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A journal that attempts to bring cohesion to the practitioners of psychotherapy, reinforcing their identity as members of a profession that often clusters around theories and teachers that do not always speak the same language, is a welcome addition to our literature. The British Journal of Psychotherapy attempts to bring together a wide variety of opinions in an attempt to provide a balanced theoretical and clinical viewpoint from authors with mostly psychodynamically oriented backgrounds who work in a variety of settings. Hence we have Jungian analysts, group psychotherapists, child psychiatrists, child psychotherapists, Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysts working in clinics, maladjusted schools, GP practices, teaching hospitals and private practice. They all have in common the wish to understand the workings of the mind through clinical phenomena, which after observation and notation, might be conceptualized in such a way that communication with colleagues becomes viable.
In part 1, Joan Raphael Leff writes on 'motherhood' and approaches the subject by isolating certain areas of Freudian theory, which, once extrapolated, are criticized in an attempt to revindicate a view of motherhood and femininity in which the author argues against Freudian 'myths' that have the effect of restricting individual growth and the understanding of femininity in all its manifestations. But, as in cases in which psychoanalytic theory is used to explain social attitudes, there exists the danger of generalizations, as when she talks about certain 'prejudices', which, in my view, are not to be found with the frequency she suggests. These prejudices are based on 'myths', like the castrated mother, anatomy as destiny, female passivity and masochism, baby = penis, etc., which are discussed with the support of quotations from various authors (who are part of an impressive bibliography). The weight of the argument tips the balance in favour of a view of 'motherhood' as a personality tra