| Although steeped in psychoanalytic jargon, and obviously intended for the professional, this book is remarkable for its groundbreaking, revolutionary view of the dynamics of bi/lesbianism, and tells a fascinating story. This book reports in graphic, sexually explicit language the case histories of 6 adamantly committed lesbians referred to Dr. Siegel by their lesbian support group who became fully and permanently heterosexual upon treatment! This clinical result is even more impressive when you realize that Dr. Siegel treated a total of only 12 lesbian referrals from that same lesbian support group--so that fully one-half of the test group became fully and completely heterosexual, at which point the lesbian support group angrily stopped making referrals to Dr. Siegel! The key to successful treatment, as outlined exhaustively by Dr. Siegel, is that these 6 women were ultimately able to identify with her as a strong heterosexual mother, something that all had lacked as children. In doing so, they were able to successfully complete their psychosexual development with her and become fully and exclusively heterosexual. Since her own successful countertransference with all 6 patients was itself the essential element, in effect this discovery and clinical observation could only have been made by a female psychoanalyst, such as Dr. Siegel, which in itself makes it a truly remarkable story! Dr. Siegel further outlines her view that today's sex industry is also uniquely a bi/lesbian phenomena. Her sociological research conclusively demonstrates for the first time that female sex workers are in fact predominantly bisexual and lesbian. She details many other aspects of each patient's histories, including each parent's role and other novel, determining psychoanalytic factors that she believes contributed both to their original lesbianism and to her own successful treatment. Again, the only weakness of the book is that Dr. Siegel must translate each observation into tedious and laborious psychoanalytics, which detracts somewhat from the book's fascinating and unique content and popular appeal. The book is groundbreaking in that Dr. Siegel's successful treatment is unique, unsurpassed, and, in my opinion, itself a phenomena worthy of study. |