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Why are the women Shakespeare created so perplexing? Why do children fear witches in fairy tales? Holbrook (literature, Cambridge U.), drawing upon object relations, Jungian, and existential psychology, shows how recent insights from psychoanalysis reveal much about the unconscious (male) fear of women and how this fear is personified in universal images. Sensitive and jargon-free, but uninformed in the perspectives offered by contemporary feminist psychoanalytic theory. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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CHOICE Review

Holbrook's general concern is to "bring to bear on literature some insights from psychoanalysis about gender," and more specifically to address "the problem man has with woman," especially woman as a symbol. The book is divided into three parts, one on insights from psychoanalysis and two on applications of those insights to the work of J.M. Barrie and Shakespeare. The book will be of value to those interested in psychoanalytic approaches to literature, though it is superficial in its grasp of psychoanalytic theory and of current studies of gender. The book is unfortunately and unnecessarily testy about feminism. To its detriment it obscures distinctions that ought to be made between Freudian and Jungian theory, and, though it inclines toward Jungian categories for understanding gender issues, it is particularly short on reference to classic Jungian studies such as Eric Neumann's The Great Mother (1955) or Esther Harding's The Way of All Women (1933) or to "revisionist" studies such as Christine Downing's The Goddess (1981) or Nor Hall's The Moon and the Virgin (CH, Nov'81). In these studies one finds a far more sophisticated approach to "woman as symbol" in the conceptual framework of the archetypal feminine or, though Holbrook seems determined not to allow this, in feminist rereadings of Jung. There are adequate notes, bibliography, and index. Recommended for advanced collections that aim at completeness. -R. J. Lee, St. Olaf College