Bending Psychoanalysis Book Series, Vol. 2 Hailed on publication as “an impressive integration of postmodernism and relational psychoanalysis” (James Hansel) and “an intelligent and stimulating account of where the issues of identity, gender, and difference are joined” (Jessica Benjamin), Lynne Layton’s Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? is a major contribution to the postmodern understanding of gender issues. This new edition, under the aegis of the Bending Psychoanalysis Book Series, includes a Foreword by Series Editor Jack Drescher and an Afterword in which Lynne Layton addresses the evolution of her thinking since the book’s publication in 1998. -- from the publisher Reviews: “[Layton] explores that layer of existence that filters the social through the psychological, bringing clinical work and feminist theory together. Her book is a significant interlocutor to, and serves as introduction for, a number of important feminist dialogues and debates, such as the relation between the personal and the political and between social constructionist versus identity-derived perspectives. Layton’s text beings these many, sometimes contesting, perspectives together in an incisive and grounded exposition.”— Kareen Ror Malone, Signs “I don’t think it is an exaggeration to call this a work of intellectual virtuosity. Where some, myself included, grow impatient with postmodern theories, while nonetheless being influenced by the same social currents out of which these theories have sprung, others bury themselves in theory, seemingly losing touch with lived experience. Layton brings patience and passion to unraveling the knotty intellectual currents of meaning that both unify and separate these two areas of thought. Rather than come down on one side or the other of what she considers a false polarity, she shows how one can inform the other.”— Sheila Bienenfeld, Women’s Review of Books About the Author: Lynne Layton has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Washington University and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Boston University. She is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and supervises residents at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She teaches popular culture and psychoanalysis and culture for the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University and also is on the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. With Barbara Schapiro, she is the coeditor of Narcissism and the Text: Studies in Literature and the Psychology of Self; and, with Susan Fairfield and Carolyn Stack, she is coeditor of Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis. Dr. Layton is editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society and practices psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Brookline, MA. |
