Book excerpt: Twenty years ago, few observers would have foreseen that some feminists would once again turn to Freud. But in recent years, the adoption by American feminists of French concepts-especially the ideas of Lacan-has led to new approaches in feminist theory and psychology. This book traces the intellectual history of the interaction between feminists and Freudian thought, charting the essence of psychoanalytic theories through the years to show specific notions were adapted, readapted, and discarded by successive generations of feminists.