Female Experience: Four Generations of British Women Psychoanalysts on Work

Edited by Joan Raphael-Leff and Rosine Jozef Perelberg PhD

London: Routledge 1998, New Edition 2008

The analysis of women by women has made a valuable contribution to the development of psychoanalytic technique and theories on femininity, sexuality and embodiment. Female Experience presents contributions from twenty female psychoanalysts representing four generations, encompassing differing psychoanalytic traditions within the British Psychoanalytical Society, discuss their experiences in working with women.

A wide spectrum of subjects are addresed, including: sexual abuse and violence; eating disorders; gender acquisition; childbearing, perinatal loss and postnatal depression; the primitive tie to the mother; and eroticism, fantasy and desire. While the contributors to this book present detailed material pertaining exclusively to the analytic reaction between women, the insights afforded by this into the determinants of gender identity will be of interest to practicing psychotherapists, both male and female, and to students of gender studies, psychoanalytic studies and women’s studies.