This stimulating new book is written from an unequivocally feminist perspective and, unlike much writing in the field of psychotherapy/psychoanalysis, it is far from sociologically naive. Maguire starts from the premise that ‘the inequality between the sexes is one of the most intractable features of human culture’ and that it is ‘inscribed in our very psyches’: that is, like other inequalities such as those of class, race and gender, it is structured into the personality and so, inevitably, emerges within the therapeutic relationship. More specifically, despite periods of intense debate between feminists and clinicians (two groups who have tended to regard each other with deep suspicion), the inequality between the sexes continues, she considers, to be embodied in the theory and practice of analytical psychotherapy.

The author tells us of how, like other women, she turned in the seventies to