ABSTRACT
In my reading of the psychoanalytic literature on female psychology, a field ever more pluralistic and complex, I detect six important trends. I know well that many complex ideas and theories have been put forward and are presently in use in the clinical office and in the academy regarding the vast topics of gender, sex, and sexuality. In all of these topics, the body needs to have a place, but it is handled differently within each, and there is no way that I can absorb, encompass, or do justice to all of them. In my preoccupation with my own central thesis, I am bound to underplay, or even pass over, inspired writings of others that I may well appreciate later as having had an important bearing on my present claim. Nevertheless, I will go ahead with my project in any case, because I retain a conviction about its importance, and because I have received much encouragement from others in our field.
