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In the Finnish Psychoanalytic Society, there are several members who subscribe to classical psychoanalysis with its well-known emphasis on instinct theory and infantile sexuality. This is the path that the author follows in her work on the female psyche, and this book develops some themes recognizable from her previous book (Reenkola, 2002). The author sets out to trace the psychic work involved in becoming a woman. One may be born female, but womanhood is never achieved
without working on it considerably. Such work will make it possible for a woman to find herself as a subject by her own means and not via images held by others or by being mirrored in their gaze. In seven essays, she examines the conflicts inherent in a woman's varying desires. In the central chapters she deals inter alia with the symbolic matricide, female shame and sister fantasies. In particular, the themes of female shame and sister fantasies are developed and deepened in a personal manner. I review here some of the book's more important themes.
The symbolic murder of the mother is viewed through the Greek myths of Elektra and Kore/Persephone, both illustrating how difficult it can be for a woman to combine feelings of love and ambivalence for the mother in such a fashion that love may survive. The matricide here stands as a metaphor for separation and the establishment of boundaries in relation to the early mother and as a metaphor for rivalry with the oedipal mother as well.
Reenkola describes the arduous path the girl has to take to emancipate herself from a mother whom she is becoming increasingly alike as she grows up. While freeing herself from the gravitational pulls of resemblance and symbiosis, the girl will often experience feelings of disgust and repulsion towards the mother's body and presence. When standing sufficiently free from the mother's grasp, it is possible for her to identify with the mother's motherliness and the desire for a man. Love for the mo