Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities

Noreen O'Connor is a qualified analyst practising in North London for over twenty-five years. She has a Ph.D in Contemporary European Philosophy (NUI, Cork). As a member of training committees for psychoanalytic trainings for eleven years she taught and supervised trainees alongside her supervision of qualified analysts. She has lectured on philosophy courses in universities and publicly. She is co-author (with Joanna Ryan) of 'Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis' (Karnac, 2003).

'Offers the first critical, systematic, and comprehensive survey of psychoanalytic writings on female homosexuality available in English...Remarkable not only for being the first such survey to appear in print, and for its sustained attention to both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, but especially for its effort to work through both Freudian psychoanalysis from a lesbian perspective, questioning and yet retaining both categories - psychoanalysis and lesbianism - in tension with each other...Immensely valuable.'- Teresa de Laurentis, Journal of the History of Sexuality'Ranks among the best of recent psychoanalytic work on same-sex object choice...Should prove of great interest to those who are interested primarily in lesbianism and to those who are more concerned with the more general issues of the contours and limitations of psychoanalytic theory and discourse.'- Psychoanalytic Books'[This] exhaustive critical review of psychoanalytic theories about female homosexuality is a necessary reference tool for analytic therapists who want to understand the history and development of psychoanalytic thinking on the subject.'- Clinical Social Work Journal'A truly original venture...The clinical examples are invaluable in widening our understanding.'- Josephine Klein

• INTRODUCTION 1. FREUD: Disappointment and Repudiation2 . THE MASCULINE WOMAN: Identification and Rivalry with the Father 3. THE CHILD AND THS MOTHER: Deutsch and the Maternal/Erotic 4. KLEIN: The Phantasy that Anatomy is Destiny 5. SPOILING THE PERVERSE GRATIFICATION: Narcissism and Metapsychology 6. TRUTH and REALITY: McDougall and Gender Identity 7. PROMISES AND CONTRADICTIONS: Lacan and Language, Irigaray and Kristeva 8. JUNG: The Waters and the Wild 9. EROTICISM AND COUNTERTRANSFERENCE 10. DIFFERENT VOICES? Sources of Dissent and Dialogue 11 . IDENTITIES: Mistaken , Assumed, Revealed or Concealed?POSTSCRIPT Notes Bibliography Index