Special Issue on Women, Psychoanalysis, and Gender: Editors' Introduction

This special issue on Women, Psychoanalysis, and Gender is a commemoration of the capability, influence, acceptance, and authority of women in the community of psychoanalysis. Although the idea for the volume germinated through the efforts of Adria Schwartz, under the past presidential tenure of Judie Alpert and the Section III Board, and flowered with the generous support and assistance of Bert Cohler, Editor of Psychoanalytic Psychology, its origin must be located in the earlier vision of Barbara Claster, whose interest in women's issues in mental health stimulated the formation of an ad hoc committee on women in psychoanalysis, which would officially become Section III. This was followed by a series of columns written by Bernice Barber, Ruth Formanek, and Dale Mendell for the Division 39 newsletter.

In this issue, we turn to both new and more established voices in an expanded arena of gender, culture, and psychoanalysis. Our authors are critical, generative, playful, and disruptive of the traditional ways in which psychoanalysis has constructed gender. We look at gender in theory, in the consulting room, in popular culture, and on the dramatic and cinematic stage. This particular selection of articles and reviews attempts to represent the breadth of interests in our community within the context of current thinking about gender in psychoanalytic theory and practice. It is but a sampling of the many articles submitted, reflecting the need for a stronger voice for women and gender theorists within the mainstream of psychoanalysis.