The process of sex-role integration in psychotherapy: Contributions from a training experience.

Abstract

Feminist therapists have described the negative effect that therapy has on women, given its replication of patriarchal features of the broader society. However, the dialectical interplay between feminist theory and psychotherapy can enhance rather than impede the practice of feminist therapy. Feminist therapists face contradictions between avoiding abuse of power and accepting legitimate authority; between affective sharing and the use of intimacy to circumvent relational conflicts; between their feminist beliefs and internalized, unconscious sex-role norms; between their collaborative values and the hierarchical nature of their discipline and of psychotherapy. These contradictions are most accessible to therapists-intraining for whom supervision can heighten an awareness of the interplay between personal influences and technical requirements. Two developmental models are provided for delineating feminine therapists' evolving use of these contradictions in their formulations of client dynamics and in the therapy relationship. Case examples from therapists in training translate these models into specifics of clinical practice.

The Feminist Critique in Epistemological Perspective: Questions of Context in Family Therapy

“…Many women involved in family therapy-writers, therapists, trainers, trainees, and clients-live in daily awareness of the crisis and its consequences for them (cf. Kaplan et al, 1983). By contrast, the sense of urgency found in recent epistemological reconstructions seems to be generated mainly by the audacity of theorists' thinking.…”

“…Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, Rosencrantz & Vogel, 1970;Chesler, 1972;Franks & Burtle, 1974;Rice & Rice, 19731, feminist critics brought such concerns directly to bear on the theory, research and practice of psychotherapy. At the heart ofthis early work was an insistence that much of psychotherapeutic practice reflected the dominant culture's biases in the matter of sex-role stereotyping (Kaplan, Greif, Fibel, McComb, Sedney & Shapiro, 1983). Not only were there double standards with respect to how the criteria of mental health were applied to men and women (Broverman et al, 19701, but psychotherapy's practice in perpetuating these double standards was enough to question its relevance for women's issues (Chesler, 1972).…”

“…The feminist critics of family therapy (cf. Gurman & Klein, 1980;Hare-Mustin, 1978Hines & Hare-Mustin, 1978;James & McIntyre, 1983;Kaplan et al, 1983;Margolin et al, 1983;Rice & Rice, 1977;Schwendinger & Schwendinger, 1983;Westurlund, 1983) make the critique of psychotherapy explicit for family therapy and continue its central themes. Family therapists, no less than psychotherapists in general, replicate in their theoryipractice the traditional biases with respect to sex-role stereotyping and ignore or, worse, project onto the woman as her "pathology," what are the consequences of the cultural biases in the first place.…”