Perversion. The Erotic Form of Hatred: By Robert J. Stoller, M.D. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975. 240 pp.

Robert J. Stoller's contributions to the psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature in the area of sexual development and psychopathology are both important and prolific. His book Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity (New York: Science House, 1968) is rapidly becoming a classic in the study of the origins of femininity and masculinity in young children. A second volume entitled Splitting. A Case of Female Masculinity1 describes in narrative form the psychoanalytic therapy of a woman suffering from severe psychosexual disturbances and multiple personalities. This third volume is a more general contribution, consisting for the most part of a compilation of many of Stoller's previous articles published over the last six years. For example, "Pornography and Perversion" (1970), "Symbiosis Anxiety and the Development of Masculinity" (1974), "The Impact of New Advances in Sex Research on Psychoanalytic Theory" (1973), "Hostility and Mystery in Perversion" (1975), and "Does Sexual Perversion Exist?" (1974) are all republished here. These papers and some new ones ("A Crime as a Sexual Act"; "Perversion: Risk versus Boredom") give us the opportunity for a detailed study of his important theoretical positions.