In these days of attacks on psychoanalysis as a hoax and Freud as a charlatan, Edith Kurzweil, a sociologist and editor of Partisan Review, remains an unabashed supporter of psychoanalysis. She takes the classical stance that psychoanalysis can shed light on universal concerns and change society for the better. This position underlies her new book, Freudians and Feminists, a companion volume to her earlier work, The Freudians (Kurzweil, 1989), which was a wide-ranging survey of basic and applied psychoanalytic thought in the latter half of the 20th century.

Kurzweil has three goals in her new work: the defense of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts, praise of the methods and accomplishments of what she calls the First Wave of feminists, and—above all—condemnation of the concerns and results of the so-called