Wild desires & mistaken identities
Subtitle: lesbianism and psychoanalysis
By: Noreen O'Connor, Joanna Ryan.
Contributors: Ryan, Joanna.
Series: Between men--between women : lesbian and gay studies; Between men--between women.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 315
Subjects: Lesbians -- Psychology.; Lesbianism -- Psychological aspects.; Psychoanalysis and homosexuality.
Other titles: Wild desires and mistaken identities.
Description: Based on the authors' clinical experience as psychoanalytic psychotherapists, this reconsideration of lesbian lives and lesbian experiences offers a new and thoughtful framework that does not inevitably pathologize or universalize all lesbianism. Instead, it argues for the development of a psychotherapeutic theory and practice open to the complexities and vicissitudes of individual life histories, relationships, and identities.

Surveying a wide range of psychoanalytic ideas about lesbianism from Freud, Deutsch, and Jung to Lacan and contemporary object relations theorists including Klein and McDougall, O'Connor and Ryan critically address questions of sexual identity, sexual desire, and gender identity, of transference and countertransference, and also of institutional practices in relation to psychoanalytic training.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-306) and index.
"First published in the United Kingdom by Virago Press in 1993."