Sexualities: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives presents a broad selection of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking on sexuality from a wide range of psychoanalytic traditions. Sexuality remains at the heart of much psychoanalytic theory and practice but it is a complex and controversial subject. Edited by Alessandra Lemma and Paul E. Lynch, this volume includes a range of international contributions that examine contemporary issues and trace common themes needed to understand any sexuality, including the basics of sexuality, and the myriad ways in which sexuality is lived.

The clinical examples provided here demonstrate contemporary psychoanalytic techniques that uncover meanings that are both fresh and enlightening, and address heterosexuality, homosexuality, gender, and perversion from a psychoanalytic perspective. Divided into four parts, the book includes the following:

Historical context

Foundational concepts: Contemporary elaborations

Homosexuality

Perversion revisited

Throughout Sexualities: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives the reader will find psychoanalytic wisdom that is transferrable to work with patients of all sexualities, and will see that the essentials of sexuality may be more similar than they are different for homo- and hetero-sexuality. Psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as academics interested in the subjects of psychoanalysis, gender, sexuality, or homosexuality will find this book an invaluable resource.

Alessandra Lemma, PhD is Director of the Psychological Therapies Development Unit at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London. She is a Consultant Adult Psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic where she specializes in working with transsexuals. She has published extensively on psychoanalysis, the body and trauma.

Paul E. Lynch, MD is on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance. He teaches about psychoanalysis, gender, and sexuality, and has been a popular speaker on issues of homosexuality and psychoanalysis. He is also a Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

"The book make a compelling argument for how psychoanalytic conepts such as mirroring and revisiting the Oedipal Complex could help us understand sexual variations (a term preferred by some sexologists to "perversions"), gender, and homosexuality... The current sexual climate requires a reevaluation of theories to explain human sexuality to keep pace with changes in issues such as gay and lesbian rights, sexual dysfunctions, and gender issues. Lemma and Lynch have managed to provide updated and integrative discussions on these issues. Lemma nad Lynch have managed to provide updated and integrative discussions on these issues. The book should be of interest to scholars interested in sexology, as well as to historians of psychology and clinicians." - Carlos Escoto, Eastern Connecticut State University, associate editor for Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, in PsycCritiques "In this remarkable new collection of essays, Alessandra Lemma and Paul E. Lynch have provided us with an up-to-the-minute compendium of current psychoanalytic thinking regarding sexualities. Desire, developmental pathways of gender and sexual orientation, prostitution, perversion, sexual excitement, intimacy, and many other themes are considered from various perspectives that are unfailingly enlightening. Psychoanalysis has struggled with this entire area because of our fear of looking at what is in front of our eyes. This extraordinary book helps us see what we may prefer to avoid in ourselves and in others. It deserves a place on the bookshelf of every psychoanalytically-oriented clinician and will surely be used as a textbook for courses in psychoanalytic institutes. - Glen O. Gabbard, MD. - Training and Supervising Analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston. This book sets a new standard. Contributors portray extraordinary empathy for and rich clinical documentation of the wide range of psychic and behavioral usages of sexuality and gender. They candidly acknowledge wrestling, like Freud, with old feelings -- discomfort with some current culturally-contested formulations while being at the forefront of contestation. Several chapters provide an original, creative integration of abstract theories about maternal sexuality with research on attachment, mirroring and mentalization and on-the-ground observations of infantile sexuality. I was grateful for recognition of Stoller's contribution and for necessary, and too rare, discussions of the relations between sociology, sexology and psychoanalysis. - Nancy J Chodorow, PhD. Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.