to a ‘mother-centered’ focus. The author attempts to do so through a series of self-contained biographies of four leading women psychoanalysts influential in Freud's day - Helene Deutsch, Karen Homey, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. In addition to presenting their life stories Janet Sayers gives a lucid and mostly faithful rendering of their work. As such, this is a useful book for the student or layperson with an interest in psychoanalytic ideas. Nevertheless, one would hope this book whets their appetite to read the papers in their original form as much is inevitably lost in condensing them.

Despite my pleasure in having the work of these four women introduced to a new readership, I must point out some shortcomings, as I see them, in the hope that they may be rectified in subsequent editions. It seems to me that Janet Sayers clips her own intellectual wings by not drawing conclusions. Both in the structure of the book which