Library | Shelf Number | Material Type | Item Barcode | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Garden Grove Main Library | 150.1950922 SAYERS, J | Book | 315039740783 | Searching... Unknown |
Once patriarchal and phallocentric, psychoanalysis has now become strongly mother-centered. This book tells the story of that revolution through biographical portraits of four pioneering figures in the early institutions of psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Melanie Klein.
Four women--Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Melanie Klein--helped establish modern psychoanalysis, by adding to Freud's emphasis on patients' oedipal relationships with their fathers an equal concern with mother. Gripping, novelistic accounts of the foremothers' lives make up the book. Interweaving biography, psychological analysis, and interpretation of each woman's theories, Sayers creates memorable characters whose differences become clear. Seeing Deutsch's independence and Klein's arrogance, we understand how each came into conflict with the Freudian establishment; discovering Horney's childhood idealization of her own mother, we realize how it colored her evolution of the "womb envy" theory; learning of Anna Freud's analysis by her own father, we come to understand her limitations and gifts as a theorist. A useful, deeply intelligent book. ~--Pat Monaghan
Through biographical analysis of the mothering experience of Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Melanie Klein, Sayers attempts to trace the transformation of psychoanalysis from father and phallo-centered to mother-centered. Although having the biographies of these "mothers" in one volume is attractive, they are so limited in scope as to be less useful to the reader than fuller treatments found in available full-length biographies, i.e., Elisabeth Young-Breuhl's excellent biography, Anna Freud (1988). With the exception of the psychoanalytic writings of her subjects, Sayers uses very few primary sources. Further, she obliquely refers to conflicts and relationships among these women and between some of them and Sigmund Freud, but fails to clearly delineate the nature of these relationships and conflicts. Psychoanalytic jargon makes for difficult reading. Of limited appeal even to graduate students and faculty.-K. S. Milar, Earlham College
