ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic papers reviewed in this chapter cluster around the topics of love, genital primacy, and relations between the sexes. These themes have universal appeal, and the papers encompass ideas beyond a specific psychoanalytic focus and beyond our interest in female psychology. In several recent psychoanalytic papers, the perspectives of object relations, ego psychology, and drive development are combined to evolve new theories of love. In Feminine Psychology, Karen Horney explores intrapsychic impediments to the maintenance of a good marriage that are determined by early childhood factors and are independent of the personality of the partner. Most important is the illusion that the spouse will fulfill all of one’s desires. Michael Balint's Primary Love and Psychoanalytic Technique contends that genital love is a misnomer for a state of being that does not really exist.
