Identity, Gender and Sexuality 150 Years after Freud edited by Peter Fonagy, Rainer Krause, and Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber London:  International Psychoanalytical Association Controversies in Psychoanalysis Series, 2006,  224 pp.

This attractively designed edited book is the first in a series, “Controversies in Psychoanalysis,” to be published by the International Psychoanalytical Association. The goal of the series is to examine similarities and differences in psychoanalytic theory, so that pluralistic dialogues can ensue. This volume

was meant to describe and integrate results of studies on sexuality, both psychoanalytic and non-psychoanalytic. The papers were given at the Sixth Joseph Sandler Research Conference in March 2005, at University College, London, which was devoted to the 100th anniversary of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality .

After a foreword by IPA President Claudio Laks Eizirik, the book begins with a remarkable overview of psychosexuality from a psychoanalytic perspective by Peter Fonagy. There are six chapters by other authors on various topics within the field Fonagy surveyed: a historical and conceptual essay by Andre Haynal; chapters on transvestite development by Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber; male homosexuality by Richard Friedman; childhood gender identity disorder, transsexual patients, drive and affect in perversity, all by Rainer Krause; and a concluding chapter by Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber. Each of these chapters has a commentary/response by yet another author. This format contributes well to the goal of being dialogical.

I'll spend a considerable part of this review on Peter Fonagy's overview essay, which, to my mind, is a clear and masterful description of the different theories, the historical issues, the problems, and the possible alternate approaches to this fraught topic of psychosexuality. Then I'll describe more briefly two of the “applied “essays and the conclusion, before raising the questions I have about the book and the range of its content.

Fonagy's main purpose is to consider why sexuality has mostly disappeared from the understanding and practice of psychoanalysis, and from most contemporary theorizing in psychoanalysis. Sexuality, he