This book, a collection of essays with an introduction by the editors, offers a rich picture of the changing perceptions of human sexuality.

The first section, whose three essays explore the impact of sexuality on our historical traditions—the Jewish, the Christian, and the Classical—also sheds new light on incest and the origins of matriarchy, on the origins of Marian worship, and on bisexuality and androgyny in the classical myths; revealing confusions, not until recently perceived, underlying our cultural foundations.

The authors of the essays of the second section have each attempted to develop new explanations of the origins and the functionality of the sexual difference between males and females. Fineman describes Stoller's model in which masculinity is a reaction to a fear of regression to the female beginning, while femininity is basically secure because of its identification with the mother. Kestenberg and Marcus utilize the classifications developed by Laban