“Nasty Women” — Reclaiming the Power of Female Aggression: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series)

By: Janet Rivkin Zuckerman, Ph.D.

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Synopsis: This book addresses the fraught relationship between women and aggression, one troubled by age-old patriarchal forces that disparage women’s ambition, assertion, and voice.Told from a psychoanalytic perspective, the book details the sociocultural forces that infect a woman’s intrapsychic dynamics and compel her to sacrifice her goals and dreams. Compelling examples are offered from current politics, the author’s own struggles with aggression, and clinical work with female patients who successfully reclaimed their aggression. The book addresses the critical question of how a woman can ever succeed, through the presentation of the author’s detailed and psychoanalytically informed interviews with six powerful and highly influential women. Each woman brings to life the story of her history, influences, and challenges to provide inspiration for others to reimagine their own “nastiness,” as an innovative, vitalizing tool.This book is distinguished by its unique blend of contemporary life, psychoanalytic practice, feminist theory and gender studies, untold in any other forum or publication. It is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and all those interested in working with women in a therapeutic setting and understanding their challenges with aggression.