Review of Subversive dialogues: Theory in feminist therapy.

Reviews the book, Subversive dialogues: Theory in feminist therapy by Laura S. Brown (see record 1994-98446-000). Laura Brown's desire to "talk about theory and about the philosophy that is feminist therapy" has resulted in an illuminating and challenging addition to the discourse shaping of feminist therapy into a coherent and explicit whole. She has courageously moved to suggest a unified language and theory where the convergence of feminist traditions in therapy allows. She reminds us of the central importance of theory in our work while insisting that we strive to avoid the dangers of overgeneralization of our individual experiences. Specifically, while stretching us to define what feminist therapy is at its core, she has emphasized the need to remain true to the data of clinical experience. We are invited to join the author in a "subversive dialogue" in which we are challenged to apply feminist epistemologies to our daily work and lives. She stimulates this dialogue by articulating some of the core dilemma for feminists interested in therapy: can feminism and therapy co-exist? what about therapy and money and the privilege/power signified by that relationship? does therapy undermine more "natural" bonds and relationships among women? Dr. Brown moves thoughtfully and respectfully through her resolutions of these thorny questions. Laura Brown has written a book which I hope will become standard reading for all therapists in training. It assumes a level of familiarity with basic concepts of therapy and feminism, but is very accessible and clear. Dr. Brown walks us through the emergence of feminist therapy, contextualizing the issues and struggles expertly. With the skills of a seasoned guide, she deftly highlights the foundations of feminist therapy while stimulating us to articulate our own experience and application of those core concepts. This book should make it possible for graduate students (and practitioners) to study feminist therapy as an integrated body of thought/ knowledge alongside the other traditional therapeutic approaches such as existentialism, behaviorism, or phenomenological approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Women therapists working with women: New theory and process of feminist therapy.

Reviews the book, Women therapists working with women: New theory and process of feminist therapy edited by Clair M. Brody (1984). As with other edited volumes on this topic, this book attempts to address a very broad range of issues confronted by a therapist holding a feminist theoretical perspective in her work. Where this is most original and successful is in the examination of the issues faced by the therapist as a woman and feminist in the social and emotional environment of therapy. This volume does not stand alone as a text on feminist therapy, and that was clearly not the editor's intention. It will probably be of most interest and use to therapists already familiar with other literature on feminist therapy, and serves to complement what has come before. I would not suggest it as any reader's first introduction to feminist therapy theory and practice. However, it is sufficiently introductory that it can be of use to any experienced psychotherapist seeking to enhance her or his consciousness of women's issues and sexism as they impact upon the process of psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing Patterns of Intimate Relations.

The book under review (see record 2006-00700-000) is in several American traditions: Lerner is at Menninger's, and her book, an expression of the self-help tradition, concerns how women should deal with their anger via communicating differently with spouses, parents, lovers, and children. It is a "how to" book spaced with good-humored vignettes of dealing with the misunderstandings of everyday life. Besides its debt to the tradition of self-improvement, the book is also an outgrowth of the feminist movement, itself both affected by and a part of pop culture. Lerner's book is not a book for professionals. Catharsis is so pervasive that it never approaches an understanding. Lerner's stories are entertaining, but tell us little and may be damaging to the whole feminist enterprise. The book encourages hasty generalizations, inspires poor theory, and obscures issues that are important to the humanistic awareness of women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Diversity and complexity in feminist therapy.

Reviews the book, Diversity and complexity in feminist therapy by Laura Brown and Maria P. P. Root (1990). This is an exciting and compelling book, challenging to both feminists and clinicians who work with women. It focuses on appreciating, understanding, and building on the differences among women. While it describes and defines the principles of feminist therapy theory, it also incorporates those principles into the very way the book is written—that is, by authors who themselves come from a variety of ethnic heritages and cultural backgrounds and who discuss the impact of oppression and victimization through sexism, racism, and classism, white privilege, and homophobia on the diversity and complexity of women's lives. The goal of this book is to offer proactive perspectives on the development of antiracist and multicultural theories so that feminist therapy theory is "relevant to all women of color, non-North American women, and so on" (p. 18). The message conveyed throughout this book is that we must "guard against imposing our own personal contexts, whatever they may be, upon the meaning and realities of women different from ourselves" in our theories and in our therapies (p. 13). The goal is not only met overall in this book, but is consistently addressed within each of its chapters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Healing voices.

