This book is a joy to read. The author, in 534 pages, writes one of the most comprehensive and well-organized books about the psychology of women I have ever read. Her writing is clear and well phrased, so there is little possibility of misunderstanding the points she is making.

In the Introduction, she briefly reviews her first book Feminist Psychoanalytic Writing, and says that it is her belief that psychoanalytic theory does not give adequate room for integration of cultural events, and that feminist theory is not able to recognize the unconscious. Both therefore lack full recognition of the roles of both the unconscious and of culture and it is her goal to provide an integration of the two. She then demonstrates the validity of her theory in multiple case examples of what she says to a patient, and why she says it.