SEXUALITIES LOST AND FOUND: LESBIANS, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND CULTURE. Edited by Edith Gould and Sandra Kiersky Madison, CT:  Int. Univ. Press, 2001.  308 pp.

Over the past decade, new writings have deepened the psychoanalytic exploration of female homosexualities. This aptly entitled compilation, Sexualities Lost and Found: Lesbians, Psychoanalysis, and Culture, is a diverse collection of papers that aims to remedy past omissions of lesbian love from analytic discourse. The contributors to this collection agree that female homosexuality is not pathological. They write from various psychoanalytic theoretical perspectives, including Freudian, interpersonal, intersubjective, relational, and postmodern. Queer theory, sociocultural, philosophical, and performative viewpoints are also presented. The collection's four sections seek to explore clinical material and clinical theory, to theoretically deconstruct “the myth of lesbian identity,” to illustrate the impact of culture on lesbian personal and artistic expression, and to comment on changes in psychoanalysis and the lesbian community.

I believe that analysts can contribute to understanding human sexuality by sharing clinical material drawn from individual patients, while remaining cognizant of inevitable countertransferential and theoretical biases. As I have noted elsewhere,1 those women who experience homosexual interests, impulses, fantasies, or