Reviews the book, Healing voices by Toni Ann Laidlaw, Charyl Malmo, and Associates (see record 1990-97463-000). This book is a rich collection of a particular type of feminist therapy aimed primarily at adult female victims of sexual abuse. Readers who are interested in feminist therapies, psychodynamic approaches to the treatment of women, or the deleterious effects of sexual abuse on women will find this book interesting reading. The authors, therapists, and clients provide much detail and personal reflection which give this book depth. Unfortunately they do not address the important issues of systematically validating the effectiveness of these strategies, nor frequently, the need for serious consideration of what therapy to use with whom. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The playground of psychoanalytic therapy.

Reviews the book, The playground of psychoanalytic therapy by Jean Sanville (see record 1991-98946-000). Sanville studies psychoanalytic therapy and uses play and playing as the focal point, the pivotal organizing concept. She reviews the theory of psychoanalytic development and the dynamics of clinical intervention, and she attempts to integrate the contribution of her favorite authors, such as Winnicott, Stern, Kohut, and as always, Freud. Thus, the book is a textbook of Sanville's vast theoretical clinical experiences with the motive to document that play is the essential organizing and integrating mental activity. A book rich in considering the fabric of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with its broad frame of reference must greatly limit the ideas of the author, and I wish that there could be a more complete integration of her propositions. It is a pleasure to follow Sanville's case vignettes and to observe her gift and sensitivity with which she tunes into the inner life of her patients. Sanville's book explores a new metapsychological dimension embedded in object relation propositions. The reader will find unexpected rewards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Shaping the future of feminist psychology: Education, research, and practice.

Reviews the book, Shaping the future of feminist psychology: Education, research, and practice by Judith Worell and Norine G. Johnson (see record 1997-36316-000). This book is distinct in that it is neither a psychoanalytic nor psychoanalytically informed reader. The book is the collective outcome of the first National Conference on Education and Training in Feminist Practice, a working conference that convened in 1993, in Boston, and was attended by some of the nation's preeminent feminist psychologists. The 4 day conference was organized for purposes of developing a solid training and educational plan for prospective feminist practice. The focus was on the re-creation of a psychology that would be consistent with feminist principles and practices. The book evokes a sense of how exciting the conference must have been. It focuses on nine topics: theory, assessment, therapy, research, curriculum development, teaching, supervision, diversity, and postdoctoral training. In general, each chapter provides a summary review of the status of the topic, describes the process and content of the work group meetings, considers some models, and identifies future directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Women in families: A framework for family therapy.

Reviews the book, Women in families: A framework for family therapy edited by Monica McGoldrick, Carol M. Anderson, and Froma Walsh (1989). The editors state that this book grew out of the need of women doing family therapy to network and to develop visible women mentors and role models not overshadowed by the men in their lives. This book does try to cover too much ground in a single edited volume; the first two sections, by themselves, focused new themes in the theory and practice of family therapy. However, this is a new contribution to the field, a book that tells us how to bring gender into teaching and practice, and which ideas should be included. This book is recommended for practicing family therapists and students in family therapy training programs. It should be required reading for any professional planning to do family therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Maternal Desire: On Love, Children, and the Inner Life.

Reviews the book Maternal Desire: On Love, Children, and the Inner Life by Daphne de Marneffe (2004). This book is based on the premise that the desire to care for one's children is one of life's great pleasures and opportunities for fulfillment. In creating a relationship, and, by extension, a psychological life, suggests de Marneffe, women find particular and crucial meaning and authenticity. Grounded in psychoanalytic, attachment, and feminist theory as well as de Marneffe's own personal journey, Maternal Desire is a subtle rebuke to feminists' inherent derogation of motherhood and a far less subtle encouragement to women to open themselves to feelings that, in this day and age, may seem heretical. De Marneffe, who is a clinical psychologist and mother of three, was powerfully affected by the experience of struggling to balance the demands of her own career with her growing and ultimately grounding desire to care for her children. By the time she gave birth to her third child, she had decided to stop practicing in order to stay at home. The intensely personal nature of her evolution is at the heart of this book; the richness, the sensuousness, and the depth of her longing to care for her children are its emotional core. This revolutionary book challenges women (and men) to take on all the complex pleasures of motherhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction, language and the "narrative turn" in psychotherapy and psychiatry

The traditional emphasis in psychiatry about "listening to patients" has recently been added to by the development of what we call the "narrative turn" in mental health care where clients' narratives are emphasised. We shall argue however that both approaches tend to embody similar assumptions about therapeutic transactions and roles, and that much work emphasising narratives reveals little about how therapists and researchers work to reconstruct the clients' accounts. It is therefore vital that the emphasis on narratives be supplemented by a more thoroughgoing approach to shared structures of knowledge which act to prefigure clients' distress, how professional records are a profoundly transformative medium, and how therapeutic encounters work to co-construct clients' narratives, rather than simply reflect or explore them. The radical implications of thinking about therapy in terms of narrative and language need to be more fully discussed in the therapy literature, so the narrative turn does not simply reproduce the common-sense assumptions of more conventional approaches.     

