You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Stoller had known Mrs. G as a patient for fourteen years and had treated her for seven. In the first of over twenty hospitalizations, she appeared to be a psychopath 'with a touch of anguish'. As psychotherapy diminished her impulsivity and denial, Mrs. G developed repeated, acute, transient, nondeteriorating psychotic episodes. When Stoller learned of her delusions of possessing a penis, she was included in his researches on women with gender disorders and sessions were audiotaped.
With clarity, candor, and courage, Stoller decribes his methodological and theoretical position and his goals: to 'report on progress in a study of the psychological origins of masculinity and femininity; examine the problem of reporting data in clinical research; upgrade the value of the single case studied in depth; open analytic theory up so that social learning theories and research can enter our understanding of infant development; amplify object relations theory (minus "death instinct", "psychic energy", and a libidinal zone fixation theory of neurosis), especially by emphasizing the power of parental fantasies in creating personality structure; study issues in the causes and treatment of splitting, such as female homosexuality, multiple personality, and hysterical psychosis; and shed some light on the roots of evil' (p. xvii).
Stoller holds that early or core gender identity—the sense of maleness