Description: Any encounter between psychoanalysis and feminism would seem to promise a standoff. But in this history, Buhle reveals that the 20th century's two great theories of liberation actually had a great deal to tell each other. She brings together far-flung intellectual tendencies rarely seen in intimate relation--and offers a new way of seeing both.
Brief description: Mari Jo Buhle is William R. Kenan Jr. University Professor Emerita at Brown University.
Review Quotes: Where some feminists have been hostile to psychoanalysis, and some psychoanalysts have been hostile to feminism, Buhle, a MacArthur Fellow and professor at Brown University, finds them linked in their quest to understand selfhood, gender identity, family structures and sexual expression...Feminism and Its Discontents is an excellent guide to the history of these ideas...The struggles of feminism and psychoanalysis may be cyclical, but they are far from over, and far from dull.--Elaine Showalter "Washington Post Book World"