Review of The psychology of today's woman: New psychoanalytic visions.

Reviews the book, The psychology of today's woman: New psychoanalytic visions, edited by Toni Bernay and Dorothy W. Cantor (see record 1989-98207-000). The contributors introduce this work with their concern about the applicability of analytic theory to the changing realities of today's women, questioning the idea that women's behavior is either "sick" or "well." The book, divided into four sections, reexamines and reframes conventional conceptions under four headings: Traditional Visions of Femininity Reassessed; New Visions of Femininity; Today's Women; and Therapeutic Relationships. There are some important populations of women omitted or treated only in passing in this collection of essays, for example, cross-cultural therapy, treatment of abuse and incest victims, alcoholism, eating and sexual disorders, a feminist approach to the treatment of depression, and lesbianism. Nevertheless, there are many innovative approaches to a variety of problems and this book, oriented for practitioners as well as students and researchers, provides fresh models for psychoanalytically oriented therapy for women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Understanding depression: Feminist social constructionist approaches.

Reviews the book, Understanding depression: Feminist social constructionist approaches by Janet M. Stoppard (see record 1999-04422-000). Dr. Stoppard has written an excellent overview that brings together mainstream psychological and feminist research and writing about women and depression. The author, a feminist psychologist, brings a balanced view to this area, which has typically seen feminists and mainstream psychologists either avoiding or dismissing each other's work. Thus this book presents a unique and important integration that both feminists and psychologists should find useful. This is an excellent book that will be of interest to a wide range of readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of New Directions in Sex Therapy: Innovations and Alternatives.

The impetus for this book grew out of the editor's dissatisfaction with approaches to sex therapy that overemphasize the technical aspects of sexual functioning and thus fail to appreciate the interpersonal relationships in which sexual problems arise. A central thesis of this book is that clinicians need to be aware of how sexuality is always a "product" of a complex set of power relations. The book provides up-to-date coverage of the theoretical and research literature in the field of sex therapy, while the contributors provide challenges to reductive, biomedical explanations of clients' sexual intimacy-related concerns, and they offer many practical, insightful, and helpful suggestions. The book is relevant to sex therapists, but it would also be a valuable resource for counselors and faculty teaching graduate-level courses in sexuality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The pluralist revolution: From the one true meaning to an infinity of constructed ones.

Argues that the truth of psychotherapy is not historical, disclosing a real fit between subjective recall and past events, but narrative (D. Spence, 1982). The story of clients' lives, which develops in therapy, is not the real history of the individual, but one possible narrative. Life narrative is inextricably linked to self-concept. Cure in psychoanalysis is not due to the uncovering of the past, but to the replacement of an inchoate life narrative by a congruent one, and the transformation of the meanings that previously blocked the person's ongoing story with new ones. Psychotherapeutic approaches provide metanarratives for the re-creation of life narratives that help therapists mend their clients' self-defeating narratives. Although a therapist's belief in his/her metanarrative is crucial, a pluralist position holds that no metanarrative is uniquely true. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The first session in brief therapy.

Reviews the book, The first session in brief therapy edited by Simon H. Budman, Michael F. Hoyt, and Steven Friedman (see record 1992-98543-000). This book provides an overview of the models of brief psychotherapeutic intervention. A major focus is how brief therapists structure and manage their initial contact with the patient. The editors intend this volume to be a casebook in which the reader can learn what therapists actually do in their clinical practice and offers the reader opportunities to further develop and sharpen his/her thinking regarding brief therapy. According to the reviewer, this book provides a fine survey of the current diversity of approaches to brief therapy. Taken as a whole, the book stimulates considerable thought on the most efficacious use of time in psychotherapy and will appeal to a wide audience including graduate students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Learning process in psychoanalytic supervision: Complexities and challenges.

