Virginia Prince

BOOK REVIEWS

ANDROGENY-Toward a New Theory of Sexuality. June Singer. Anchor Press. Garden City, N.Y. 1977.

When I head of this book—it was being using as a text book in a sociology class to which I was to speak on the Sex and Gender question, I thought, "Hey, this is pretty interesting, I'll have to ask for a review copy." I did and the publisher was kind enough to send it to me. But frankly, I had bitten off more than I found it comfortable to chew. The book is monumentally difficult to get through and it took me a long time to burrow through it but I finally made it and here are my comments.

To start with, I take exception to the title. Androgeny is a gender phenomenon and to tie it to sexuality is wrong to begin with in my opinion. Ms. Singer, is a Jungian psychoanalyst and as you probably all know it was Jung who thought up the ideas of the Animus and the Anima-the opposite gender characteristics in all humans. So she is pretty involved in that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the book is a weird mixture of correct and perceptive comments on the subject of androgeny and a whole terrible lot of divergent commentaries on all manner of myths, religions and philosophies. She has done a monu- mental research job in this area which would be great in a study of mythology, etc., but really doesn't help for a book on Androgeny. She talks as though Adam and Eve were in reality the parents of the human race. (Some of you may also believe that and if so I hope I don't hurt your feelings.) If they had been and the human race started out "zap" with no preceeding development, her theories would be much more appealing. She continuously refers to the "Original

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