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Lesbian Lives: Psychoanalytic Narratives Old and New
by Maggie Magee, Diana C. Miller
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Routledge (1997-12)
ISBN: 0881632694
EAN: 9780881632699
Dewey Decimal #: 616.8917086643
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 448 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: T092105-7863
Condition: As New
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In this groundbreaking re-visioning of lesbianism, Magee and Miller transcend a literature that, for decades, has focused on the timeworn and misconceived task of formulating a lesbian-specific psychology. Rather, they focus on a set of interrelated issues of far greater salience in our time: the developmental and psychological consequences of identifying as homosexual and of having lesbian relationships. Their consideration of these issues leads to a rigorous review of major psychoanalytic and biological theories about female homosexuality and a probing examination of current notions of gender identity. These tasks set the stage for Magee and Miller's own model of psychologically mature sexuality between members of the same sex. The developmental and clinical issues taken up in specific chapters of Lesbian Lives include the challenges facing lesbian adolescents; the psychological and social significance of "coming out"; the various meanings and contexts of coming out as a gay or lesbian analyst; the interaction of individual psyche and social context in clinical work with lesbian patients; and the history of homosexual therapists and psychoanalytic training. The chapter on "Bryher," the lesbian-identified life partner of the poet Hilda Doolittle (Freud's patient "H.D."), relying on unpublished documents, is not only a wonderful exemplification of themes developed throughout the work, but an invaluable contribution to psychoanalytic history. Lesbian Lives is a heartening sign of the generous scholarship and humane impulse that are transforming psychoanalysis in our time. In writing infused with an experiential immediacy born of personal participation in the stories they tell, Magee and Miller weave a multiplicity of narratives into a fabric of explanation far richer, far more colorful --far truer to lived experience--than anything psychoanalysis has heretofore offered on the subject.
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Customer Reviews
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Lesbian Lives retrieved from psychoanalytic invisibility.
Rating  (5)
Date: 1998-03-31
9 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
In the rapidly-growing body of literature written by openly gay and lesbian psychoanalysts, Lesbian Lives stands out as an exemplary contribution. It fills in some gaps in the historical omission of lesbian identities and sensibilities by psychoanalytic theories and narratives. Although history and politics provide the framework from which this book is written, Magee and Miller offer their readers a refreshing overview of lesbian lives from a variety of perspectives. Their's is a lively reading of the unpublished memoirs and letters of Annie Winifred Ellerman. An Englishwoman who called herself Bryher, she was also the lesbian partner of the poet, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) who had a short analysis with Sigmund Freud. Magee and Miller1s historical narrative is a complex tale, not only documenting the intimate affairs of these two women's lives, but of the state of affairs within the early psychoanalytic movement as well. The book critically deconstructs psychoanalytic and biological theories of homosexuality, illustrates the anxiety of coming out as a lesbian and also address what happens when the psychoanalyst is a lesbian.
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