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Women
in Therapy
Women in Therapy will help all therapists examine the
biases and assumptions that adversely affect the treatment of
women. Such an examination is a prerequisite for compassionate
and informed clinical practice.
Women in Therapy is a bold look at women and the psychotherapists
who work with them. Dr. Harriet Lerner carefully critiques and
challenges traditional notions of female psychology and elucidates
the ways in which our unconscious fears, wishes, and assumptions
about women continue to distort our theories and clinical practice.
She offers new perspectives on age-old "women's problems"
such as struggles with dependency, anger, depression, and guilt
and she provides detailed and lucid case studies to illustrate
how theory can be transformed into effective therapeutic work.
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In Part I Harriet focuses on:
- The earlier years of development.
- Reformulates the overextended concept of genital inferiority.
- Presents alternative psychoanalytic perspectives on the devaluation
of women and female sexuality.
- Identifies the complex unconscious factors that may
lead both sexes to cling to traditional sex-role stereotypes,
patriarchal solutions, and phallocentric views.
In Part II: Dr. Lerner details her views on:
- The adaptive and pathogenic aspects of sexrole stereotypes.
- The reformulation of diagnostic criteria for the hysterical
personality.
- The key errors of omission in psychotherapeutic work with women
related to therapists' unconscious absorption of cultural norms.
- The advantages as well as the anxieties associated with choosing
a woman therapist.
- The myth of "female dependency," with implications
for therapeutic interventions.
- The complex connections between anger, depression, and women's
relationship orientation.
- The role of self-sacrifice and self-betrayal (and the concomitant
loss of self-esteem) in female depression.
- The importance of facilitating connectedness and change in the
adult daughter's relationships with both parents.
- The role of unconscious loyalties and multi- generational guilt
in female work inhibitions.
- The problem of mother-focus and mother-blaming in psychoanalytic
theory and practice.
Finally, Lerner examines the feminist psychoanalytic contribution
to developmental theory building. With depth and incisiveness, she
critiques the psychoanalytic preoccupation with maternal power and
describes the conceptual problems that arise when the encapsulated
unit of mother and child, or the oedipal triad of mother, father,
and child, remains the primary, if not exclusive, framework for observation
and theory building. Here Lerner argues for a systems perspective
that views female development in light of the reciprocal, circular
patterns maintained by all family members. She calls attention to
the false dichotomy between intrapsychic and family systems camps
and challenges us to move against this polarity in our thinking and
clinical work.
Lerner demonstrates a remarkable ability to interweave feminist, psychoanalytic,
and family systems perspectives into theory-building and clinical
practice. Her work, which spans a period of fifteen years, helps us
to view women through a wide-angle lens, with an eye toward identifying
the intrapsychic, familial, and cultural factors that thwart the differentiation
of self and impede the ability to love and work.
Praise
"The
cover should be stamped in bold letters: Not for professionals only.
I recommend it highly, for all women and for the men who care for
and about them."
- Maggie Scarf
Author of Intimate
Matters
“Harriet
Lerner writes with startling clarity and power …Here is a
rich store of clinical wisdom – exciting, engaging, inspiring,
distressing, challenging, and satisfying. Every woman client can
hope that her therapist has discovered Dr. Lerner’s work.”
- Marjorie Bayes, Ph.D.
Coeditor Women and
Mental Health
“Dr.
Lerner skillfully interweaves theoretical and clinical material
on female psychology. This is a major contribution to our understanding
of the parameters and direction of the field.”
- Carol C. Nadelson,
M.D.
Past President, American
Psychiatric Association
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