Don't be put off by the dense introduction or the hyper-academic, two-colon-title - only a moderate understanding of contemporary critical theory is necessary to appreciate Jan Campbell's Arguing With the Phallus. Since her work is strongly grounded in the corporeal psychoanalytic theories of Luce Irigaray, those with a penchant for 1980's French feminism will especially enjoy the tone of the book. However, it is the breadth, not the depth of Campbell's writing which is most striking - she summarizes the work of a number of diverse thinkers with surprising clarity and skill. The premise of the book is that clinical psychoanalysts must learn to situate their practice at the crossroads of (linguistic) theory and (bodily) experience. This, claims Campbell, will help analysts escape the limitations of the Oedipal model and castration complexes that govern classical psychoanalysis and instead create a more comprehensive understanding of patients' alternate, individual realities. To ensure her readers arrive at the same conclusion, Campbell systematically outlines her thought process, abstracting key arguments from each of the various critical schools of thought then weaving them into an overview of contemporary theoretical debates now raging in academic and psychoanalytic circles.

The first two chapters provide an historical account of Freudian psychoanalysis, its relation to politics, the troubling ambiguity of Freud's linguistic and bodily realities, and the ensuing debates this uncertainty has caused identity theorists. Campbell examines the contrast between object relations theories that privilege bodily experience as the key to the formation of a physically located concept of the self, and poststructuralist accounts of identity that view the self as a fictional, ego-driven illusion. She questions the necessity for such a strong division between the two camps and posits a third, more fluid option that sees personal identity as an ever-shifting product of lived, bodily experience and analytic narrative accounts of the self.

Chapters three and four extend this personal multiplicity to feminism. Campbell highlights the antagonism between claims for an innate biological essentialism that determines female sexuality and identity, and the claims that such identity is constructed and culturally specific. Again, Campbell argues for a third alternative that incorporates aspects of both.

The fifth chapter examines what happens when queer theory and subsequent constructions of personal and political identity enter into the debate. The traditional psychoanalytic position that any orientation other than white, male and heterosexual is pathological or psychotic (132) leads Campbell to wonder in frustration why "so many contemporary theorists see the Oedipal as inevitable?"(146). Chapter six explores the specific ways in which gay desire is structured by and through social institutions and chapter seven addresses issues of race and postcolonial identity. She notes,

The final chapter provides an example of just what sort of alternative she envisions. Presenting a reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Campbell declares that authors whose "ethnographic reading of cultural history does not locate the unconscious in terms of a phallic linguistic metaphor, but as an unspeakable and narrative bodily experience of the real" (234) offer a glimpse of the alternate histories and realities that generate our collective cultural narratives. Campbell's final chapter however, is not sufficient to convince me that those who have traditionally existed outside of the norms posited by contemporary psychoanalysts have a natural, immediate recognition of, and revolutionary response to, the hegemonic Oedipal discourse. On the other hand, her ideas are certainly interesting ones, and Campbell has managed to produce a surprisingly comprehensive reference point for anyone whose interests include feminism, queer, post-colonial, cultural, literary or psychoanalytic theory.