Love: Psychoanalytic Perspectives edited by Judith F. Lasky and Helen W. Silverman New York:  New York University Press, 1988,  xiii + 235 pp., $39.50; $15.00 paper Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference edited by Deborah L. Rhode New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1990,  xi + 315 pp., $30.00; $15.00 paper

Love: Psychoanalytic Perspectives contains 16 essays on the much neglected psychoanalytic perspective on love. Most of these essays were originally presented as papers at a conference sponsored by

the Psychoanalytic Society of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. As the editors explain, several papers were added to make the book more comprehensive.

The book presents wide-ranging theoretical and philosophical views on love as seen by psychoanalysts of essentially all major orientations. Freudians, objective relationists, and interpersonalists are well represented here. Equally represented are the many facets of the topic itself, which has not received the attention it deserves in analytic circles. There is agreement in virtually all the papers contained in this collection that love is curiously absent from psychoanalytic inquiry or, at best, has remained a marginal topic. Glossaries of psychoanalytic terminology fail to include it; Freud's treatment of it is limited; and many researchers ignore it. It is curious indeed that a topic so central to the human experience remains so shadowy in an epistemology committed precisely to understanding this experience.

There are, of course, many issues or situations that analysts ignore. For example, little is written on or by gay or lesbian analysts, sexual feelings of the analyst toward the patient, difficulties we experience in collecting money from our patients, and so on. And while much has been explored concerning our patients' fantasies, little has been written about our fantasies toward our patients. These issues evidently arouse too much anxiety. And although we frequently discuss these topics among ourselves, writing about them might be a bit too self-revealing. It is refreshing, therefore, that these authors have not been intimidated by self-revelation. On the contrary, numerous clinical vignettes elucidate how important the concept of love is in the analytic setting, how di