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Sayers’ book is a comparative study of the work of four female psychoanalytic pioneers: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Her theme is that the origins and early development of psychoanalysis were dominated by a male perspective on human development. This perspective stemmed from Freud, whose masculine identity was reinforced by the male dominance and prejudices of the society in which he grew up, and these in turn were bolstered and rationalized rather than challenged by his theoretical formulations. The result, according to the author, was the establishment of a ‘patriarchal and phallocentric’ theory and therapy, which has since given way to one ‘which is now almost entirely mother-centred’. Her chosen quartet of female psychoanalysts are seen as having played a crucial role in bringing this about.
Undoubtedly, there has been a shift of focus in psychoanalysis during the past half century both in the predominant types of presenting symptoms, from Oedipal and post-Oedipal to pre-Oedipal conditions, and towards a more maternal conception of the analyst's role (or at least one less exclusively father-centred than that habitually adopted by Freud). The question is, what part did these four women pioneers play in these developments? Were they, as the author suggests, each in their own way ‘architects of this revolution’? Or is her whole argument misconceived?
There are a number of different levels on which the author argues her case. The first, and least controversial, is by showing that their individual contributions to theory, concerning the specific nature of female sexuality, the relationship of female sexuality to mothering, and the biological, psychological and social roots of the child's tie to the mother,