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This book is another attempt by this well-known investigator of human sexual behavior “to understand the origins, development, dynamics, and pathology of gender identity–masculinity and femininity” from a psychoanalytic viewpoint. The author is professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine, the originator of many works on sex and gender, as well as a trained psychoanalyst.
Despite Stoller's disclaimer that he is not a scientist, and only a naturalist, his form of inquiry, the many doubts and questions that he raises about psychoanalytic theory, and his fundamentally healthy skepticism about hypotheses and “clinical findings” make him in the best sense of the word a “scientist.” (One definition of science is “the search for truth.”)
In addition, Stoller is to be lauded for the candor, simplicity, and directness of style. His book often contains parentheses with explanations of his underlying meaning, and I shall do likewise (by simplicity, I am referring to Stoller's use of sentences and paragraphs that eschew a clutter of words or pretentiousness or without psychoanalytic jargon). He is able to say, “I do not know,” or “I do not understand.”
He points out even in the preface to his work that psychoanalysis, practice and theory, are still too crude for reliable scientific work, but he expresses hope that these can be refined. He also points out that Freud was contradictory that a research interest was inimical to analytic treatment, because Freud himself had a rampant interest in research. For an excellent researcher to display enormous modesty, to point out that searching is not research, and to invite doubt and questioning is intriguing.
He states that naturalistic observation and confirmation on various perspectives both in and out of psychoanalysis are necessary to learn about our field.
This reviewer had the privilege of presenting a child aged 2 3/4 to Dr. Stoller at a medical conference at UCLA approximately 30 years ago. This child was a female who began to cr