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Some of the articles in this book (a record of the 1968 conference sponsored by Adelphi University) stimulate one to re-evaluate Freud on the psychology and sexuality of women. Analysts and therapists such as Jones, Horney, Rado, and Thompson have already expressed dissatisfaction with classical theories of female development, and others among us are catalyzed into rethinking the subject by the charges feminists in
the women's liberation movement have made, namely, that psychotherapy has damaged, rather than healed, their psyches.
For those who are au courant in this rapidly expanding area of information, this book is a disappointment. It does not grapple with the most relevant questions about women, and there is little new information in it.
Three lectures, however, are worth noting. Elaine Grimm's research findings on women's attitudes toward and reactions to childbearing contradict myths perpetuated by a male-oriented society concerning women's desire for pregnancy and motherhood. Grimm says what most women know. When a woman undertakes pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, she catapults into a major developmental crisis and stands pretty much alone. The lack of societal support for childbirth, child-rearing and housekeeping, Grimm states, is curiously inconsistent in “a society that values this role in the abstract.” This is central to the genesis of many problems which face women.
Also of interest is Sheldon Waxenberg's discussion of the implications his recent physiological research on female sexual functioning have for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He corroborates previous research and finds that “the so-called male and female sexual hormones are not sex specific and that the androgens are the hormones which promote and sustain libido or erotic impulses in both males and females.” In his consideration of therapeutic applications of recent revolutionary biological and psychological discoveries, Waxenberg excellently recapitulates both Mary Jane Sherfey's r