Product Description

Ranging from Freud to Hitchcock, from Dracula to Jane Austen, and from Agatha Christie to Greek tragedy, this contribution to the field of gender studies aims to tease out surprising insights of contemporary psychoanalysis to show why there is little chance of a harmonious relationship between a man and a woman. It suggests what it might be that Claudia Schiffer sees in the magician David Copperfield, and why women are more likely than men to fantasize about making love in public.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116349 in Books
• Published on: 1997-02-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 180 pages

Customer Reviews

fascinating
Found the book very interesting, At times I questioned the ongoing use of generalisations - Leader points attention to the limits of this himself (i assume he's a man). I also wonder if we can still make the same generalisations about women and men that freud and lacan made -now that forces in modern culture are changing / trying to eliminate traditional gender roles etc.

If this is Lacan lite...
I will not be checking out Lacan.

This book is one long meandering "story book", the chapters arent exactly titled and the index wasnt great, its not a text book and has much more literary pretense than I would expect in a pscyhology read, even a popular psychology read like Eric Fromm or Karen Horney's books.

In the opening pages/introduction the author talks about how he is aiming to ask more questions than provide answers and get people to think and speculate themselves, it does leave more questions than answers and doesnt feel as though any satisfactory conclusions are reached at any point. The book is full of literary and pop culture references (inner space, terminator etc.), along with snatches of Freud (its not even particularly good or clear presentations of Freud's theories, for that check out the ideas in psycho-analysis series) and even those seem like a literary references.

So, perhaps my expectations were different to what is actually "on sale" here, perhaps I was really looking for something in the order of the books produced by Allan & Barbara Pease or other more psycho-analytical sources. As a result this wasnt satisfactory to me and I wouldnt recommend it unless you want a pretty literary, ideosyncratic muse about women, men and life.