The object of psychoanalysis, writes Rosine Perelberg, is sexuality. This sexuality is infantile, unconscious, repressed, and traumatic in its inability to be mastered by the drives. Perelberg is driven to better acquaint us with this object and its derivatives—sometimes in literature, or through her clinical work or anthropology. If psychoanalysis has forgotten what it discovered for fear there was nothing more to unearth, this book is a delightful reassurance to the contrary. Perelberg’s deep mastery of Freudian metapsychology propels her into unique and fresh theoretical territory. Touching upon the negative, life and death, love and hate, psychic structure and representation, time, and origin, the book’s scope is its own testament to the centrality of psychosexuality.