This book tackles delicate issues along the difficult learning path regarding gender. It seeks to trace from childhood, family, and prevailing social conditioning how a person's very self-identity and attitudes toward gender issues can be shaped and marked throughout one's entire life. Some of the consequences described in the book are what might be described as the resulting inner demons or beasties and bogeymen that lurk within the inner soul and are a source both of confusion to the victim and something that tends to be locked safely yet restrictively away from others. Thus, the two key symbols of this work-the private island to which one might retreat in relationships, especially with a partner or spouse and the secret buried box of things about oneself and one's attitudes that one might be reluctant to share with that partner.