Feminist Therapy Flashcards
Key concepts
Personal is political, therapists have commitment to social change, women are valued and honoured, egalitarian counselling relationship, therapy focuses on strengths and reformulated definition of psychological distress
Basic philosophy of feminist therapy
Criticize traditional theories because of gender based concepts such as adrocentric, gendercentric, ethnocentric, etc… Concepts include being gender fair, flexible, interactionist, and life-span oriented. Gender and power at heart of theory
Goals
Bring transformation in client and society, assist clients in recognizing, using and claiming personal power to free themselves from limitations of gendered society. Confront institutional policies that discriminate.
Therapist-client relationship
Relationship based on empowerment and egalitarianism. Hierarchy of power actively broken down and artificial barriers broken down through appropriate self-disclosure and teaching client about therapy process. Strive for collaborative relationship.
Therapy techniques
Techniques from traditional methods used. Employ consciousness raising techniques. Gender role analysis, intervention, power analysis, reframing, role playing
Applications
Applied to individual, relationship and family counselling, group counselling and community intervention. Applied to both men and women with goal of empowering
Multicultural contributions
\+focus on both individual and social, emphasis on cultural gender expectations -bias towards values of white middle class heterosexual women, need to consider consequences of significant changes for clients
Contributions and limitations
+responsible for questioning gender stereotypes! paving way for gender sensitive therapy! bring attention to gender power relations, brought attention to incidents of rape, incest, harassment, and violence
-impose new set of values, need to keep in mind, clients are there own best experts
Types of feminism
Liberal, cultural, radical, contemporary, socialist
