Introduction

The inequality between the sexes is one of the most intractable features of

human culture. Even today, as the relative position of women in western

society improves, sex-based patterns of power and submission continue to

be reproduced in our most intimate relationships. Why is this? How is it that

gender inequities come to be inscribed in our very psyches, even when we

believe passionately in the need for change? In this book I explore the ways

in which psychoanalytic and feminist theorists have addressed these

questions, as they examine the impact of early experience and unconscious

fantasy on the formation of psychological gender.