Feminism and psychoanalysis have been in constant dialogue over the last four decades, and Juliet Mitchell has played a critical role in instigating and shaping that conversation. Yet her own work incorporates some of the most contentious aspects of it. Here I explore her latest book, Madmen and Medusas, to reflect upon why the relationship between her work and that dialogue remains so troubled. This exploration enables me to consider, once more, the contrasts between psychoanalytic perspectives that focus upon kinship, ideology, and symbolic structures and those which stress the historical contingency of gender categories.