Feminist Therapy

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Feminist Therapy

• Carol Gilligan - born in 1936
• PhD in social psychology from Harvard in 1964
• Focused on the moral development of girls
• 1982 wrote the book, IN A DIFFERENT VOICE
  PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY AND WOMENS DEVELOPMENT

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Feminist Therapy

• Feminist counselors believe that women have been
  restrained oppressed in society. Their
  strengths have been devalued they have been
  socialized to take care of others deny their
  own needs
• Many of the problems women experience are from
  sociopolitical cultural forces

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Feminist Therapy

• The client knows what is best for their lives
• Mental health can only be achieved if societys
  values change there is more nurturance,
  cooperation relationships
• Individual change occurs best thru societal change

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Feminist Therapy

• Feminist counselors educate their clients about
  how counseling works attempt to demystify the
  counseling process
• Counseling is an egalitarian process a
  collaborative process.
• Self-disclosure is common to reduce the power
  differentiation between counselor and client

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Feminist Therapy

• Sees mental disorders as ways of coping or
  responding to unfair societal standards
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vkw_5P4iDCqc

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Feminist Therapy

• Goals
• Replace gender role socialization with more
  functional beliefs
• Encourage personal empowerment
• Develop a wide range of freely chosen behaviors
• Acquire skills that help to change the environment

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Feminist Therapy

• Foster equality in society in male/female
  relationships
• Learn to balance independence interdependence
• Learn to become more self-nurturing
• To value diversity especially in regard to
  gender, culture lifestyle

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Feminist Therapy

• Gender-role analysis helps women to ferret out
  early dysfunctional messages replace them with
  self-statements that they want to change
• Gender-role intervention give women insight
  into the ways that social issues messages
  impact them

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Feminist Therapy

• Power analysis recognize the difference in
  power between men women in society Help women
  to identify alternate kinds of power that they
  possess ways to make appropriate changes
• Power intervention strengthening or empowering
  women by reinforcing their statements or giving
  them information

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Feminist Therapy

• Assertiveness training stating what one wants
  in clear, direct ways. Neither being aggressive
  nor passive
• Reframing relabeling seeing situations from
  another perspective attribute different meaning
  to certain behaviors
• Bibliotherapy scriptotherapy reading
  writing appropriate woman material

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Feminist Therapy

• Demystifying therapy counselors are clear, open
  direct in explaining what therapy is how it
  works.
• Self-disclosure the counselor shares personal
  thoughts feelings that educate reveal the
  counselor as a real woman
• Group work/social action connect women with
  each other to promote unity

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Feminist Therapy

• A great example of Feminist Therapy in action
• www.duluth-model.org