Individualizing Gender and Sexuality: Theory and Practice

Psychoanalytic understanding of gender and sexuality has changed radically since the 1970s, and Nancy Chodorow has been at the forefront of this rethinking. Individualizing Gender and Sexualitybrings together her recent writings, focusing on the uniqueness and complexity of each person's personal creation of gender and sexuality and the ways that these interrelate with other aspects of psychic and cultural life. She brings her well-known theoretical agility and clinical experience to every chapter, advocating for the clinician's openness, curiosity, and theoretical pluralism. The book begins with reconsiderations of Freud, Klein, and Stephen Mitchell, as well as her own theoretical work and the postmodern turn in psychoanalytic gender theory. Subsequent chapters address contemporary clinical/cultural issues, such as women and work, women and motherhood, and men and violence. Concluding chapters present her innovative thinking about the multiple ingredients and complex processes that delineate gender and sexuality in individuals. An investigation of homosexualities as compromise formations returns the reader to Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexualityand to the many subsequent strands of psychoanalytic investigation that clinicians and theorists can now draw upon. Taken together, Individualizing Gender and Sexualityconsolidates Chodorow's place among those at the forefront of original insight and understanding about psychoanalysis, gender, and sexuality.