Prologue

From the time psychoanalytic theory was first introduced, psychoanalysts have attempted to explain similarities and differences between women and men, masculinity and femininity. In some of his last comments on the subject, Freud (1933) wrote that what he had to say “about femininity … is certainly incomplete and fragmentary and does not always sound friendly…. If you want to know more about femininity, enquire from your own experiences of life, or turn to the poets, or wait until science can give you deeper and more coherent information” (p. 135).

Despite this disclaimer, most early psychoanalysts followed Freud in viewing both femininity and masculinity as derivative of psychosexual phenomena. Although there were those such as Karen Horney, Ernest Jones, and Melanie Klein, who disagreed with Freud's ideas about femininity from the beginning, few questioned his thinking about masculinity. Only in the past quarter of a century have psychoanalysts given serious consideration to ways of conceptualizing both femininity and masculinity other than those proffered by Freud and his followers.

Robert Stoller was a leader of this movement. Contemporary theories of masculine and feminine gender identity have been significantly influenced by his work. Utilizing data gathered from clinical and anthropological inquiries, he questioned Freud's conclusions and began to explore a variety of factors involved in the development of gender identity.

Stoller (1985) noted that gender identity (as differentiated from biologically determined sex) is a complex, multiply determined experience, which he described as “a dense mass of beliefs, an algebraic sum of ifs, buts, and ands—not an incontrovertible fact” (pp. 10-11).

The seven papers in this issue represent a sampling of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking about these beliefs. Gender identity is a