This English translation of Marie Bonaparte's book was published at approximately the same time as Kinsey's report on women. The publisher placed around the jacket a band which reads as follows: 'The Kinsey Report gives the facts—this book explains the why and wherefore'. Marie Bonaparte, for reasons of scientific integrity, might have qualified this statement. Indeed, she explicitly and implicitly mentions in her book the many things we do not know about the development and the disturbances of sexuality in women. Nonetheless, we believe the publisher's statement is justified; what the author says about female sexuality is certainly much more than any nonpsychoanalytic publications, such as the Kinsey report, are able to describe. It is, moreover, a most searching and thought-provoking psychoanalytic study of this important subject.

The author divides her book into four main chapters: I. Female Sexuality; II. Passivity, Masochism and Femininity; III. Some