Reviews the book, Learning process in psychoanalytic supervision: Complexities and challenges by Paul A. DeWald (see record 1987-97784-000). This book is a wonderful contribution to the field of supervision. It is the only book available that presents the actual supervision sessions of one ongoing supervisee with one long-term psychoanalytic patient as they were transcribed. DeWald also offers a review of the supervisory literature, his view of the supervisory process, his supervisory reports, and a chapter from the supervisee discussing her experience. The book is refreshing in that the supervisor does not present himself as perfect, and he does acknowledge mistakes he made in the comments after each set of process notes. There are some criticisms of the book to be made. First, the reviewer was not able to determine the frequency of the patient's sessions or the supervisory sessions. Second, the author's framework is classically Freudian. While this is not a problem, it is important that the reader be aware of the point of view. Third, the author seems ambivalent about the role of the patient's ethnicity and culture in her neurotic stance. These comments aside, Learning process in psychoanalytic supervision is an excellent book, and certainly one any supervisor would want to read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Women, men, and the psychology of power.

Reviews the book, Women, Men, and the Psychology of Power by Hilary M. Lips (1981). This book is therefore a welcome addition to the literature as it is an integration of gender differences on the one issue of power: it is totally devoted to the analysis of the multiplicity of factors involved in sex differences regarding the achievement of power. Dr. Lips presents her ideas from a dual perspective, that of a feminist and that of a social psychologist. Looking at the issue of power from the first point of view, she not only refers to the fact that women have fewer avenues to power than men do, but she also discusses the ways women cooperate to maintain their subordinate position. At the same time she elucidates the consequences for both sexes as women become more powerful. From the second viewpoint, she maintains that some of the observable differences in personality characteristics between females and males may be a function of structural variables, such as differential power bases, rather than stable inherited traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applying a feminist analysis model to selected nursing studies of women with HIV

Women's mental health has been linked to oppression and to oppressive practices in health care. Feminist approaches to health care delivery and research have been suggested as a remedy for the subtle and overt oppression faced by women, and many nurses have used feminist principles to conduct and report their research and to critique existing studies. Though nursing authors have identified useful feminist guides for conducting and reporting research, few examples of the practice of feminist critiques of research are available in the nursing literature. This analysis synthesizes and adapts feminist principles from nursing literature and presents a feminist model to review selected nursing research reports of women with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A convenience sample of eight articles from nursing journals was examined for statements or implications that the author(s) (a) perceived the purposes of the study as benefiting women, (b) demonstrated an awareness of the structures and policies that oppress women, (c) were sensitive to issues of diversity, (d) were committed to social change, and (e) recognized the female participants' strengths. The selected articles were found to meet many of the feminist criteria, although these principles were not always explicitly addressed in the articles.     

Review of A tired woman's guide to passionate sex: Reclaim your desire and reignite your relationship.

Reviews the book, A tired woman's guide to passionate sex: Reclaim your desire and reignite your relationship by Laurie B. Mintz (2009). Statistics bear it out: The most common sexual complaint that women have is low desire, and the most common reason that women cite is being too tired for sex. A tired woman’s guide is a thorough, research-based, cognitive– behavioral self-help program to help women not only revive their interest in sex but also be more assertive and take more time for self-care, which is sorely absent in the contemporary lives of women. Because the author has taken care to eliminate the crass language that is sometimes found in popular books about sexuality, it is a book that a psychotherapist or health care provider could easily recommend without fear of offending a female client of any age. The book is organized into nine chapters and is written in a professional and friendly manner that will appeal to the lay reader. Although the purpose of the book is to educate and motivate a lay audience, the book would be improved by having specific references to research included so that a psychotherapist unacquainted with the research in the field of female sexual health would be able to do further reading or research on the topic. Even a brief list of references to major studies would be preferable to none at all. Second, the book lays the blame for being “too tired” squarely on the woman’s shoulders. Much is made of the woman’s task of helping her partner understand how she feels and what she wants. Although this is a good ideal, it assumes that the male partner is receptive to feedback or will make the requested changes. Although the author recommends pornography made for women by a woman, it may still be a potential turnoff for some readers. Clinicians need to be prepared for a potential exploration of the topic should they recommend the book. Still, A tired woman’s guide to passionate sex is better than many books on the topic. Perhaps because Mintz is brave enough to admit to her readers that she, herself, was a woman too tired for sex at one time and needed to go on her own journey to recover her lost libido, the book works as an empathic companion to the woman who is puzzled by her own lack of drive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)