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Psychoanalysis, with its potential to analyze how subjectivity is constructed, is hampered by ideas about gender that are deeply embedded in theory and practice. This book considers the binary basis of Western thought that underlies gender opposition in which the feminine is discounted. Its author, Louise Gyler, suggests that contemporary Kleinian psychoanalysis offers a more radical conception of the psychoanalytic clinical encounter than contemporary psychoanalytic feminism, and recommends the former as the more fruitful path toward promoting an understanding of gender bias and increasing our ability to hear our patients.
Freudian psychoanalysis has a masculine bias. For years now, many of us, myself included, have been finding ways to include the feminine in psychoanalytic understanding. This book furthers that effort. It takes an interesting twist in finding that Kleinian ideas offer a better way forward than contemporary feminist thinking. I applaud the author's effort, although I believe her objective could have been accomplished in a more concise, clear-cut manner.
Gyler has given us an erudite, detailed, historical compendium of psychoanalytic thought that encompasses Freud, Klein, and contemporary feminist psychoanalysts. She compares theory and practice and the interaction between them. This is quite an undertaking, and although extensive and interesting, it may be more than most readers anticipate. Clinical examples do lighten the effort. Greater succinctness would have demanded a greater economy and clarity of thought, and would have had a greater impact on a North American audience and made a stronger case for this interesting, provocative read of a possible trajectory in psychoanalysis. Klein trumping contemporary feminist psychoanalytic theory and practice in furthering the effort to open up our understanding