Review Essay: Psychoanalysis,Post-Modernism and the Lesbian Rule

Lesbian Lives and Sexual Subjects reflect important contemporary trends in feminism, postmodern literary studies, and relational psychoanalysis. Both books are critical of such traditional psychoanalytic ideas as drives and developmental stages. Although such an orientation leads to important insights and reconceptualizations, it may also relinquish other important values, such as stable sexual identity, the capacity to mourn for lost possibilities, and the ability to commit to real, limited projects. In addition, the denial of sex and aggression as motivating forces and the alternative emphasis on attachment lead paradoxically to an impoverished sense of independence and active agency. One of Magee's cases is discussed.