Feminist Therapy

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Feminist Therapy
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Themes

• The personal is political
• Problems originate in a political and social
  context
• Commitment to social change
• Not only help clients but society change as well
• Clients voices and ways of knowing are valued and
  their experiences are honored
• Increase silenced voices of women, etc.
• Value ones emotions, intuition, and experience
• Egalitarian counseling relationship
• No power imbalance
• Focus on strengths and reformulated definition of
  psychological distress
• Distress is not looked at as a disease but as a
  coping mechanism
• All types of oppression are recognized
• Social and political inequities have a negative
  effect on all people

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Process

• Become aware of their own gender-role
  socialization process
• Identify their internalized messages and replace
  them with more self-enhancing beliefs
• Understand how sexist and oppressive societal
  beliefs and practices influence them in negative
  ways
• Acquire skills to bring about change in the
  environment
• Restructure institutions to rid them of
  discriminatory practices
• Develop a wide range of behaviors that are freely
  chosen
• Evaluate the impact of social forces on their
  lives
• Develop a sense of personal and social power
• Recognize the power of relationships and
  connectedness
• Trust their own experience and their intuition

4
Process

• Therapist work to
• Equalize power base in the therapeutic
  relationship
• Focus on clients power and ability to make
  decisions
• Self disclose

5
Process

• Gender-role analysis
• Examine messages about expected behavior
• Gender-role intervention
• Examine how social expectations effect problems
  they are experiencing
• Power analysis and power intervention
• Difference in power between men and women in
  society
• Assertiveness training
• Reframing and relabeling
• See behaviors as coping skills rather than
  diagnoses
• Bibliotherapy and Scriptotherapy
• Social Action