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It is my pleasure to review Muriel Dimen's new book, Sexuality, Intimacy, Power, published by The Analytic Press in 2003. An ambitious, sweeping effort by an author whose scholarly reputation in the field of gender studies and postmodern psychoanalysis is undisputed, the book is also candid and charming, with Dimen vividly illustrating aspects of dense theory with poignant vignettes from her work with patients as well as from her own rich and colorful personal history. As Dimen points out, her own life has been marked by the upheaval of socio-cultural events of the countercultural late 60's, and she shares with us her insights into how her life serves to illustrate one of her main themes: that “the personal is political is theoretical” (p 201).
In organizing her book, Dimen stresses that her topics of sexuality, intimacy and power will be addressed from three perspectives: psychoanalysis, feminism and social theory. Throughout, a multidisciplinary perspective (Dimen is an anthropologist as well as a psychoanalyst) informs the author's discourse as she offers glimpses of her personal and intellectual journey in feminist-Marxism-socialism, illustrating how these experiences have shaped her understanding of her thesis. Her politically conscious perspective is declared in her preface, “Personal Journey From Duality to Multiplicity.” Dimen deconstructs the binary, noting that it always conceals a hierarchy. She further asserts that duality is a “set-up” because it leads us to “want to know which pole is true” (p 7). Dimen believes that it is more useful to replace either/or with both/and - in the interest of creating a transitional space in which all aspects of a potential idea can be explored.
As one examines the various sections of the volume, one is reminded of Derrida's famous epigram, “There is too much truth”; it is clear that Dimen is striving to create a new experience for the reader as she moves from deconstruction of familiar postmodern themes towards a fresh con