Nancy J. Chodorow, PhD
Routledge, 2012
In Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, Nancy J. Chodorow examines the complexity and uniqueness of each person’s personal creation of sexuality and gender and the ways that these interrelate with other aspects of psychic and cultural life. She brings theoretical agility, wide-ranging interdisciplinarity, and clinical experience to every chapter. The book reflects on on Freud, Melanie Klein, and contemporary writers, including Chodorow’s own previous work. It addresses contemporary clinical-cultural issues such as women and work, women and motherhood, and men and violence. Concluding chapters describe the multiple facets and affective, conflictual, and defensive constellations and processes that create sexuality and gender in each individual. As she extends her account of clinical individuality and sex-gender transference-countertransference, Chodorow also brings her readers back to Freud.
Rosemary Balsam: “Nancy Chodorow is [a] gift to psychoanalysis. An intrepid explorer, she combines a seasoned, scholarly feminist vision with prodigious clinical knowledge and expertise “from behind the couch.” She maps here the whole theoretical territory of sexuality, gender, femininities, and masculinities.”
Glen Gabbard: “No one has influenced the psychoanalytic view of gender as profoundly as Nancy Chodorow.… In this wonderful new work, her brilliant and original thinking is summarized in an extraordinary collection of essays.”
Muriel Dimen: “In this retrospective collection, Nancy Chodorow’s brilliance and breadth of knowledge shine.”
About the Author: Nancy J. Chodorow, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at BPSI, on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, a Lecturer on Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, and Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of four previous books and winner of numerous awards and fellowships. She is in private practice in Cambridge, MA
