Feminist Therapy

1. Feminist Therapy

2. 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

3. 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