Routledge Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis

This groundbreaking book provides a challenging exploration of psychoanalytic ideas about lesbians and lesbianism. Based on the authors' clinical experience as psychoanalytic psychotherapists, it offers a new and thoughtful framework that does not inevitably pathologise or universalise all lesbianism. A wide range of psychoanalytic ideas are sur Review "Ranks among the best of recent psychoanalytic work on same-sex object choice... Should prove of great interest to those who are interested primarily in lesbianism and to those who are more concerned with the more general issues of the contours and limitations of psychoanalytic theory and discourse."--Psychoanalytic Books "Offers the first critical, systematic, and comprehensive survey of psychoanalytic writings on female homosexuality available in English... Remarkable not only for being the first such survey to appear in print, and for its sustained attention to both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, but especially for its effort to work through both Freudian psychoanalysis from a lesbian perspective, questioning and yet retaining both categories - psychoanalysis and lesbianism - in tension with each other.... Immensely valuable."--Teresa de Laurentis "Journal of the History of Sexuality " About the Author Noreen O'Connor is a qualified analyst practising in North London for over twenty-five years. She has a Ph.D in Contemporary European Philosophy (NUI, Cork). As a member of training committees for psychoanalytic trainings for eleven years she taught and supervised trainees alongside her supervision of qualified analysts. She has lectured on philosophy courses in universities and publicly. She is co-author (with Joanna Ryan) of 'Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis' (2003).