Feminist Therapy - Jamie V Canauay MA-Psych
Feminist Therapy - Jamie V Canauay MA-Psych
Feminist Therapy - Jamie V Canauay MA-Psych
Who is a feminist?
A feminist is someone who supports the political, social and
economic equality between the sexes; that biological sex should
not be a pre-determinant factor that shapes the social identity,
sociopolitical and economic rights of a person; supports equal rights
and dignity for both women and men.
Approaches to Feminist therapy
Liberal
Help individual women overcome the limitation and constraint of gender-role
patterns.
They believe the major goals of therapy include personal empowerment of
individual women, dignity, self-fulfillment, shared power in decision making in
relationship, and equality.
Cultural
Believe that oppression stems from societys devaluation of womens strengths,
values and roles.
The major goal for therapy is social transformation via infusion of the feminine
values into the culture.
Radical
Focus on the oppression of women that is embedded in patriarchy.
The major goals are to transform gender relationships, transform societal
institutions and increase womens sexual and procreative self-determination.
Approaches to Feminist therapy
Socialist
Focus on multiple oppressions and believe solutions to societys problems must
include consideration of class, race, sexual orientation, economics, nationality
and history.
The major goal of therapy is to transform social relationships and institutions.
Postmodern
Provide a model for critiquing the value of other traditional and feminist
approaches, addressing the issue of what constitutes reality and proposing
multiple truths as opposed to a single truth.
Use deconstruction and discourse analysis to show how reality is constructed.
Women of color
Believe that it is essential that feminist theory be broadened and made more
inclusive.
Want to include an analysis of multiple oppressions, an assessment of access
to privilege and power, and to emphasize activism.
Approaches to Feminist therapy
Lesbian
Heterosexism is at the core of womens oppression. Also, womens oppression is related
to sexualized images of women.
Their perspective calls for feminist theory to include an analysis of multiple identities and
their relationship to oppression and to recognize the diversity that exists among lesbians.
Global international
Take a worldwide perspective and seek to understand the ways in which racism, sexism,
economics, and classism affect women in different countries.
They see the need to address those cultural differences that directly contribute to
womens oppression.
Social change to create the kind of society where sexism and other
forms of discrimination and oppression are no longer a reality, (Worell &
Remer, 2003).
Feminist therapy goals
According to Worell and Remer (2003), feminist therapists help clients:
Be 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 factors and their lives
Develop a sense of personal and social power
Recognize the power of relationships and connectedness
Trust their own experience and their intuition
Roles and Functions of the therapist
Feminist therapists are:
Committed to monitoring their own biases and distortions, especially the
social and cultural dimensions of womens experiences.
Committed to understanding oppression in all its forms sexism, racism,
heterosexism and they consider the impact of oppression and
discrimination of psychological well-being.
The value being emotionally present for their clients, being willing to share
themselves during the therapy hour, modeling proactive behaviors, and
being committed to their own consciousness-raising process.
They work to free women (and men) from roles that have constrained them
from realizing their potential.
Therapists and the clients take active and equal roles, working together to
determine goals and procedures.
They avoid assuming a therapist role is of an all-knowing expert, assuming
instead the role of a relational expert.
Clients Experience in Therapy
Clients are active participants in the therapeutic process.
Clients tell their stories and give voice to their experiences.
The female therapist may share some of her own experiences including
gender-role oppression.
The therapeutic relationship is always a partnership.
The client, if male, will be the expert in determining what he needs and
wants from the therapy.
He will explore ways in which he has been limited by his gender-role
socialization.
He may be able to fully experience such feelings as sadness, tenderness
Clients acquire a new way of looking at and responding to their world.
Relationship Between the Therapist
and Client
The therapeutic relationship is based on empowerment and egalitarianism.
The very structure of the client-therapist relationship models how to identify
and use power responsibly.
The therapist use their power responsibly.
Clients are encouraged to identify and express their feelings.
Therapist makes a client and active partner in determining any diagnosis by
making use of appropriate self-disclosure.
Therapists respect the clients decision to proceed or not proceed with a
particular therapeutic technique.
Application: Therapeutic Techniques
and Procedures
Empowerment
The client will know she or he is in charge of the direction, length, and
procedures of her/his therapy.
Self-disclosure
Helps equalize the therapeutic relationship, to provide modeling, to normalize
womens collective experiences, to empower clients and to establish informed
consent.
Gender-Role Analysis and Intervention
Helps the client understand the impact of gender-role expectations on his/her
psychological well-being.
Intervention gives the clients insight into the ways that social issues are affecting
him/her.
Power Analysis
Helps the client become aware of the power difference between men and
women in our society.
Application: Therapeutic Techniques
and Procedures
Bibliotherapy
Reading about feminist perspectives on common issues in womens lives (incest, rape,
battery and sexual harassment) may challenge a womans tendency to blame herself for
these problems.
Assertiveness Training
By teaching and promoting assertive behavior, women become aware of the following:
Their interpersonal rights
Transcend stereotypical gender roles
Change negative beliefs
Implement changes in their daily lives
Reframing and Relabeling
In reframing, rather than dwelling exclusively on intrapsychic factors, the focus is on
examining societal or political dimensions
Rebelling is an intervention that changes the label or evaluation applied to some
behavioral characteristic.
Application: Therapeutic Techniques
and Procedures
Social Action
Therapists may suggest to the clients to actively become involved in activities
such as volunteering at a rape crisis center, lobbying lawmakers, or providing
community education about gender issues.
This empower the clients by helping them see the link between their personal
experiences and the sociopolitical context in which they live.
Group Work
Emphasizes support for the experience of women.
Provides women with a social network, decrease feelings of isolation, create an
environment that encourages sharing of experiences, an help women realize
that they are not alone in their experiences (Eriksen & Kress, 2005).
