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As Joan Raphael-Leff notes in her Prologue to Female Experience, bringing together contributions from three generations of women psychoanalysts writing out of their clinical experience with women and girls is something that has never been done before. For this reason alone it is a uniquely valuable book. More importantly it is a book in which ‘specific determinants of female sexuality and gender identity which have become central to our thinking’ (p. 1) are challenged by those with the essential knowledge and authority to do so. ‘Our thinking’ refers to the British Psycho-Analytical Society of which the authors are members and who, as a group, encompass diversity in many dimensions. From the perspective of theory they include Freudians, Kleinians and Independents. Geographically they grew up, were educated and/or analytically trained in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, the United States and, of course, England. With regard to disciplines, developmental and social psychology, English literature, medicine, anthropology, modern history, psychiatric social work and law are all represented.
The ‘specific determinants’ these analysts call into question are the assumption of the primacy not of the genital but of the phallus, the ‘classical valorization of independence