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The dynamics of gender in psychoanalytic treatment have sparked the concern of psychoanalysts ever since Freud invoked the concept of transference to contend with the fervent declarations of love by female patients toward their male analyst. He noted that this phenomenon 'may be evaluated from two points of view, that of the doctor who is carrying out the analysis and that of the patient who is in need of it' (Freud, 1915, Observations on transference-love. S. E. 12, p. 160).
Editor Morton Kissen's Introduction to Gender and Psychoanalytic Treament leads one to anticipate further insights about the current fate of the 'evaluation' from these 'two points'. However, the book's seven contributors devote themselves more clearly to specifying developmental obstacles to gender identity—also an interesting topic—than to the gendered interaction between patient and analyst. Margaret Foerster, in 'Freud and gender: the script as artifact', critiques Freud's 'deficiency theory of the acquisition of femininity'. 'The struggle for gender differentiation in boys' by Elaine Siegel details boys' 'early castration anxiety' preventing identification with their fathers. Anni Bergman, in 'The mother's wish for a better self: mutual identification between mothers and daughters', highlights 'the effect of the mother-child relationship during separation-individuation' 'on the child's identity themes' and illustrates this with lovely case material. In 'Gender and super-ego development' Morton Kissen's 'central thesis' is 'that normal super-ego structuralization' is 'directly linked to the palatability of the same-sex parent as an identification figure'. Dale Ortmeyer, in 'Idealisation, gender and the psychoanalyst', argues that culturally-shaped gender ideals unconsciously constrict both patient and analyst, unless the analyst differentiates 'ideal and real' selves. Suzanne B. Phillips, on the 'Influences of gender in the analysis of the homosexual', stresses the unconscious mea