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This volume provides the reader with an opportunity to ponder upon and bring up to date their understanding of one of the central issues in psycho-analytic theory, sexuality. Its editor, Dana Breen, has drawn together writings from three cultural traditions - American, British and French and provided a thoughtful framework. The fourteen papers which are reprinted here first appeared between 1968 and 1990; only four were published before 1984. They are grouped in four sections: the Oedipus complex, the phallic question, the representation of the body, and bisexuality. In addition to a 39-page general introduction, Breen contributes a preface to each section; the first two are extensive.
The gender conundrum of the title is the tension which exists within the corpus of psycho-analytic theory between a focus upon biological destiny and a concentration upon the psychological construction of sexuality over time. Drawing upon Freud's struggle to describe masculinity and femininity and his concept of bisexuality, Breen identifies the essential body/mind duality in classical theory. Members of each sex group struggle to understand the specific significance of their anatomy in their lives. The theoretical task of comprehending this development is made more complex by the inherent bisexuality of human nature, the shared experiences of the nursling, female and male, and the intellectual traditions within which psychoanalysts work.
In a brief review it may be more valuable to give an indication of the issues which Breen identifies rather than listing the names of contributors or proffering a highly condensed overview. The introduction furnishes the reader with a concise theoretical summary from the historical perceptive of all three cultural traditions, first of women's and then of men's psychosexual development. We are reminded that Freud's final attention to pre-oedipal attachment to the mother led him to view bisexuality as more important in female development. Young girls' ea