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Grappling With Injustice
The women at the Stone Center in Wellesley, MA, have been important voices in feminist therapy for more than 20 years, beginning with Jean Baker Miller's germinal Toward a New Psychology of Women in 1976. Throughout the '80s they published a series of "works-in-progress," papers articulating their ideas about women's development and the practice of psychotherapy, some of which were gathered together in their first book, Women's Growth in Connection, in 1991. Many feminist therapists have been influenced by this book and its primary tenet -- that at best, women's psychological and emotional development occurs within relationships, that women mature in the context of relationship, not separateness and autonomy, as mainstream psychoanalytic theory had once argued. The fundamental (and constantly repeated) keystone to health and growth for women is mutuality in relationship, including, of course, the therapy relationship. And disconnection is the "source of most human suffering" (3).
As widely embraced as their work was, however, it was also criticized for relying upon the ideas and experiences of middle-class white therapists and clients. Their work was grounded not in women's experience but in the experience of a particular group of women, a failing shared by other feminist theorists and certainly by most other psychological theorists. This new book from the Stone Center begins to address the deficiencies of the old. Some of the authors are working with other populations, particularly African American women and lesbians, and they envision a psychology informed by this diversity. As Jordan writes in the introduction:
While all women suffer in a patriarchal society where our experience is not represented in the dominant discourse, women in various cultural/ethnic groups suffer additional marginalization based on race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic standing, able-bodiedness, and age. Women who are marginalized also develop strengths that may differ from those of white, privileged heterosexual women. (2-3)
Clevonne Turner writes about the disconnections created by racism, both across color lines and within them. As an example, she notes that African American mothers may tend to be stricter with their children because the consequences of unacceptable behavior for them can be graver. As mothers try "to both protect and teach," tension is created between mothers and daughters:
Some of these mothers have been mislabeled as matriarchal,...