ABSTRACT
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.