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This book comes out of lectures given by Nancy Chodorow at the University of Kentucky. It contains her reflections on two issues of interest to psychoanalysts: first, she asks about difference and variation in the context of our theories about gender in psychoanalysis; second, she challenges the sanctioned position, the “normalizing,” of heterosexuality in psychoanalysis.
Chodorow begins with an enlightening and lucid account of Freud's views on women. She describes several different approaches that Freud takes: theoretical woman in his developmental theory, in which he reconstructs female development from his adult clinical cases; second, the clinical women, the many women we have come to know in Freud's case studies; third, woman as subject-object, as she herself internally represents and experiences herself; fourth, women as they are socially and historically located; and fifth, women patients and the early women psychoanalysts as creators of psychoanalytic technique and understanding. Little gems of insight dot this chapter. Chodorow shares her hunch that Freud's idea that the girl gives up oedipal wishes more gradually than the boy might account for his