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Women
in Therapy
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 offers new perspectives on age-old "women's problems"
such as struggles with dependency, anger, depression, and guilt. She provides detailed and lucid case studies to illustrate
how theory can be transformed into effective therapeutic work.
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Praise for Women in Therapy
“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
In Part I Harriet focuses on:
- The earlier years of development.
- An alternative perspective on the devaluation of women and female sexuality.
- 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 sex role stereotypes.
- 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.
- Key interventions in facilitating change between mothers and daughters.
- 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.
- How to maintain a systems perspective that views women's problems in light of the reciprocal, circular patterns maintained by all family members.
Lerner interweaves feminist, psychoanalytic,
and family systems perspectives into theory-building and clinical
practice. Her work 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
“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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