A useful psychology of gender needs to make sense of both the seemingly fixed and universal aspects of gender and the seemingly contradictory and individual aspects of gender. It should provide an explanation of gender’s seeming intractability and universality, and of individuals’ ability to manifest and experience gender in endlessly multiple ways. This chapter considers the particular utility of psychoanalytic theory for understanding gender. First, what distinguishes psychoanalytic theory from other theories of human development and gender and Freud’s initial contributions to the understanding of gender is described. Then, the contributions and revisions to Freud’s theory provided by feminist psychoanalytic theorists during the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on social structure and relations, are described. Finally, more recent feminist psychoanalytic theories influenced by postmodernism, queer theory, and the trans movement, which address universality and intractability as well as particularity and fluidity, are described.