Feminist Family Therapy Flashcards
who was Rachel-Hare Mustin (Villanova) and what did she do
wrote the first paper examining the gender bias in Family Therapy, and was the first to use the term, Feminist Family Therapy.
-Pointed out that there was a lot of female blaming in family therapy, often putting the mom as the one who has to make the changes
-She pointed out that Feminism and Postmodernism are not completely compatible: expecting a family to devise its own solution can lead to historical oppression
explain what Carol Gilligan found in In a Different Voice
-Women’s morality based on “caring”
-Men’s morality is based on “rights”
-Thus: Women’s needs, and rights suffer.
-Additionally, Gilligan pointed out that psychological research was predominantly about men.
explain Feminist Stonehedge Meetings
Formed by Monica McGoldrick, Carol Anderson, and Froma Walsh with active support from Peggy Papp, Olga Silverstein, and Marianne Walters held three national and international meetings (1984, 1986, and 1991) which resulted in numerous publications and the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy (Lois Braverman)
-We need to be clear about what feminist family therapy is, what it looks like, and why it is important
explain Deb Luepnitz and The Family Interpreted
Warned against relying on a historical perspective since mother blaming, mother as caregiver, and women’s role, was a continuation of oppression.
explain Thelma Jean Goodrich Feminist Family Therapy: Empowerment in Social Context
The therapist must look at their own belief systems
-White women had created the movement, and it needed to include the voices of “sisters of color”
-Movement within the movement to address the need of women of color
-Feminism needed to join with the larger field of Multiculturalism
-There has been some push back against the word “feminism” because some people believed that it was “anti-men”, but this is not true
how did family therapists/ systems thinkers react to feminist therapy
Family Therapy was Caught Off Guard
-The field had believed that having left Freudian thinking behind, it had moved to a more neutral, non-sexist position. However, FFT thinkers challenged this idea.
-Believed it had spent years attacking other therapies for being ant-women
-Mom enmeshed
-Mom too coddling of children
-Mom as caregiver
-Dad as provider
-Dad as hero for doing some parenting
what do feminist family therapists believe about systemic formulations
Systemic Formulations are inadequate (by themselves)
Appeared neutral, but
-Divorced from historical, economic, political and social context
-By focusing out of context, dysfunction had to be in the interpersonal relationship, thus, one is forced to lose sight of the sociopolitical context
-Believed that family therapists were a part of an oppressive class and were ignoring sociopolitical contexts
-Systems thinking (in the FFT opinion) put an emphasis on maintaining the dysfunction, rather than what caused it.
-True family therapists believed that the ideas of oppression need to be addressed every session, these are things that cannot be ignored
feminist therapy on circularity
-Relational violence
-FFT believed that circularity and neutrality created a sophisticated version of blaming the victim
-Members of a system were assumed to share equal power in maintaining a problem.
-Rendered power differences invisible.
what traditional roles did feminists believe were reinforced in therapy
-Marriage is good for women
-Women received less attention in the therapy room
-Child rearing continued to be defined as women’s role
-Husband’s need were dominate over the wife’s needs
-Because a lot of people were worried about the man leaving therapy, people wanted to keep him in treatment; e.g. would follow what the man wanted if there was a disagreement on what time the kids should go to bed
what actual differences were highlighted in feminist therapy
Talk about gender issues during therapy ($, power, childcare, household work)
-Not just when it was the problem, but you always bring up money, power, childcare, household work, etc.
Therapist needs to be direct about their own views (otherwise, could be tacitly supporting ongoing oppression)
Relabel deviance and redefine normalcy to highlight women’s strengths (e.g. connection)
Focus on individual women’s need, not just relationships
Reduce or stop woman blaming
Examine your own values and socialization
how did feminists want to shift the power balance
-Both Genders should change
-Sometimes give greater weight to the woman’s change request
-Challenge traditional childcare, housework balance
-Defining parenting as an important role that men need to embrace (research shows that children need a father figure in their lives, even after divorce, women with no relationship with dad have a lower trust level of men)
-Value women’s work as much as man’s work
Virginia Goldner on family systems thinking
-Goldner believed that systems thinking, particularly family systems thinking, was quick to embrace the idea that those practicing this model were advanced, especially regarding social justice.
-Her contention was that this occurred because there was not enough understanding of the wider context.
Goldner on original systems family thinking
-Goldner believed that originally, family systems thinking would oppose the idea that social forces could differentially regulate the participation in a family. In other words, she felt that to accept that there were ongoing social forces that could alter the power structure in the family would create a system wherein some people (e.g. men) would be more equal than others.
-Goldner suggests that field wanted to avoid this painful truth.
Goldner on the gender dichotomy
-Goldner went on to suggest that women became linked to the home, and childcare, whereas men got linked with the outside.
-Women were Expressive: Men were Instrumental
-Due to this dichotomy, women were both too powerful (in decisions about the family) and simultaneously socially degraded.
Goldner on Men in therapy
-Goldner makes the very interesting point that men were “risking” the status quo by coming into treatment, thus, therapists would protect men.
-As family therapy tends to look for alternative patterns in order to create change, men’s status as being marginal, thus mysterious, led to multiple interventions that suggested that putting dad in charge of family interactions would magically turn things around.
