Suzanne Juhasz and Object Relations

Utilizing object relations psychoanalytic theory, Juhasz theorizes women's writing and reading as atempts to work through the primary relationship in life: the mother-daughter relationship. Desire, from this perspective, is not an essence of the biological body acting through or agains the world, but rather a result of the baby's subjective interaction with the caregiving mother. Literature, as written and read, enacts something like a psychoanalytic therapeutic session based on transference.