ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the ambivalent relation between psychoanalysis and feminism, which has existed almost from the beginning, when S. Freud's thought promised, among other things, to help emancipate women. It explores some of the issues by showing how a succession of disparate psychoanalytic concepts were inserted into feminist debates: When they furthered women's autonomy they helped further the movement. The book shows that the formulations become increasingly margined to the practiced and complex problems facing both liberated and not-so-liberated women in their everyday lives. It discusses the fact that psychoanalysis entered the main-stream during World War II and that, at least indirectly, it was responsible for the explosion of all sorts of other therapies and for the therapeutic society we currently inhabit. The book deals with the various ways American feminist critics began in the 1980s to import and explore the French theories.
