What women want A therapist, her patients, and their true stories of desire, power, and love

Sigmund Freud famously asked, "What does a woman want?" British-born psychotherapist Chung (The Eighth Girl, 2020), who has centered her practice on women, focuses her first nonfiction book on seven of her patients, sharing their stories, therapies, and successes. One wants to be accepted by her mother despite her sexual preferences; another wants to forget the psychological abuse inflicted by her stepfather. A biracial woman longs to feel at home in her body; another battles eating disorders. One woman wants to be a mother, whether or not she's partnered. An older woman has finally found love and wants her son to understand; another woman struggles to come to terms with her son's suicide. The cases are told in detail and include moments when the patients interact with their families at home--episodes that patients have either relayed to Chung or that she has imagined for them. She demonstrates empathy, care, and skill as she guides each to safer ground. Ultimately, women want what men want: to be accepted and recognized for themselves. Chung offers a pathway.

In this intimate exploration, psychotherapist Chung (The Eighth Girl) tackles a question that famously eluded Sigmund Freud: What do women want? Driven partly by memories of emotional suppression from her childhood, when "the word want was a ghost lodged at the back of throat," Chung investigates the nature of female desire and "what keeps us in denial, loveless, or in a constant state of longing" through the stories of seven patients. Ruth, a grocery clerk in her 40s, developed bulimia as a teen in response to her stepfather's psychological and physical abuse, and nowadays seeks freedom from her eating disorder. Tia, a biracial lawyer and mother, "never felt pretty or beautiful as a child... as if I'd been shoehorned into a body that wasn't mine," leading her to undergo cosmetic procedures at age 23 to appear more Caucasian, including relaxing her hair and lightening her skin--a source of personal shame, particularly as a mother to a confident Black daughter. Through therapy, she realized her desire to "make a home of my body... to feel and know I belong." While Chung's observations can sometimes read as stilted ("Tia... wears oppression on her face every day. We must work hard to heal those wounds"), her sensitive renderings of her subjects and commitment to the "premise that women want. Period" uplifts. Readers will be touched by Chung's compassionate approach. (Sept.)