Routledge The relationship between men and women is both absolutely basic and crucial but also troubled. In this 248-page book, Marie Maguire, a practicing psychoanalyst in London, is not afraid to speak to the knottiest issues in the psychoanalytic community, that is, the nature of human sexuality and the involvement of historic and ongoing disputes over gender. She acknowledges that human sexuality is basic to psychoanalytic theory and practice and that the experience of transference for both analysand and analyst is crucial. She provides a clear, succinct, and balanced history and overview of the debate within analytic discourse over femaleness and masculinity. Unfortunately, it appears her concept of feminism is limited to the view that the relationship between male and female is limited to an apparently innate conflict over power and control. The reliance upon the concept of unconscious dynamics and the necessity to bring them to awareness and understanding as the path to overcoming maladaptive perceptions is straight psychoanalytic personality theory. However, she is a compassionate and reasonable therapist and in her discussion of false memories of childhood sexual abuse she takes a quite balanced view. She, of course, accepts the reality of the Freudian concept of repression, but she also understands that a therapist who may unwittingly become too deeply involved in countertransference can generate a false memory. She sees this as harmful to the analysand and encourages therapists to avoid any such failure of therapeutic judgment. The book is useful primarily to those who see psychoanalytic theory as viable and value a reasoned and cogent presentation of it. Reviewed by Ralph Underwager, Institute for Psychological Therapies, Northfield, Minnesota.
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