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This book is a psychoanalytically based compendium of studies about the “sexual body.” Each of its various chapters is full of careful reviews of research and theories, presenting multiple views of the body and its importance as a psychological entity. Major space is devoted to discussions of Reich, Bowlby, Peterfreund, Kohut, Lichtenstein, Holland, and Lacan. Topics such as the sexual revolution, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Frost, orgasm, homosexuality, and the theory of evolution are included. Efron wants to remove shame and guilt regarding the body's sexual components. He wants us all to acknowledge B-O-D-Y and S-E-X-U-A-L and the linkage of these two. Too long have we avoided our own bodies. Too long have we felt the badness of our physical being. Efron wants us to see our sexual nature as good and as important. He wants us to stop pretending that, because we have an intellect, we can rise above our bodies. He wants us to promote BODY and specifically, SEXUAL BODY to the same lofty plane that we've done with intellect. The major focus of this book is really not as “interdisciplinary” as Efron would have us believe. It is a book earnestly and sincerely devoted to proving the validity of Freud's psychoanalytic frame of reference. Perhaps the heading for Chapter 2 would have been a more forthright title for the book: Psychoanalysis as the Key Discipline. On page 91 Efron states, “There is no rival in this field to contest the status of psychoanalysis as the key discipline in the study of the sexual body.” His view of the sexual body and his evaluation of others' works are presented primarily from the perspective of how they do or do not fit Freud's psychoanalytic frame of reference.
Efron disapproves of current research dealing with infant development because it is so cognitively oriented. At the outset of his chapter on infant research he states, “One huge, persistently confusing factor underlying