The Mermaid and the Minotaur

“A feminist classic that issued a call for the fundamental reorganization of society’s gender expectations, especially regarding childrearing…Dinnerstein’s message has become sadly urgent again.” —New York Review of Books

“This book is a game-changer.” —Gloria Steinem, from her introduction

“To the very largest degree this book is exciting and valuable and belongs in every prominent library of feminist thought. Dinnerstein writes beautifully, often eloquently, and she argues brilliantly…a stirring view of the common psychic life of men and women and its relation to the whole of organized human history.” —Vivian Gornick, New York Times Book Review

“The most important work of feminist psychoanalytic exploration thus far. Its re-publication is a celebratory occasion…The book is disturbing—almost frightening—in certain parts of its analysis. Truly facing and understanding its message, however, is an act of liberation.”—Eli Sagan, author of Freud, Women, and Morality: The Psychology of Good and Evil

“A seminal text in the women’s movement.” —Ethel S. Person, author of The Sexual Century

“[The Mermaid and the Minotaur] continues to astonish us with the depth and wisdom of its psychoanalytic approach even as its major ideas have become as unobtrusively essential to psychoanalytic feminism as the atmosphere.” —Jessica Benjamin, author of The Bonds of Love