The perspective of this book is that of social psychology, sociology, and criminology. My experience in reading it was essentially one of frustration, inasmuch as Dr. Campbell stayed faithfully within the realm of sociologically descriptive phenomena, while I kept wanting answers to questions about the psychodynamic underpinnings for these phenomena.

In the first chapter, Campbell introduces a series of expressive (feminine) and instrumental (masculine) theories of aggression, each of which she summarizes in only one paragraph. If this chapter had served as an introduction to the development of these theories in later chapters (in the context of her sociological observations), I would have been satisfied. No such development occurs, however, and the book seems to beg theoretical containment.