This book certainly has an engaging title, with its allusion to Freud and perhaps to Simone de Beauvoir (1949/1989) in The Second Sex as well, who wrote: “One is not born but rather one becomes a woman” (p. 232). The overall frame for the chapters is also promising—that of a woman's life from infancy to old age. Lax is to be congratulated for having treated subjects, such as pregnancy and menopause before it was fashionable to do so, and for her willingness to depart from Freud in her theories of genital anxiety, the superego, and penis envy, all of which are brought together here.

But there are some problems. Although the credits at the back of the book state that the chapters are “based on” earlier materials, little that is new has been incorporated in them. True, there are