The Female Body

'The Female Body: Inside and Outside addresses a topic that has fascinated and challenged psychoanalysis since its inception. Here, we find experienced clinicians reflecting on fertility and procreation, on maternal fantasies both generative and destructive, on the female life cycle, and on disturbances and perversions of female body and self. Several chapters focus on portrayals of female bodies in art, literature, and culture. Particularly welcome is the range of contributors from different countries, which shows how much our views of and attention to sexuality and embodiment are shaped by the psychoanalytic and cultural worlds from which we come. This volume shows us how inside and outside are both, in endlessly complex ways, part of female embodiment and its psychic representation.'- Nancy J Chodorow, PhD, training and supervising analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, lecturer on psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Professor emerita of sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and author of several books