Can men be feminist therapists?
Absolutely!
Men can be nonsexist therapists
Also, men can be pro-feminist therapists when they embrace
the principles and incorporate the practices of feminism in their
work.
Feminist therapy from a Multicultural
Perspective
Strength From a Diversity Perspective
Feminist therapy and multicultural perspectives have the most in common.
Recognize and address sexism, racism and other cultural variables
Intervene in ways designed to help client to Intervene in ways to help change the clients
cope context
Six Systematic Viewpoints in Family Therapy
Adlerian Multi- Human Experiential/ Structural Strategic Family
Family Generational Validation Symbolic Family Therapy
Therapy Family Process Model Family Therapy
Therapy Therapy
Key Alfred Adler Murray Bowen Virginia Satir Carl Salvador Jay Haley &
figures Rudolf Whitaker Minuchin Cloe Madanes
Dreikurs
Oscar
Christensen
and Manford
Sonstegard
Time Present with Present and Here and now Present Present and Present and
focus some past: family of past future
reference to origin; three
the past generations
Six Systematic Viewpoints in Family Therapy
Adlerian Family Multi- Human Experiential/ Structural Family Strategic FT
Therapy Generational FT Validation PM Symbolic FT Therapy
Level 2 sequences support the functioning of the family and become accepted
as routines. In this sequence, individual roles support a smooth process for the
whole system. If any part of this routine stops or breaks down, the whole system
must adjust.
Father gets up and wakes oldest daughter.
Oldest daughter gets up, gets dressed, and feeds dog.
Mother gets up and wakes 3-year-old daughter.
Father fixes breakfast for children while mother dress 3 y/o
Children eat. Oldest daughter fixes lunches while mother and father dress
Parents grab bagels. Everyone leaves for work and school.
Sequences: Tracking Patterns of
Interaction
Level 3 sequences have to do with the ebbs and flows of life. These much longer
sequences often account for family adjustments to outside forces or
developmental changes.
When Level 1 and 2 sequences effectively resolve difficulties, the ebbs
and flows that constitute the processes at Level 3 also tend to find a
functional balance.
Level 4 sequences are transgenerational. They include sequences that reflect
larger system values and rules about culture or gender roles. These sequences
are passed from one generation to the next and are intended to provide a sense
of continuity to life.
Family therapy is often about developing more useful sequences at
any or all of these four levels.
The Organization Lens:
Individuals and families have some organizing process that holds everything
together and provides a sense of unity.
In family systems, organization is manifest in family rules, routines, rituals, and
expected roles.
Collaboration is found in mutual or egalitarian relationships between
couples, and the function of leadership in the family is to organize the
system in clear, useful ways.
Balanced family leadership requires the ability to be firm, but friendly, and
to set developmentally appropriate limits while remaining fair, flexible, and
encouraging. In balanced families, individuality and connection to the
family are both significant: both fit generational, cultural, and
developmental needs.
The Developmental Lens:
The family life cycle is a developmental framework that is
focused on the nuclear family. The family life cycle focuses on six
significant transitions:
A single, young adult leaves home to live a more or less independent life.
Individuals marry or become a couple to build a life together.
The couple has children and starts a family.
The children become adolescents.
The parents launch their children into the world and prepare to live a life
without children.
The family reaches its later years where children may have to care for
parents as well as their own children, and the parents prepare for the end of
their lives.
The Developmental Lens:
The first presentations of the family life cycle were focused almost
entirely on a two-parent, Caucasian, nuclear family, but today
there are developmental models for single-parent families;
remarried, blended, or stepfamilies; cross-generational, extended
families; lesbian, gay, and bisexual families; families from diverse
cultures; poverty and the family life cycle; and the effects of gender
(and roles) in the family life cycle.
Family therapists address the needs of individuals while
simultaneously considering the needs of relationships, the family,
and larger systems.
In assessing different levels, family therapists look for constraints and
seek to remove them so that natural growth and transitions become
possible once again(Breunlin et al., 1997).
The Multicultural Lens:
A multicultural lens challenges dominant culture and introduces diversity and complexity
into our understanding of the human condition. This lens reframes dominant culture as
simply one of many. It seeks not tolerance but an appreciation and valuing of diversity.
Ten areas of assessment assist family therapists in bringing a multicultural perspective to their
work:
Membership as an immigrant in a dominant society
Level of economic privilege or poverty
Level of education and process of learning
Ethnicity
Religion
Gender
Age
Race, discrimination, and oppression
Minority versus majority status
Regional background
The Gender
Lens:
The oldest most pervasive discrimination and oppression in the world is against
women in all cultures, and with few exceptions, across the human life span.
Family therapists have increasingly accepted an advocacy stance as part of
their therapy. Therapists can no longer ignore their personal influence and
their responsibility to challenge unequal status and treatment of women.
Power positions, like hierarchy, enmeshment, and unbalancing catchwords
that have been associated with structural-strategic approaches to families for
years are slowly being replaced with ideas about leadership, connection,
conversation, and collaboration.
The Process Lens:
What is happening between people- the process of communication- is essential
to experiential models of family therapy.
Process is also about our movement through significant events in life. Clarity of
process tells us where we are and delineates where we are likely to go. It allows
the therapist and the family to examine where they are in the flow of life, the
process of change, and the experience of therapy.
When essential routines are interfered with, the result is a disruption that throws
a system out of balance. In the face of disruption, families may initially seek to
retreat, but they generally fall into a state of chaos. Because chaos is
experienced as crisis, family members often want to make huge decisions even
though everything seems out of balance. Therapists immediately become one
of the familys external resources with a primary responsibility to help individuals
reconnect with their internal resources and strengths, which are often not
recognized.
A Multilensed Process of Family
Therapy